I learned today that at one’s 100^th post, he is supposed to reveal 100 truths about himself.  This is Number 101, but here goes:

1-      I can’t write without music, a couple cocktails , or running.  I prefer all 3, as I have done tonight.

2-      Mute Math, Makers, and more than 2 miles works best.

3-      It’s called alliteration.

4-      We’re not as unique as we think we are, but there’s not a “normal.”

5-      Professor Carroll was right when he said the “real world is more like highschool than even college is.”  See, e.g., happy hours, cliques, nepotism, pettiness, gossip, distasteful dress.

6-      One will never find what he’s looking for in a person if he approaches all candidates with a checklist.

7-      He’ll find out how much he can enjoy being alone and frustrated.

8-      When a parent warns of his child’s genetic predispositions, pay attention.

9-      This will avoid multiple arrests for underage consumption, underage possession, DUIs, and indecent exposure.

10-   If said advice is ignored, however, make sure your father has friends in the local police force and judiciary.

11-   No matter how cool and metrosexual you think you are, some time, someone’s just going to call you a “faggot” and won’t care whether it’s true or not.

12-   It’s gotta be the shoes.

13-   Money, it’s gotta be the shoes!

14-   Just because someone stars in basketball shoe commercials or helps sell pizza doesn’t mean he can’t teach me something with his filmmaking.

15-   Not everyone is able to help it.

16-   Not everyone deserves it.

17-   But most have created their own plights.  Made beds and all.

18-   Bad health is the great equalizer.  Well, assuming everyone has decent insurance.

19-   I’m not sure about psychological health, though.  At some point in the past 10 years, a PhD or MD has diagnosed, and prescribed meds for, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and ADD.

20-   The prescriptions were never filled, and all is well, as long as Number 1 is enacted in moderation.

21-   But that doesn’t mean I won’t eventually kill some sonofabitch who mistreats my dog or my girls.

22-   Number 19 notwithstanding, PTSD is real.

23-   Just ask the guy driving the Jeep who honked at me , then saw me slam on the breaks, open the car door, and slap his driver’s side window and scream, “I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!” a few days after leaving a combat zone.

24-   Or the colleague who thought it’d be funny to drop a book on my desk when I was reading an electronic document closely, only to find his shirt wadded up in my left hand and my right fist nearing his nose a few seconds later.

25-   Again, it’s all about running, writing, and a cocktail or two.

26-   The best friends in life are the ones you made when you were a kid.  Gordon Lachance was right, only he made the mistake of losing touch with them.

27-   A good way to get back at a senior who has hazed you is to piss in the drink he made you get during the college football game your date drove 200 miles to come watch with you.

28-   After that, it’s pretty easy to forgive him and be friends.

29-   If you’re good enough friends, it’s okay to switch dates with your buddy at a formal.

30-   He might marry your date!

31-   And it’s great fodder for that rehearsal dinner speech you get to give as a groomsman.

32-   If you have an aversion to needles and pass out shortly before the wedding, resulting in a forehead full of stitches like Frankenstein, don’t let it affect your game.

33-   But if you do meet someone special and decide to jump in the pool with her, make sure the rest of the wedding guests aren’t watching and laughing through their hotel room windows.

34-   It’s not as dark as you think it is outside.

35-   Going rolling wearing nothing but one sock over your privates is dangerous if the house’s lights come on, and you’re forced to run away through the woods.

36-   There’s sticker bushes in them there woods.

37-   Have you ever had your nuts go through a sticker bush?  That shit hurts.

38-   Have someone take a picture of you and your wife on the night you meet.  If you’re not lucky enough to have such a treasure, find a new wife.

39-   Or, pretend you just met and have someone take a picture of the two of you looking happy and embarrassed and a little tipsy.

40-   And then think about how she looked in that picture whenever you kiss her.

41-   Time for another Makers and water.

42-   If you can’t make fun of yourself, don’t try to entertain others by making fun of others.  You’re not funny.  You’re just an asshole.

