The eternal struggle.
Knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it are worlds apart.
When I made my decision to withdraw from college and hit the road with a regional touring rock and roll band, I knew it was not the right thing to do.
But it allowed me to experience the electric thrill of a power chord, bass, and drums mind-fucking me in the prime of life. It began an odyssey that I am forever thankful for. It also has provided me with stories that most people can only read about.
When I stole a shotgun from a bullying, bar-fighting asshole, I knew it was the wrong thing to do. But as I threw it out of my car window over a canyon wall, it sure felt right.
I was 100% right when I talked a battered wife into leaving her jerkwad of a husband, but 100% wrong when I backed out of anything to do with her because she had two kids.
Some people are right even when they’re wrong.
Like the Domestic Despot.
She used to get so pissed when I would not go to the mattresses for her in defense of an obviously wrong statement of “fact.”
And we’re still together.
The evil side got just a little taste from me in high school. I pretty much played it safe, not getting in much trouble (after third-grade). I was friends with both the “evil” element in school (remember I had six high schools due to my peripatetic existence) and the “good” kids, led by the Student Council members.
The only time I was ever even associated with wrongdoing in high school was in my senior year. There was a group of ne’er-do-wells in class who approached me to join them in their scheme to change our professor’s gradebook grades. Problem was, by my senior year, I had completed all my academic requirements, so I was only taking three morning classes. This allowed me to hit The Point and surfing by noon every day. I was making an “A” so I just told them I wouldn’t rat on them.
They would end up getting caught, ending two college careers before they ever got started.
Life definitely did not suck my senior year.
Now that my Pops has passed, I can tell the story of my attempt to break a “world’s record” (totally made up by me, I don’t know if there was ever such a record). I attempted to drink 24 12-ounce cans of Coors beer in thirty minutes. I even arranged to have a reporter and photographer from the local newspaper show up. My Dad was at work and my stepmother, a nurse, was also gone.
When the pair showed up, I had 24 opened cans of beer in front of me. I had this all mathematically figured out. I could spend about 73 seconds per beer.
But no.
I slammed the first, draining it in about four seconds. Beers six, seven, and eight were gone and I still had twenty-four minutes left to drink the remaining sixteen, so I started to feel a bit cocky. The photographer was looking pretty bored, so I stepped up to the bar and started chugging. When I hit beer number twelve in minute number twenty, I knew I was in Big Trouble.
All over the counter.
All over the floor.
All over me.
Needless to say, it was all over.
Stay well.
