So…I’ve got a little break at work. However expected this break might’ve been, there was still a little startle once it came. The students filled my room first period this morning with their usual loudness—stayed their usual 75 minutes. Then they left, and break came. The silence hit me like a mack truck. And silence’s lady love came crashing in just as hard as he did. She dangled just above my head, whispering into my ear about all the ‘less than sexy’ things I should be thinking about. There are trucks to rent, things to pack, grades to put in, ceremonies to plan, and errands to run. She’s mocking me…but she can’t hear the noise that’s already in my head. She doesn’t know that the reason I am staring blankly at this computer screen is because there is so much noise that I cannot even make sense of it enough to type it into the white oblivion of Microsoft Word. But these are just black words on a white backdrop. Must they make sense?

Stupid is an ongoing theme in my life. When I was a kid my best friend. Darold, and I used to jump off of the roof onto bean bags. We’d pick each other up above our heads a and body-slam each other like WWF wrestlers did. We threw rocks at cars, and school windows. We shop-lifted and lit things on fire. We played baseball with just two people…hmm. We were stupid kids—the kind adults get really furious at when they come into their front yard and see a portion of their yard on fire, or a broken window or something. I guess that’s what kids do…or some of them at least. I have no regrets about all that. Its just part of the story of life I guess.

Here are the things that are genuinely stupid…
Do you guys remember those little poppers that used to come in the Rice Crispy cereal box? It was like a little rubber dome that you turned inside-out, and when you did that and set it onto a surface it would eventually pop up into the air. We used to think they were so cool. So, one day I decided (while lying on the couch watching TV) that I wanted to see it pop up from a different perspective…perhaps from the bottom. “I’ll just turn it inside-out and lay it on my eye!” I thought the idea was genius…that is, until that sucker finally popped and gave me a black eye. I immediately knew how stupid it was to have done that. The idea was obviously doomed for injury way before I carried it out. So why didn’t it occur to me beforehand? Stupid. It was just one of those times that you do something without realizing what is actually going on. There was another time that I was riding my bike and decided I was going to plow straight into one of those chain-linked fence doors (I was one for demolition). I hit that thing so hard that it bounced back and caught me in the shoulder…took a nice chunk out. Stupid.

So what’s up with that? Why do I do stupid shit like that? I realize the mistake after the fact, and am left wishing for a time machine. Sometimes I find myself falling into a manhole even though someone tried to warn me ahead of time. And in the conversation I go, “yeah I get it”, thinking that I do. But I don’t know that I don’t until I REALLY do. That makes me feel like a real douche-bag. And until modern science starts pumpin’ out affordable time machines, I guess all I can do is learn my lessons for future reference and hope the past can be overlooked…