MONOPOLY IT AIN'T

They say life is a game. Well, it's one heck of a game if you ask me. It's a game two other people got you into without your approval. You have to find out the most important rules for your self while simultaneously playing the game, and, most interestingly, you can't win. No thanks, I'll pass on that game. Oops! I can't do that either. If I'm alive, I'm playing.

The life game does have a winner, it's just not you. Death is the ultimate winner. Death is like a well-camouflaged, sharp-shooting, game piece hidden behind the heavy trees on the ridge overlooking your life being played out in the valley below. Death's job is to pick off everything of importance around you. Maybe on a slow day Death will just play with your world like a cat plays with a mouse. He will wound or take out those special to you just for something to do. Then when death gets really bored he'll put a slug right between your eyes, and there is not one darn thing you can do about it. Death always wins.

I know this sounds cynical, but reality often does sound cynical. When you really "get' that life and the lives of those around you are finite, only then can you begin to truly live life the way it is, not the way you would like life to be.

If you view immortality as winning life's game, you're a loser right out of the blocks. Who would want to live forever? As Woody Allen said, "Some people want immortality and they can't think of what to do on a Saturday night." If you look at life as a trip, as something you do between birth and death, you win the game by simply enjoying and maximizing each day. Enjoying what you have when you have it is the only way you can thumb your nose at the sniper on the hill.

Lesson:  Life's game is not about winning or losing; it has to be about how you play the game because there is nothing else.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

As we landed in Los Angles the sun was shining and the airline had not lost my luggage, overall a good flight. Now all I had to do was get the rental car and I'd be on my way.

I had given speeches in the LA area before and felt reasonably comfortable finding my way around. This was pre-GPS so I just had a map of the area with my destination clearly marked by my client with bright yellow magic marker. There should be no problem finding the place. Getting lost when I have a time commitment tends to release my stress juices. Not needing that particular adrenaline rush, I thought I'd verify my driving plan with the desk agent at the rental car counter.

"Can you exit the 105 at Western?" I asked in my best guy-asking- directions tone. "I dounno," came the reply from the most recent Dale Carneige drop out. "Ask the guy down where you pick up your car," he mumbled. I guess if you "dounno", you "dounno", so I slupped my bags to the rental car pick-up.

"Can you exit the 105 at Western?" I tried again in my best annoyed-guy-asking-direction tone. This guy was much more helpful. I think so," he said. Well I thought so too, and within my world two "thinks" equal a "know," so I went for it.

Wrong.

After driving longer on the 105 than I thought I should (I started seeing signs for Pittsburgh), I pulled off the highway and parked on an unfamiliar side street to get my bearings.

I figured with my trusty, handy-dandy map my "bearing getting" should be a snap. I pulled out the map with the designation brightly highlighted and sat there staring. It was then I learned another of life's bountiful lessons.


Lesson:  Knowing where you're going is useless if you don't know where you are.

Slippery Slope

I am officially a senior citizen, and I’m just a tad away from yelling at kids to get off my lawn, but something really concerns me.

I heard the other day that in the early days of TV, (days of which I was a part), the word “pregnant’ could not be said on TV. Today you can watch somebody get pregnant on TV.

"Dick Van Dyke Show" was one of the first TV programs to let you into their bed room only to find 2 twin beds hugging the opposite walls. Today’s TV shows don’t need a bed, the kitchen counter will do.

When Elvis hip-wiggled on the "Ed Sullivan Show" the camera never wandered south of his belt line. If the same rules were in effect today we’d miss the pop singers grabbing their junk.

If you heard the “F” word shouted, the room would go silent, it would mean some ice road trucker, a Marine drill instructor or a lifer must be in the room and really had a visceral life effecting point to make. Today you look around and the only other person in the room is a middle school girl having trouble with the zipper on her back pack. That same young lady goes to school in an outfit that in my day they asked a hefty cover charge to see at a strip club. Don’t even get me started on the pants-at-half-mast creepiness.

I always enjoyed listening to stand up comedians. The good ones worked at crafting a joke. Today it appears as if they can’t tell a funny story, one that is just plain funny on its own, they swear as much as possible to at least get a nervous laughter out of the audience, or the audience laughs just to show how cool they are. Carlin and Pryor colored up their act so I guess the young guns feel they need to do the same in order to be successful. I believe people laughed at Carlin and Pryor in spite of their language not because of it. It seems to me they were just as funny on regulated network TV. I never heard of anybody coming out after a comedy show saying they wished the comedian swore more but some how comedians seem to think increased swearing is the answer to a “bad audience.”

I wonder what words can we use now to show real emotion? What does the “F” word even mean today? When a woman conservative politician can be called the “C” work on a major cable network, are there any words off limits?

Compare "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriett" to "Two and ½ Men." If I found myself in an alternate universe when I was 10 years old and "Two and ½ Men" appeared on our black and white Zenith I wouldn’t understand 2/3s of the 1/2 man.

My question is what happens when we go too far? Can we go too far? As a conservative I naturally tend to not take a fence down until I know why it was put up. Change, just because we can, doesn’t sit easily with me. How far can the TV sitcoms go? In order to set themselves apart, it seems they feel they have to “out-raunch” the competition. Will we have an all nude channel on cable soon? Soft porn is already there, will the network shows begin easing into soft porn in order to stay competitive? After that what? Hard core followed up next season by snuff films?

I guess maybe our parents and grandparents wondered the same and we survived, but are we surviving in the best possible world? The way society evolves is like the elastic on your old man’s underwear. Once it’s stretched it ain’t going back. Our grandchildren will live in a very different world than the one in which we live and we have created, and they will be OK because they will know nothing else.

But I guess the big question is, “Is a child better off over his or her life time being shielded from “adult” things until reaching a certain age, or should our children be taught to read using "Hustler’s Letters To The Editor?" I guess we had better hope it’s the latter because I see nothing on the horizon to stop it.

Now, “Get off my lawn!”


Lesson:  Change is neither good nor bad, or is it?

SAY WHAT?

"Find out what others are doing and do something else."

This sage piece of advice was offered on a self-improvement audio tape. It sounded logical to me.

Innovation is a key (on a packed key ring) to success. If you do what everybody else is doing, you'll get what everybody else has got. You are an indistinguishable piece on life's game board. For you to stand out in those areas of your life in which you would wish to stand out while doing what everybody else is doing, is pretty unlikely.

Therefore innovation is good---but wait.

"If you want to be successful, find people who are successful and model them."

This equally sage piece of advice was offered on another self-improvement audio tape (by the same speaker I might add), and it sounded logical to me.

Obviously learning from other people's mistakes is an excellent way to learn. If you don't learn from others' mistakes, you have a long, winding and bumpy road ahead. Then obviously, learning from other people's success is an equally excellent way to learn. So you should model the productive behaviors of those you feel have attained the degree of success with which you would be happy and eliminate the behaviors of those you would charitably label as "losers."

Therefore innovation is bad.

"Do something else" or "model the leaders"--I'm confused.

Lesson:  Listen to others for ideas not truths. Truth is what works for you.