LIFE IS GOOD

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HAPPINESS

By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

 

First Published in The Wilson County Advocate, Vol. 5, No. 29, ©August 10, 1993 by Donald W. Gillette

 

“A message from Dr. Meeker to the Unemployed, the Sick, the Infirm, the Widowed, the Orphaned, The Disturbed, the Downtrodden, and All You other Grumps”

 

            What the hell is wrong with you people?  You’re bitchy, you’re testy, you’re always mad about something, you scowl and pout and whine all the time.  For God’s sake, enough is enough!  I can’t take anymore of your gloom.  Things are lousy enough without you mopes dragging your moody asses around the malls threatening to break into tears every time I look at you.  I mean, bleak is bleak and crestfallen is crestfallen, but the Trail of Tears is a highway now and the wars are over.

            I’m sorry if I sound a little “raw,” but it really greases my stick to go out on a beautiful day feeling great and then run into a dozen of you liverish droops puling about some ridiculous crap.  You don’t have an exclusive on the blues, you know.  I’ve got problems, too.  But I manage to wear a smile regardless of how miserable I feel.  Sometimes it’s tough to look perky, but I do it anyway because I like people, I like life, and I’m pretty damned thankful I’m here on earth.

            Sure, you say, sure he’s glad to be alive because he’s got a silver spoon up his ass.  Hey, like I said, I’ve got problems.  Like, for instance, I’m writing this little epistle on a 486SX/16.  It is to computers what the Amish are to the US defense strategy.  Most writers I know have sleek, colorful Pentium models that talk to them and let them play games when they’re not composing.  So how come I don’t have one of them?  Because I have to spend all of my spare dough on flowers and jewelry so I can keep a few young girls around me all the time.

            Speaking of money, how much do you think I make a year?  Eighty thousand?  A hundred thousand?  Close enough, but if I didn’t spend two grand for a good tax man and if I didn’t sweat my ass off every spring looking for loopholes in the tax laws and inventing business expenses, I’d be paying 40 percent instead of the 6 percent I thank God I’m paying now.  This kind of nonsense takes its toll—do you want to see my heart and liver?

            It’s not all joy in the morning around the Meeker ranch, I’ll tell you.  I don’t have flunkies to tell the landscapers to trim the bushes—I have to tell them myself.  I don’t have a 20-year-old French maid running around all day in a short black skirt picking up after me and I have to drive all my dirty clothes to the laundry just like you do.

            I suppose you think old Meeker lives in a palatial mansion next to a babbling brook in Dreamy-Dreamy land.  Au contraire!  I have a regular, old 12 bedroom house on twenty acres next to Old Hickory where I pay outrageous property taxes and trash pick-up is only 4 days a week.  It’s no easy task keeping the bees out of the solarium, either.

            What about cars?  Do you think I have a pack of Jaguars and a Lincoln?  Wrong again.  I have the two Cadillacs, the Cherokee, and a vintage BMW just like everyone else.  Need I go on?  As you can plainly see, we’re in the same boat, but I can live with my woes.  And so can you.

            Unemployment won’t kill you; neither will a country-ass accent.  If you saw “The Other Side of the Mountain” or “Helen Keller Goes To The Rose Bowl” or whatever the hell that movie was called, you’ll know that with half a tablespoon of steroids, you can run right around a physical impairment and probably even make a few bucks selling your story to TV.  So what’s left to bitch about?  The price of cheese?

            I have to live without certain things I want; I have to grow old and die just like every other Joe.  I don’t cry, I don’t yammer, I don’t beg for sympathy.  I suppose I could, but I don’t.  I really could, though.  I could.  I could moan and groan and whimper and all that.  I mean, for example, I’m a hated, miserable son-of-a-bitch who is maligned and despised and if I didn’t shell out $15,000 a year for liquor and presents I wouldn’t even have anyone to talk to on the phone.

            You know, I wonder why I started writing this in the first place.  All I’ve done is splatter my pain all over a countywide newspaper that my old high school and college pals read, and think I’m real uncool and childish because I write for it.  If I weren’t such a Jello-spine, I’d put a bullet through my brain.

            Whew!  That was hard work!  But if sure proves I’m a good writer.  To be able to convince readers that you’re a sorry SOB when you’re really quite happy and content and doing very well is craftsmanship.  I had you thinking I was headed for the switchyard for a little nap when in reality I’m a happy-go-lucky sort of guy.  I’m never one to go around down in the mouth.  Not me.  I’m as happy as a frog in the mud on a July night waiting for a French chef to lop off my legs and…let’s be honest with one another.  I’m happy.  But I’m not that happy.  I’m certainly not ecstatic.  I’m overjoyed every now and then, but mostly I’m…a lot of times…sometimes I can be a little out of sorts.  Lately it’s been about every other day.  Not every other day; just an occasional every other day.  But I snap out of it.  Nothing to worry about unless…well, if you start acting a little “private.”  Like, for example, on Thanksgiving I was at my mother’s house and I had to carve the ham.  Anyway, I took out the electric knife and stared at it for the longest time just listening to that motor whine and those wicked metal blades slither back and forth and…is this getting a little downbeat?  I think so.  Hell, I know so.  Who do I think I’m kidding?  The printed word doesn’t lie.

            Oh, God!  I’ve got deep, deep problems.  Life is cruel.  There’s nothing good about it.  What appears to be good is merely a setup for devastation.  That pot at the end of the rainbow?  It’s filled with hardened arteries and incontinence.  Your reward for living a long and fruitful life?  Third bed from the window at the nursing home.  I say damn the whole kit and caboodle!  Damn the USA, damn the Japanese, damn taxes, damn the Arabs, damn the Jews and the Serbians and tooth decay and newspapers and everything that ever was, is, or could be.

            I hope you all feel better now; I certainly do.

            No one here gets out alive.