The Green Red Green (17 page)

H
ere’s the thing that’s bad about successful people: they tend to be successful in most things they do. If they’re good at running a business, they’re probably good at running a family too. Congratulations to them and everything, but the last thing you need is to spend time with a person who not only makes ten times your annual salary but also gets along better with his kids. And no matter how much you think you get along with that successful guy, somewhere deep down inside, each of you is thinking, “What a dink.”

W
hen I was a kid, there was no such thing as health food because back then all food was pretty healthy. Today, thanks to breakthroughs in technology, we can eat a three-course meal that is about 2,394 steps removed from a farm. In fact, many of our modern snack foods are byproducts from the manufacturing of synthetic upholstery.

Generally speaking, a fast food snack with a name like Cheez-O-Rinos has virtually nothing to do with cheese. Some consumers feel this is false advertising, but in fact, the list of ingredients on the package quite clearly includes “cheez,” not “cheese.” What’s not mentioned is that “cheez” is an industrial term for a waste chemical that’s skimmed off vats of latex house paint.

When you check the nutritional value of snacks like Cinnamon Whizzeys, Choco-Drips, or Gribble Grabble, you’ll find that the label on the cellophane package usually says something like this: “Each 10 oz. serving contains the recommended annual intake of
salt, vitamin L, and di-ethyl-methyl-ketone. Uranium has been added to preserve freshness.”

If you are going to hoover down a lot of junk food, your heart certainly doesn’t deserve the extra strain that comes from worrying about what you’ve just inhaled. So when some health nut teases you because you’ve just knocked back a party-size bag of ketchup-flavoured Tater-rinos and a gallon of Zap cola for breakfast, pull out this handy chart, which proves that snack foods are good, and good for you.

I
’m not sure exactly when I figured out that people are made up of chemicals, but my guess would be sometime in the 1960s. We are all complex mixtures of various chemicals. A change in
the chemicals makes a change in the person. Hydrogen and oxygen make water. That’s it. Anything you add to that combination makes a huge difference. You can’t also throw in a boatload of Bunker C Crude and still have water, as everyone at BP now knows. So we should all be aware of the chemicals we put in our bodies every day.

The more chemicals, the more chemical reactions. The more chemical reactions, the less chance you have of making new friends or being allowed back into the hot tub. You’ll need to do a lot of your own research on this because everyone’s different, but as a general rule, you should never mix carbonated overproof alcoholic fruit drinks with any type of cheese derivative having a pH above 9.

A
s the years go by, an unwritten law allows you privileges that you’ve never had before. While you may not be able to
do
as many things as you used to, you can now
say
more stuff than you ever could. Here is a list of expressions that are acceptable once you hit mid-life and beyond:

I
’ve been a husband for most of my adult life, and certainly for all of my mature adult life, and I’ve watched the marriage evolve over that period of time. I’ve found that the average married woman regards her husband as some strange life form who means well but basically doesn’t get it. He becomes an obstacle to a quiet, easy, stress-free life. Someone who has to be cajoled and coaxed and tricked into doing things like shopping or having the relatives over.

I’d just like to point out that the role of being the opposition is a valuable one that is reflected in court procedures and parliamentary government. Husbands are the opposable thumbs of relationships. There is an implied mutual dependency, as the contrary positions of husband and wife make both stronger and more effective. Without husbands, the wives would simply be four fingers waving in the breeze, and without wives, husbands would just be a thumb hitchhiking its way through life.

I
f you’re like me, you have more than once found yourself driving down the highway when all of a sudden your car hood flies up and blows off. Don’t you hate that? Probably my own fault for closing the hood with the same piece of duct tape over and over. But let me tell you, it’s worth going back to get that hood, even if you have to apologize to the people at the bus stop. That hood can save you thirty bucks come Christmas, because with a little skill and ingenuity—and some rope—you can turn it into a toboggan.

The first step is to put the rope through the front of the hood and tie it to something so it doesn’t flop around when you’re coming down the hill. Or get the fat kid to sit on it.

Now, you don’t just want to ride your hood/toboggan by sitting down on the bare metal. You need to be a little higher so you can see what’s up ahead, ’cause there’s nothing worse than screaming down a farmer’s hill and getting hit in the face with a frozen trail treat.

Remove the front seat from a former friend’s car (he shouldn’t be driving in winter anyway) and strap it to the inverted hood with duct tape. Now go out and have yourself some fun. And make sure you really enjoy that first run, because this unit comes in at around four hundred pounds, and you may not be able to convince your wife to drag it back up the hill.

Y
ou’ve taken steps so you won’t be reminded that you’re getting older. You avoid mirrors and brightly lit rooms and anyone who knows your true age, but there are physical activities you should also stay away from. If you want to maintain that healthy, young self-image, pay attention to the following:

I
saw another “long-lost brother reunion” thing on one of those talk shows for people who tell their whole family to shut up so they can watch a television program on communicating. On this particular episode, a brother and sister were brought back together after twenty years of no contact. Now, it was a touching scene when they hugged each other and shed a tear or two, but I had a sense that this was all a huge invasion of privacy.

We’ve got the Internet and the phone book and there are only ever six degrees of separation, so I have to believe that any two people who want to find each other do. When you see a reunion, that can only mean the person who wanted to do the finding did a way better job than the person who wanted to do the hiding. It looks good for a few minutes on television, but an hour later, I’ll bet somebody is saying, “By the way, you still owe me money/an apology/both.”

So if there’s anybody out there trying to reunite with somebody, accept that the reason you can’t find the person is because
he or she doesn’t want to meet you halfway. Focus instead on the people who’ve been with you all the way along. Unless you owe them money or an apology or both.

M
y wife bought a computer desk this week in the form of two boxes sticking out of the car trunk, each of which outweighed me. I wrestled them into the living room and tried to open the boxes carefully, but I’m not at my best when something heavy has just fallen on my foot. Inside were a couple of dozen slabs of fake wood, five bags of hardware, and a twenty-seven-page instruction manual. I learned to read manuals last summer after I assembled what I thought was a five-speed bicycle and turned out to be a wheelbarrow. Three days and a bunch of repeated steps later, the desk was together.

So now I’m thinking, “What if we don’t like it and want to take it back?” I’ve already scratched it and wrecked the box, and I’d have to take it apart just to get it into the car. And it struck me then that unassembled furniture is like a marriage. It may not be perfect, but when you think about the hassle of taking it back, you stick it in the corner and try not to look at it too closely.

W
e have laws in this country that say once you reach the age of eighty, you have to have a driver’s test every year. A lot of men dread it because they know that’ll be the end of their driving career. The truth is, most driving careers should end long before
they get that far. I see middle-aged people who squinted at the menu in a restaurant walk to their cars and drive home. Right now, the cops pull you over for spot checks to catch drunk drivers and unsafe vehicles, but if the program was expanded to include surprise driving tests, a lot of us would be taking the bus.

Now, I’m not saying you eighty-year-olds are being picked on. I agree you don’t drive any worse than the rest of us. But you have been getting away with it for a lot longer. So stop dreading the driver’s test. It may give you your best chance to reach eighty-one.

W
e all know we need to save the planet and protect the animals and all that stuff, but once in a while, we also need to remind ourselves of the various priority levels of plant and animal life. Here are a few signs that something is out of whack with nature’s pecking order: