A handful of reasons not to throw yourself under a truck
It's been one of those weeks.
No, really — one of THOSE weeks! I won't go into details, but rest assured that it has been pretty bad. If weeks were movies, this last one would have been Ishtar. If weeks could be set to music, this one would have been an album titled, "Jim Nabors Sings All-Time Great Polka Favorites". If weeks were cities, this one would have been Bayonne, New Jersey.
In short, it hasn't been a great week.
So what is a guy like me to do? A mature, responsible, motivated man would sit down and do some serious thinking about his life. He'd identify exactly what had gone wrong and design a strategy for addressing his challenges. He'd face manfully up to his problems and head back into the world with his head held high.
You'll notice that I say "he." I am not that man.
No, in times of crisis, I make it a policy to avoid looking at myself in the mirror and find some way to distract myself. Because I don't yet own a Playstation2 and I haven't been motivated enough to sign up for cable television, I like to play a game called, "50 Reasons Why I'm Really Cool." I wrack my brain and try to come up with a list of things I have going for me.
This week, the list is an interesting one:
I have almost two dollars in change on my dresser.
I have half a container of ice-cream left in the freezer.
I don't have Ebola.
I like where I live — I like Mancheser. Here are a few of the reasons why:
There is a Polish grocery store in town where I can buy some of the best cookies in the world. They come in a package with a picture of a smiling bear on the bag, which is enough reason to like them in any case. But the cookies themselves are great! They are heart-shaped, made of gingerbread, stuffed with strawberry jam and covered with chocolate.
My favorite barbershop had a sign outside its door yesterday that read, "5 Barbers Today!!" (I particularly like the exclamation marks — a nice touch.)
I saw a bizarre traffic accident last week. A car full of teenage boys was facing the wrong way on the divided section of South Willow Street. The rear-end of their car was wrapped around a lamp post. The only way they could have gotten into this particular accident would have been to have driven backwards toward downtown at about thirty miles per hour and bashed into the pole. When I saw them, the kids were talking to a policeman with one question clearly visible on their faces — "Is there some sort of problem, Officer?" I love living in a city where something like that could happen.
I live across the street from one of the coolest cemeteries I've ever seen. It has gothic monuments, statues, footpaths, crypts and a wrought-iron fence enclosing it all. It is almost (and it is admittedly a strange thing to say about a cemetery) almost breathtakingly lovely. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that there must be a waiting list to get in.
In a city with a population of approximately 100,000, Manchester seems to have at least one bakery for every five or six people.
There are still nine churches in Manchester that hold services in French.
The city is stuffed to the gills with statues. Turn any corner, look in any park, peer out of the window of any municipal building, and you will find a statue. There are statues of men on horses, statues of avenging angels, statues of scholars, statues of saints, abstract statues, realistic statues, statues that are frankly boring and statues with one foot firmly planted in the surreal. This must be a great city in which to be a pigeon.
And speaking of birds, there is the matter of the falcons. It sounds trite and cliché, but I love the fact that a pair of peregrine falcons have chosen Manchester to breed and raise a family. It is unspeakably groovy that wild, feral beasts have come out of the wilderness to live among us. (I'm certain the pigeons have mixed feelings on the subject.) In my opinion, the falcons are merely a first step toward a logical conclusion — stocking the river with manatees.
