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In the blink of an eye everything you’ve worked for your whole life can be reduced to nothing!

Luckily this’s never happened to me. I don’t know if I’m just lucky or what but I have never been framed by enemies, become the recipient of paralysis or ligament damage in an automobile accident, nor even stricken with a terminal disease such as skull tumors or the fatal sting of the killer bee. Believe me though; I’m keeping my fingers crossed just in case telling you jinxes me and it happens!!

I’ve been lucky as I say but when others suffer setbacks of this nature it certainly makes you think. Like the guy in the Globe I read about who shot his wife and kids in the brain and then went to jail for his badness. This fellow (of the name of Rodney Murphy I believe) will never again enjoy the benefits and freedoms of tons of others, because they are not in jail.

That’s why I try to live every day as if it’s my last. After all you could get hit by a car or imprisoned for raping a girl at any moment, even if she led me on and that's why I put it in. (Hard to believe as it is, you can even get arrested for raping your own wife these days!) So "best make the most of every moment while you still can"—that’s my slogan. Yesterday, for example, I went to the park and took a ride on the merry-go-round just for the heck of it. Up there on my zebra something amazing occurred to me: life itself is kind of like a merry-go-round in the sense we keep moving up and down on a path, always progressing forward in a circle. It only costs $4.50.

Another thing I love to do to make sure I don’t waste a single precious moment is practice on my oboe as soon as I wake up. As I like to tell my friends, my oboe is my “coffee”! While I haven’t mastered the instrument yet I feel I’ve made significant strides. Do you want to know the best part? My life is always filled with great music. “Try it”!

Date Written: June 29, 2005
Author: Jon Matza
Average Vote: 4.5

Comments:
06/29/2005 Klause Muppet: I sure will! Thanks!
06/29/2005 TheBuyer (5): Hey, look at me!
06/29/2005 TheBuyer: Because I look good.
06/30/2005 Turgid (4): You forgot the "fangs" of the Chupacabra.
06/30/2005 John Slocum (4.5): What an amazing logical inner life.
06/30/2005 Mr. Pony (5): I laughed many times!
07/1/2005 scoop (4): I thought this would have been pure Chesapeake Bay Jumbo lump if it had ended with the $4.50 line. The late introduction of the oboe, classic nerd claptarp, feels a little forced, especially when compared to the other, more idiosyncratic choices, like the zebra and ligament damage. This once beleiveable character becomes something of a female foil from A John Hughes film, vis a vis, several things, characteristics and selections. Ergo the robust 4.
03/18/2009 scoop: This short has taken on a deeper meaning to me now that I have been diagnosed with a potentially crippling disease.