43-   Unless it’s a group you can get away with making fun of.  Like, white men.  They’re always fair game.  Non-jumping, whiny little pussies.

44-   Don’t tell your friends what percentile your son is in for height, weight, girth, etc.  Everyone’s son is in the 95%, meaning the percentiles need to be adjusted, or else all of you fuckers are full of shit.

45-   No one cares if your two year old can count or recite the alphabet, except for the grandparents.  They wanna know everything.

46-   Have I written yet about how my two-year-old can recognize letters and numbers?

47-   The best part of waking up is hardly Folgers in a cup.  It’s a blowjob.

48-   Damn right that’s a good day.

49-   Just because you used to sing “The Gambler” on your swing set on Saturday mornings at 6am with your little brother and wake up the neighbors doesn’t mean you can’t do it again, 28 years later.

50-   If you didn’t have a sibling growing up, walk up to your father, and kick him in the balls.  You missed out, dude.

51-   And Kenny Rogers was right-no one likes the asshat who counts his money while he’s sitting at the table.

52-   But if you do decide to gamble, do not tell the waitress to refill your nearly empty glass of whiskey and water every time it nears the one inch level for 12 hours straight.

53-   You will drive off everyone else at your blackjack table, and the dealer won’t help you any more, no matter how much you tip him.

54-   And you’ll fall backwards out of your chair onto the busy-patterned red carpet below.

55-   But you still might win several hundred dollars on pure, dumb luck.

56-   Don’t try to keep up while doing shots with an alcoholic.  He’ll go home just fine and work the crossword.  You’ll get pulled over and have to say the alphabet backwards while standing on one foot.

57-   For God’s sake, learn the alphabet backwards!  It’ll save you from getting a DUI.

58-   Or, at least, it’ll help.  Along with telling the cops you just found out you’re leaving your family to go to Iraq for the second time.  Maybe they’ll drive you home and thank you for your future service.

59-   If you steal Halloween decorations in a college town, however, don’t expect the police to be as forgiving.  They’re tired of seeing the same behavior year after year.

60-   But hide the weed!  You’ve got to keep it at the misdemeanor level!

61-   And when you go to court as the defendant and are called to approach the bench, don’t lean on it when you’re addressing the judge!  Only an idiot does such.

62-   However, running into said judge five years later after you’ve become a successful attorney will produce untold laughs from all around.

63-   Especially if he was one of your father’s best friends in college, and your father is present for the out-of-court reunion years later.

64-   At some point when you’re grown, befriend some of your parents’ old friends.  Hear the stories about them.  Learn who they were before they were “Mom” and “Dad.”

65-   Preferably before the funeral.

66-   Preferably over drinks.

67-   Get a dog.

68-   If your neighbor encourages getting a dog because, “It’ll change your life,” take heed.  Sometimes a selfish, living-alone adult needs to learn how to love and care for someone or something else before he can grow into someone who’s worthy of a more complicated relationship.

69-   By “complicated relationship,” I mean loving someone you can’t lock in a crate.

70-   If you feel on top of the world and are revving and have a racing mind and feel like you can’t be touched or do any wrong, don’t drink or drive or shop or call that person you shouldn’t call.   The mean people in white coats will just prescribe lithium.

71-   And you’ll understand what Kurt Cobain meant when he was so happy that he found his friends in his head.

72-   If you find that you’ve been picked up by two bouncers for throwing up in a plant in a bar and tossed out over four steps and into the street, make sure you pick up the pieces of that Swiss Army watch you bought yourself for getting your first “real” job.

73-   And hope to God you have a friend with you who comes outside just as you dust yourself off and tell the two hulking bouncers you’re about to “completely fuck them up” before you become a statistic or a punchline.

74-   And don’t bother researching the laws regarding bouncers and battery the next day.  They’ve got rights other folks just don’t have.  And how you gonna testify about a night that concluded with alcohol poisoning anyway?

