Flight 346 and a Useless Crutch...

06/05/2007

Headed for Milwaukee on an Air Tran flight.  The plane just took off a few minutes ago and since I do my best thinking on airplanes, or so it seems, I thought I would jot down a few things I have been giving thought to today.

Just prior to leaving the farm this morning, The Nancy had already left for her office, and as I was primping and making myself suitable for public consumption, I overheard something on the Today Show that caused me to wander into the bedroom and listen.  Some guy taking Al Roker’s place for the day– I didn’t care enough to remember his name - was outside the studio on the Plaza getting ready to do the weather report.  He was bantering with some people and stopped to chat with a very attractive young woman inquiring as to why she was in New York.  As cute as she was, I probably would have stopped, as well.  She said she was celebrating her birthday and blurted out to “Mom and Dad” she had acquired a new tattoo.  The substitute weather guy said something about TV ethics or policy or some other TV crap would not allow her to show the tattoo because of its location on her person, but she did show one on her lower leg, just above her ankle.  He then asked her what it was he was looking at, and she responded, “A tugboat.”

I think the weather dude had the same look of incredulity on his face as I had on mine.  A tugboat?  The girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen – a great age to make decisions on things that will affect your whole life.  Weather guy asked the question that had to have popped into the heads of thousands upon thousands of viewers; why a tugboat? 

Her answer caused me to have more questions than the tattoo itself.  “To help me get through life,” was her reply.  That is what she said, and I heard it with my own two very much unbelieving ears.  I was flabbergasted anyone that young could possibly need anything to help them “get through life,” especially a friggin tattoo.

A tugboat pushes and pulls.  It is a support mechanism for large ships as they maneuver in tight spaces and unfamiliar waters.  It guides them and directs them – a crutch, so to speak.  Why does an eighteen-year old need a crutch, I have to ask?  Does the tattoo serve as a reminder she cannot make it in this life without something to support her, to move her forward?  I just don’t get it.

I think sometimes people spend way too much time thinking about living without ever trying it: too much time leaning and not enough falling down.  If you think you need a crutch to make it through life, then, dammit, you will need a crutch to make it through life.  Go make it on your own, or you may be doomed to grow old in a world of Woe-Is Me.  You don’t need a damn crutch or a tattoo in order to make it through life.  Go live it.  Go be it.

I am fully responsible for all that happens to me in my life or has happened to me in my life, and that means everything – all the good, all the bad.  Everything!  I don’t need no stinking crutch.  I choose to live.  The Hell of a Guy lives!!!

I’d like to grab that girl by the shoulders, shake her a couple of times and slap some sense into her.  Perhaps give her the crutch she is so in need of.  Don’t get me started. 

And that is all I have to say about that…