My sister sent me an email recently, and in it were several cute quotations.
This one in particular caught my eye: "A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
" Fits me to a "T".
If there ever was an oxymoron that often describes my normal conditions and feelings, it must be something like "he smiled sadly".
I must drive people nuts, and on more than one occasion, okay, on more than several thousand occasions, I have been reminded that the world is not ready for a truly happy person!In my life, almost the only thing that makes me feel down is the sadness or anger of others.
On those occasions I mentioned, I am often reminded that people don't usually see things as I do.
Of course, I can't blame them.
After all, here's what it is like to live with me.
I am 62 years old, and every morning of my adult life, no matter how terrible things were, and there have been some terrible times, I have opened the front door of wherever I lived and looked out on the world as if it were totally new and a wonderful thing that I have never seen before.
At the same time, I was perfectly comfortable with the simultaneous feeling of looking at an old familiar place..
even if I had just moved in.
We recently moved (again), and by day two in the new place, my wife, who loves me dearly but is of a Mediterranean temperament, was ready to toss me (the mad Irishman) to the wolves, or sacrifice me to Etna...
whatever!I could not wait to open the same boxes we had packed just days beforewith things we had owned for years!I even secretly opened one today just so I could see what was in it.
Get my excitement fix, you might say.
Let's see; there was a bag of chips, a bottle of vinegar (unopened), a box of pasta (opened but in a Ziploc bag), a veritable plethora of tea bags of various sorts and smells...
and other goodies too numerous to mention.
I actually enjoyed it.
However, it was over all too soon.
I think I will have to secretly rip open another box tomorrow to get my next fix.
We have several stored in the shed nearby.
Maybe I can slip down there after she's asleep.
You see, the problem is, she thinks we are supposed to open boxes and put things away in an orderly fashion, while I just like to open boxes, ooh and ahh over the contents, and then open another box.
If I put things away in an orderly fashion, I would miss out on half the fun of my life...
finding long lost wonderments on my bookcase, in my desk drawer, under the desk (dresser, bed, and assorted other pieces of furniture).
To me, every event is something to be savored and admired, no matter the smallness in the minds of those around me.
I have actually had to restrain myself from pointing out garbage that made an interesting collage along the side of the road.
Sometimes these are seen on planned routes, but often I am just enjoying the scenery on a detour...
or while lost...
which happens a lot, for some reason.
The really interesting part is that when I was in the army, they used to take me to places where I didn't know where I was, give me a map and a compass, and expect me to find my way back home, or to some appointed spot.
No problem.
Did it every time.
However, send me to the grocery store one mile away for milk and eggs, and I will be back in two or three hours...
probably without the milk, or the eggs, or both.
I will have picked up something at the hardware store, had a cup of coffee somewhere, bought another notebook...
because I can't find the other two thousand I own.
A few months ago, my wife and I watched "Finding Nemo".
If you see it, I am in there, only I am a female fish named "Dory" and have the voice of Ellen DeGeneres...
which is as confusing to me as it is to you.
If you have not seen the movie, Dory cannot remember anything for more than a couple of minutes and is continually having to be reintroduced to the life going on around her and which she has been a part.
I can relate.
I guess I had better wrap this up.
I was supposed to be checking emails and then joining my wife in the living room, but then I got this great idea for this article...
Well, at least I didn't leave the garbage can in the bedroom like that other time.
Hmm!Sounds like she's in the kitchen.
There's the kitchen drawer...
wait a minute!That's where the knives are! Gotta go!