Perspective

I spent today with my Buddy Joe. I've been seeing Joe once a month since August 2006. At the time I started, it was a way to get me out of my head and try and doing something helpful in the world. Now I do it just because I enjoy it. Joe is a pretty amazing guy, he can remember incredibly specific details of events 40 years ago, but can't figure out how much lunch costs. When we first started doing things together, Joe would pick I topic/thought and repeat it over and over. at first I wasn't sure how do act around him, do I correct him when he makes mistakes? Do I have the moral authority to tell him what to do? How to act? So one of the first things I decided to work on, was his constantly repeating himself. So I explained that once he told me something, he didn't need to tell me over and over. I'm not sure he totally understood, but it stuck in his head that repeating himself was bad. So now, more than two years later, he follows up most statements with "See, I said it one time. No repeating." and then give me the thumbs up. The fact that he will do this 20 times a day, or that the thing he thinks he isn't repeating has already been said five times, doesn't seem to register with him. It's now at the point where it's pretty funny. Some things are the way they are, and there's nothing anyone can do to change them.

Today Joe wanted to look at hats. This happens every several months, and it happened today. Perfect, the busiest shopping weekend of the year, let's go to a frikkin mall.

Hanging out with Joe, while watching a bunch of spoiled, coddled, over-indulged, self-important whiners (i.e. Americans), really puts the world in a great perspective.

It was a beautiful day, sunny, about 70 degrees, and I heard one woman complaining that she was sweating head to toe so therefore she couldn't help the woman she was with (her Mom, I'm guessing). This was in response to the older woman complaining that she needed a cart to carry the bag (yes bag, singular) containing the item she had just purchased. Odd, she was able to carry 100 extra pounds on her ass, but that one little shopping bag was putting her over the edge. All the while Joe is just sitting on a bench, eating his marshmallow square, smiling, happy to be outside doing something. Happy that I took him out for a Saturday. Happy to be alive.