radio-free Europe | Curmudgeon at Large

We start our lives full of innocence and without pretensions. Along the way, we start gathering aspirations – some small, others grandiose – the ones that our parents or guidance counselor or life coach dream up for us so that we will, like Pavlovian dogs, salivate at the mere mention of them.

Of course we want to grow up to be all-star athletes or beauty queens or Phi Beta Kappa Rhodes Scholars or dot.com billionaires or rock star/athlete/movie celebrities with our own yacht and castle and gold Bentley. Of course we want to write the next great novel. Of course we want our children to grow up to be doctors or lawyers or CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies.

And we want to win the lottery. And we want world peace, an end to hunger, weight loss without exercise…

But let’s get real here, folks.

What do you really want to achieve in this life? I mean, really?! When I started life, I had delusions of grandeur. Now, in old age, I have delusions of adequacy. I started life wanting to be a teenage Nobel prize-winning PhD Physicist. Given the changes in my life, I’ll now accept unsoiled underwear as a major achievement.

So, what do I want?

I want to be an underachiever.
I want to be an Oscar-Meyer wiener.
I want to jam radio-free Europe in my Maiden-form bra.
I want to watch television for an entire week without, even once, seeing a commercial for vaginal yeast infections, erectile dysfunction or colostomy bags.
I want to fire Donald Trump.
I want the person who gives me the finger and cuts across my lane in traffic and nearly causes me to spin out and crash to end up being pulled over and ticketed by a state trooper so that I can give him the finger as I breeze on by at required speed.
I want the person whose dog always poops in my yard to receive a UPS package every day for a month with dog poop enclosed.
I want to live without hemorrhoids, heartburn or the heartbreak of psoriasis.
I want the sneering, smart-ass person who takes the last seat on the subway and won’t relinquish it to an old, doddering lady to be forced to fly from New York to Pretoria non-stop with the restrooms always occupied after being force-fed a diuretic (a really BIG diuretic).
I want a vitamin supplement that tastes like bourbon.
I want to have a day where I can answer every single question posed to me with the clarity, assurance and calm confidence of a Christian holding four aces at a poker table.
I want Rush Limbaugh to get laryngitis.
I want to see the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Petra, the Pyramids, Hagia Sofia and still be home in time for a dinner of shrimp and grits.
I do not want to be called old: I want to be called “certified pre-owned.”
I want a creamsicle. A real creamsicle with a vanilla inside and an orange sherbet outside and not those fake ones without sugar or with some sort of ice cream substitute that tastes like cardboard.
I want to be part of a world where a chicken can cross a road without being questioned as to his intentions.