Category: Daily Prompt

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Before I Die

before-i-die15_178343183Before I die I want to live. I don’t remember where that quote comes from, but it’s one I’ve lived by since I turned 21. Before then I never even thought about death, even though all around me people were dying every day. None of it really seemed that personal to me until I turned 21 and began having little aches and pains, signs that informed me of my own mortality.

In recent years a lot of focus has been given to the proverbial “bucket list,” a list of things people want to do before they die. It started off with a lot of older folk and their list of regrets. What didn’t they do that they wish they had done in their lifetime? They were regrets, though, because almost everything on their lists were impossibilities for people of advanced age. That’s when people younger and younger began writing out their own bucket lists of things they could conceivably do if they lived a nice long life.

Of course living a nice long life is not a given for anyone who’s young, and we can see more and more the stories of people who’ve died young, before they had a chance to truly live, before the things on their bucket lists could be successfully completed. I recall reading a book once about this woman who was involved in the death of a young girl who had a list of 40 things she wanted to do before 40. I could be massively reinterpreting the plot structure of the book, but it was intriguing, completing someone else’s list out of a sense of guilt or obligation. In a way it was even better because the woman felt compelled to go out of her comfort zone to try and get some closure on what she had done, accidentally or not. The idea intrigues me. Continue reading “Before I Die”

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Dating by Numbers

Okay. I will be the first to admit I haven’t dated all that much in my life. By the time I was dating age (i.e. 17) I was finally a senior in high school, but I was going to a large public school where I knew pretty much no one, and I was afraid to approach most girls. The one girl I got up the courage to ask out laughed in my face, so that wasn’t a good batting average for me. Needless to say, I didn’t ask out another girl from school that year.

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Dating myth: Flowers win the girl over.

However, I also went to church, and my mother was always suggesting I go out with one of the good Christian girls there. But so many of them I had grown up with, and it would have just seemed weird to want to court one of them. Well, except for this one girl, but she treated me like a brother, and I didn’t have the hurt to damage that relationship in order to try and craft another one out of its ashes. There was another girl, though, who was relatively new to our church, and I finally just asked her out.

GIRL #1

She had short, dark brown hair and a smile that never left her lips. She was also world-smart, meaning she didn’t come originally from a church family. So she was not really the sort of girl the preacher’s kid was supposed to be going after. I suppose that made her more appealing in my eyes. I asked, she said yes, but it was the date that never happened. That seemed to happen a lot to me for some reason. Just say no if you don’t want to go out.

GIRL #3

Me and Girl #3, we actually went on a date. Seven of them to be precise. I was 20 at the time, but a lot more world-weary than I should have been at that point. We met first online, and our initial phone conversation was horrendous. But we still met in person, which was a good thing, considering we hit it off from the start. We met, we wooed, we made exchange of vow. And yeah, as you can imagine, things went much too fast. I guess it either went nowhere, it went too slowly, or it accelerated swiftly back then for me. I think I scared her away. But those were a nice seven dates. Continue reading “Dating by Numbers”

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Hey, Jealousy

index“You can trust me not to drink, and not to sleep around. And if you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.” -Gin Blossoms

Jealousy is and always will be tied and connected to trust. If you have trust in the person you’re with then you shouldn’t be jealous, right? But it’s not that simple. Nothing is ever that simple in life. There can be the utmost trust between two people, and yet jealousy can still creep in because we are human. In fact, jealousy can even be seen as a compliment by some, a sign that you still truly have feelings for someone. But what is jealousy anyway?

“Jealousy: resentment against a rival, a person enjoying success or advantage.”

I remember liking a girl in kindergarten, when most of the rest of the boys in my class were still talking about girls having cooties. Her name was Kareema, and she was the most beautiful girl I had seen to that point in my life. So I hit her one day during recess, which was my clear sign to her that I liked her. She didn’t get it, instead telling the teacher on me and getting me a demerit for it. I would watch her from then on, but I stopped hitting her, and I noticed her having fun with her girlfriends. I was jealous that I had missed my chance and they were having fun with her instead.

Then fast-forward to fifth grade, and there was Mia. Ah, Mia. By this time the other boys were finally admitting they liked girls, and the girls were playing attention-seeking games. But Mia was different. She was a quiet sort, but she had a dynamic smile. And she was my friend, but we had a bit of a flirtatious relationship. Well, flirtatious for fifth graders in the mid-80s anyway. I was even very close to asking her to go steady when Jermaine showed up. He was smooth, and before I knew it he had asked her to go steady and she said yes. I think maybe she tired of waiting around for me to ask her. I was so jealous of him, not only for getting Mia, but for being confident enough to ask for what he wanted. Continue reading “Hey, Jealousy”

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Confidential

th“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” -Peter T. McIntyre

Having confidence is easy. Just convince enough people of it, and you’re in. The old “fake it til you make it,” mentality that seems to work on so many people because they want to believe it. The key is to find out what others are looking for from a confident person and portray that. Now, some people aren’t good enough actors to pull this off, and those are the ones we label “anti-social,” or “followers,” which is okay. But many people exist who push that fear down deep enough to project confidence.

Want to know something funny? Usually pretending to be confident is adequate over the long run to actually make you confident. That works with anything, pretty much. Remember Eddie Murphy’s character in “Trading Places”? He was down on his luck and resorted to running scams to try and get cheap money while living on the streets. But then he was picked up out of the gutter and given his heart’s desire, and a sense of purpose. Suddenly he began acting like a more confident man to the extent that he shed the bonds of those men and made something of himself. By himself.

“Confidence is the first step. It doesn’t matter how you achieve it. What truly matters is that you get it in the first place.”

This happens often, from shy nerds who only have confidence in their computer abilities, to weightlifters whose confidence comes strictly from their physical strength, to stay-at-home mothers who are only confident in their homemaking skills. Yet, if these people are placed in other situations which require confidence of a different sort they can usually adjust and pull it off. How? Because confidence is the first step. It doesn’t matter how you achieve it. What truly matters is that you get it in the first place. Then use the power of transference and you’re set. Continue reading “Confidential”

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Jimmy Swaggart & Wintley Phipps

mzi.oumnppwt.600x600-75My dad had Jimmy Swaggart on his stereo. I remember the tape case with the man himself on the cover — smiling. And every time I would visit my dad’s apartment the great speaker would be on in the background, pleading for me to take Jesus into my heart. I didn’t know how I felt about it back then, but I knew he was sincere, and that changed the way I heard his music.

Then I would go back home and my mother would be listening to Wintley Phipps, the great gospel singer with the baritone voice. When I thought of him I recalled the mini-fro he wore on the cover of a few of his records. My mother owned them all, and at times it seemed like he was all she listened to.

Wintley Phipps came to my church one time when I was young, and I recognized his voice although he looked different from those record covers. It was my first brush with the faraway coming close enough to see in person, and I was struck by the fact that he honestly looked like any other man I had met in my life. Even though he was larger than life before that, when I only knew him through his voice and through his album covers.

And about the same time I met Wintley Phipps at my church the scandal regarding Jimmy Swaggart was just taking wing. It was vague enough to me, though I did realize he wasn’t played nearly as much at my dad’s apartment after that. I think I asked what was up, and my dad gave me the tape. I guess that was my answer. Continue reading “Jimmy Swaggart & Wintley Phipps”