Today I woke up, chased my hangover away with orange juice and water, took out my garbage, returned to my apartment and, on the way back, found a ten dollar bill on the ground.
“It's gonna be a good year,” I thought because I'm a superstitious idiot.
A new year always does that to us. As a culture, we are too inclined to think that the achievement of certain benchmarks will make us happy. We think, “When I get my new car, I'll be happy; when I get my new job, new college, new girlfriend, I'll be happy.” But happy doesn‘t work like that. It's an emotion and not a state of mind.
Nevertheless, I found ten bucks on the ground on the first day of 2008. So it's gonna be a good year.
(God, I'm fucking dumb.)
But getting away from my personal stupidity, which I believe is reflective of general societal stupidity, I would like to think a little more about happiness and write about the top five things that made me happy over the course of the last year. Now, when I type “made me happy”, I don't mean in the long term or overall or even that impact-on-my-life crap some of the sports shows are pushing. When I type about happiness, I mean the exact moment that achieved a level of happiness where I forgot where I was, what I was doing, or why anything else would matter anyway. This should be a cool list.
Excuse me while I step outside and ponder this list. Here's a picture of Brother Jay, one of the two official brothers of The Nate Way.
We keep it random at The Nate Way.
5. The best blowjob I received this year was the epitome of the impossible dream. It was one of those, “We've already had sex tree times in two hours and there's no way you can make me cum” kind of blowjobs. And, not only did she make me cum, but I made a noise I had never made before. I was so shocked and overblown with orgasm that, shortly after I came, when she said to me, “I own your ass, bitch”, I didn‘t even mind. For those few seconds, she did own my ass, and I was perfectly happy with that.
4. The Bucs are in the playoffs. That made me really happy. I mean, this team is patched up with duct tape, older than dirt (which is pretty old) and still found some ways to win. We'll probably get crushed in the playoffs but I don't care because I didn‘t think they'd get there anyway.
Because this piece is supposed to be about moments: the happiest moment of the season for me was the Micheal Spurlock kick off return for a touchdown. It ended a 31 year drought I thought would go on forever. And it pulled me from a down mood to an up mood in six seconds. Folks, heroin doesn‘t even work that fast. Not that I would know or anything.
3. When my niece picked me up at the airport. She was so damned delighted to meet me there and to spend time with me that I couldn‘t even stomach the love. The love of older family members, like your parents, always seems expected and endless. But the love of a small child is explosive. Sometimes it can even blindside you. I think I finally understand why people take on the burden of reproduction. Well, when they do it deliberately, anyway.
2. When she wasn‘t pregnant and when the tests all came back negative. These are always top five moments, and the awesomeness of the findings can never be underrated. To borrow from Jake Taylor, “And to me, here's to one more year in the sun.” Thanks be to God and all that.
Oh, and I lumped these two in number two because they provided an equal level of happiness: the ultimate relief feeling, the world's largest WHEW and yet another reason to stay with Jesus.
1. Christmas with family. We don't see each other often and so we choose to remember the good times and to behave. Most importantly, though, we try our damndest to love.
Here's hoping 2008 brings you all the happiness in the world.
But it won't. I mean, that's impossible.