75-   If in the same week, you drive your car into oncoming traffic, clip another vehicle, lose your side mirror, and drive home the rest of the way home with your lights off, running red lights, and screaming, “I’m in stealth mode, bitches!  How do you like me now?” then it’s time to see a professional about your boozing.  For real.

76-   But don’t tell him to go to hell when he suggests giving up alcohol for just one week.

77-   Ask a close friend for 20 years to quit wit h you.

78-   And, read the Bible.

79-   Or, at least, a book about Bono in which he describes his faith in God.

80-   Garth Brooks was right.  See “Unanswered Prayers.”

81-   We should hope we get what little good we have coming to us in this life when the time is right.

82-   We’ve certainly seen what happens when it comes too early.  See that pop singer who drives with her kid in her lap and forgets to put on underbritches.

83-   Find someone you like talking with on the phone or on a long car ride.

84-   It’s good to always wear, or at least bring, a ballcap with you on bus rides during Vacation Bible School, because if you end up sitting next to that cute girl on the way to the wave pool, you gotta cover that boner up!

85-   And when it’s time to get off the bus, just tuck that little guy in your elastic waist band and untuck your t-shirt.  You’ll be fine.

86-   But after the trip, if she likes call you and talk and talk and talk without pause, and you set the phone down while you go do other things, and your father puts the phone next to the stereo speaker while George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” is playing, she’ll hang up.  And she won’t ever talk to you again.

87-   I’m sorry, April.  It was 6^th grade.  I didn’t know any better, and my father is a twisted, sick man.

88-   If you ever drive your 1980 Buick LeSabre onto a BMX track and it gets stuck, make sure your buddy calls every party he’s aware is going on and that they come to fill up the stands and cheer as the cops come and the tow trucks pull you off.

89-   That way, the cops will laugh about it and won’t give you a ticket.  As long as the bike track isn’t damaged.

90-   And smile the following Monday when the President of the senior class who didn’t know you the week before stops you in the hall to ask, “Aren’t you the guy who got his car stuck on the BMX track?”

91-   The cool kids are just as insecure, and are faking it, just as much as you are.

92-   If an authority figure asks you why you did something as stupid as writing profanity in chalk all over their driveway, say, “I guess I wasn’t thinking about the consequences” or something similar.  Don’t just say “I dunno.”  Adults hate hearing that from kids when they act an ass.

93-   Ditto for if you fill a mailbox with shaving cream and get caught by the cops.

94-   Or if you fill a Sunbeam plastic bread bag full of dog shit and put it on a neighbor’s front porch, ring the doorbell, and run away, only to get caught a few minutes later when you think you’re far enough away to stop running and start bragging about what you did.  Don’t refer to it as a “bundle of joy” either.

95-   Or if you and your five friends are caught drinking cans of Sunkist orange drink by the man who owns the pickup truck from whom you lifted said cans of Sunkist orange drink when he asks you why you took the drinks from his parked vehicle in his driveway.

96-   Or if you pick two kids in your second grade class and write notes from each one to the other professing hatred and profanity to the other kid and stuff it in each one’s parent’s mailbox.

97-   And by the way, Todd is spelled with 2 D’s.  Don’t sign your name “Tod” if it should read “Todd,” unless you want to get caught.

98-   Before you finish school, pick a summer job that you know will make you laugh one day.  Like being the rat at Chuck E. Cheese.  I don’t know how many times I’ve brightened the mood of all around me by telling stories about my working as the rat at Chuck E. Cheese during the summer of 1993.

99-   Snakes move after they’re dead.  If you’re swimming in the lake and see a snake and pull yourself onto the nearest boat dock and start throwing rocks at it until it dies and then pick it up to show your friends, and the snake starts moving around, and you scream and throw it down and piss yourself with fear, they’re going to laugh at you.  And they’ll keep laughing for the next several years.

100- Pray it’s only 1/3 over at age 33.  There’s too much good stuff left to see and do.
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