Watching the Wheels

It's possible - possible - that I - on occasion - take life too seriously.  I want to delete the last entry, but there's a stubborn part of me that feels that would be doing a disservice to reality.  Absolutely nothing has changed between then and now, mind you.  Just my frame of mind, which inexplicably allows me to laugh some days at the same things I might cry over on another.

I set up deck chairs for a living, son, but I am wiser than the Dalai Lama.

Yesterday I saw The Way, Way Back, which is what I like to call a "writerly" movie - the type wherein an awkward lead and two or three fleshed-out characters (in this instance, young Duncan along with his mom and her boyfriend) are supported by a cast of almost-believable caricatures, all of whom speak rapidly, wittily, and entirely too honestly about life.  They use the sort of sentences no one ever actually speaks, but the sort that writers feel proud of on a page after agonizing over.  Ever notice how many movies feature people in blue-collar jobs who have IQs high enough to inject a cultural or historical reference into every sentence, and EQs high enough to expertly guide even the most damaged to enlightenment (even as they themselves, paradoxically, go nowhere in their own lives)?  (These characters crop up frequently because this is how writers view themselves.)  It can be overdone...or it can be done the way it was in The Way, Way Back:  happily funny, to the point of making you think.

Part of what I thought when I came out of the theater was that I had been taking life too seriously.  I thought that, and I also thought how nice it would be if people were as openly awful or openly wonderful as people in movies are.  In the real world, the distinctions aren't always so clear.

I was in Nashville Friday night to see some friends from college and my friend Greta gave me some sage advice:  mess it up.

I think she was right.  And I think maybe I will.  Remember earlier this year when we decided to give 60%?  I haven't followed through on my end of that bargain.

Time to care a little less and try a little less...and see if there isn't a bit more fun to be had in the process.

:)

Pic source.