Oblah Dee .......Oblah Dah

I spend some time thinking every once in a while. We all have the same lessons to learn. And when I learn them, I often forget that I am not the first person to figure this or that out. All I can claim is that I finally got it.

I’m gonna hitch a bit on a blog I wrote for another venue. Remember the dreaded “Grading on the Curve?” That infamous bell shaped curve that defines so many aspects of our lives? Here is one angle I was thinking of recently. Take your knowledge, your physical skills and your mental abilities and distribute them along the time line of your life. If you are somewhat normal and live the expected number of years, you’ll find that your skills and abilities will follow the curve. From birth to death, you are either increasing or decreasing.

Sure, there is a smooth spot at the top, and you may ride the crest for quite a while, but it really is either up or down. In the very beginning, you don’t even notice your progress, but you are assimilating experience and knowledge at an ever increasing and quite astonishing rate. I always think of my learning and my experience as measured by milestones. Do you remember when you first rode a two-wheeler by yourself? Your first kiss? Your High School graduation or your first driver’s license?

I have always been a bit short-sighted. When I graduated High School, I didn’t envision my College graduation. When I first rode my bike around the block, it never occurred to me to look forward to driving a car or riding a motorcycle. That first kiss? Didn’t ever imagine being married. At the wedding, becoming a parent was the farthest thing from my mind. Now that I’m a bit older, though my eyesight is getting worse, my vision seems to be improving. The lens of experience, I guess.

As I grew, I collected experience, knowledge and skill, bit by bit, one piece at a time. I eventually reached a zone of relative competence and have cruised there for a while. If you will envision a metaphor with me, picture walking up a rounded hill. In the beginning, the slope is gentle, but as we have just begun our walk, we are full of energy and enthusiasm encouraged by our very ignorance. As our ability to learn and do increases, so do the challenges. Farther up, perhaps the hill is less steep, but the air becomes more rarefied the higher we go and the going does get tougher. We approach the top, and buoyed by our work to this point, we can do what we must fairly easily. At the top, our tasks, though they still take time and energy, are almost effortless.

The surprise waits a little farther. Gradually things become even easier, but……is that because we are even better, or has the slope crested and started down? At first it may be hard to tell. We are full of ourselves, matured as human beans, competent to handle most situations and able to enjoy life and the fruits of our labors. However, the rock we stand upon, that bell curve full up with our skills and abilities, is diminishing. The area under the curve is becoming smaller and smaller.

Maybe the first thing we lose is just a step. Perhaps I can’t quite catch up with that fastball, or some motion I used to make routinely now elicits a twinge of discomfort. An injury may cause us to be a taste more cautious. A restricted back-swing knocks 50 yards off the drive. Perhaps every face doesn’t always have a name attached the way it used to, or, dare I say it, maybe I get just a little bit lost on a familiar road?

At some point you begin to realize that the walk is just a bit too easy; the slope is helping you to walk just a little bit more quickly than you really want to, and it takes effort to slow down. It’s like driving down a hill: at first it’s just enough to lift your foot from the accelerator, any steeper and you begin to use the brakes. (OK here my improved vision kicks in and I can picture myself sliding, on my back down an enormous slip n slide, arms and legs flailing wildly, grasping at anything to try and slow down.) Maybe somehow our equilibrium fails and instead of a nice smooth curve into the flat line (Ooh, there is an interesting and appropriate analogy!) we trip and simply fall off the hill, straight to the bottom, not to be confused with illness, injury or accident at an unfortunate moment dropping us to zero before our time.

Another way to look at the whole thing is this. We spend a bunch of time adding…adding skills, adding knowledge even gathering stuff. Then, one by one, things are taken away. In the end you will leave just as you arrived.

My point is this: when you receive a gift, appreciate it. Be it a gift of time, space, or love, treasure it….live in the moment and savor each precious tick of the clock. You never know which tick will be your last.

Oh! Did I tell You About...........

Here is one I don't talk about much. My SO is a wonderful person, but she does have an interesting quirk.

She has never met a story that she can't improve. Literally and literarily, every time she tells a story it changes. Eventually it becomes bigger than life, and I find this incredibly amusing. Once she gets started, I sit back and marvel at how creative her manipulations become. If I have heard the story before, I have a baseline, a benchmark or starting place to mark and measure the width and breadth of her inevitable prevarication.

The funny thing is that she seems to be more solidly grounded in the improved tale than she does the truth. Every retelling drifts further and further from fact towards fabrication. She seems to believe the story and will even swear to its veracity.

Here is an example:
One day the kids borrowed her car for a while. We ran errands in my vehicle and stopped in at Trader Joes. As we parked, we saw her car in the parking lot; the kids were next door at the Wherehouse. She thought it would be funny to move her car. I have a bit of a mean streak and readily agreed, so we did move it several rows over, then went in to Trader Joes. As we were checking out, the kids rushed in looking for us, saw us at the check stand and came over to let us know just how unfunny our prank was. We laughed. End of story. OK...that's what really happened.

Now for the improved version: Everything is the same up until we moved the car. At this point we hide in the bushes and wait to see their reactions, and you wouldn't believe the looks of astonishment on their faces when they come out and find the car missing *laugh out loud and slap thigh for emphasis* "You should have seen the looks on their faces! It was hilarious!" She has even quoted dialogue between them on occasion(I guess the bushes were pretty close.)
A simple change and maybe it does make a better story......she surely does enjoy telling it more.

Anyway, it has created a new hobby for me. When she starts, I just relax and wait to see what new paths our old adventures have taken since the last time. I'm always amused and often amazed at what we have done.

Of course I can only testify about the ones to which I've been an accomplice. The stories that scare me are the ones where I wasn't........