>>> Primal Urges
By staff writer Nathan DeGraaf
November 30, 2005
Sharon: You’re not really gonna submit that as a column, are you?
Nathan: Sure, why not?
Sharon: Because it’s really weird.
Nathan: Hey, I gotta be me.
Sharon: No you don’t. You really, really don’t.
See that moron over there? The one with the long hair, grabbing the grass with bare feet, eating a Twinkie and jammin’ his tunes?
That is one lucky dude.
You see, I know him, and he’s lucky because he’s as stupid as stupid gets, as ignorant of societal norms as a bear is of a desk jet printer, and just genuinely too thick in the head to remember his coat in the winter.
Which is why he’s so happy.
He never worries about the future or what he’s capable of. And if he fails, he just shrugs, lowers the bar and moves on to lesser things. Because ambition is his venom; it’s the wind nowhere near his wings.
Come to think of it, he don’t have wings. But whatever.
His motto is, “whatever’s clever,” only he doesn’t know what that means. He picked it up from his friend Danny, who lost his memory in a car accident. Danny said that line a lot when people reminded him of things forgot. And so it stuck into the simple mind of the most relaxed dude in all mankind. “Whatever’s clever” is what he does, when not searching for a simple buzz.
Now some will say that there will come a day when our story’s dude will become unhappy with himself. A day when he will realize that his life has passed him by, and that he’s nothing more than an empty old man with a tear in his eye. But not our dude, no way no how. I know that man and I’ll tell you why there’s no way in the world that he’ll ever really try.
You see, he’s found the secret of happiness, or at least, the secret for him. He’s found out that if you want nothing, not even to live, then every day’s a blessed joy, every breath a forbidden sin.
So while those around him work and toil to become better people with bigger spoils, he laughs and lounges and drinks and dines, waiting for no one and wanting nothing at all.
They call him a loser, a sinner, a liar. They call him a stoner, a drunkard, a louse. But he hardly notices for he doesn’t care about the opinions of others who may be near.
But they carry on and he carries on too, doing whatever’s clever to get the day through. And he has more smiles and he has more laughs than every great thinker, professor or dumbass. He enjoys it all and raises his drink to you: “A toast. Here’s hoping you get the day through.”
As you struggle to become better at whatever you do.