The Roulette Wheel

I really like orange slices. I don't know why. It's not like they taste like oranges, but they DO taste like roadtrip. I used to eat them on the road from Dallas to San Antonio all the time but obviously I don't make that trip much anymore. Brings back lots of memories. I love road trips. Especially lonely ones. So few people just outright enjoy my taste in music (but you are out there so please don't start!) and it's just a pain in the ass when people don't want to listen to a whole album. When I'm on the road alone I can just play whatever and listen to album after album. It's great and one of the only times I really feel a peace. I mean, I love my videogames and I love sitting around but there is just something about a single person roadtrip. You're simultabuously getting as much accomplished as possible per second AND you get to listen to music as loud as you want on a pretty damn nice sound system. What more could you want? :)

I'm a little weird. I know that might come as a shock to several of you but stay with me. I really like being weird. I like to think that I see the world, as a whole, significantly differently than a large population of the world. That makes me feel good about myself. I like that my friends have always been really high on my list of priorities. Not that I get every present to arrive on time but that when they have a big problem I can't stop worrying about them. I think that's only slightly unhealthy but is all around good. I try and impart good things like that to my students and my students really make me laugh sometimes. I think I genuinely love several of them. Not in a dirty way but in the way that their absence really leaves a hole. I think that's a good thing.

Let's continue with the weird: I think that there just aren't enough people that are willing to stick it out unflinchingly in relationships. By relationships I mean any relationships. Friends. Family. Significant Others. People just don't risk enough. But let's look at that: what are you REALLY risking? You let yourself love and open up to someone, anyone, and then they leave and you hurt. You've put into the equation and something happened and that person isn't here anymore. It hurts. What else? Just pain? That's it? Did your eyeball fall out so now your depth perception is all fucked? Are you suddenly incapable of ever loving again? Are you doomed to be miserable your whole life? Do you HAVE to eat everything in the fridge? No. Just pain. One of the worst pains in the world? To be sure. Will it eventually go away? To be sure. So why do we call it risk? Why are we so afraid of making emotional connections with people? If you've know, laughed with, and enjoyed the company of another person don't they deserve your emotional openness? Let's look at an analogy or two. The cheerleader. She'll live forever and heals all wounds. Is driving at 100 miles per hour a risk for her besides the pain? The pain goes away, the wounds go away. Is that still risk? Another one. You go to a casino where all chips are provided and taken away before you leave. you have a set amount of chips at the beginning of each game but when you are out of chips for that game you are out of that game. Is it a risk to play that game? Is it considered risk when the only negative you incurr are your own feelings of losing? I like to think there is no real risk in loving someone. It hurts, yeah, and sometimes it hurts for a long time. But when my life is over people might say I was weird, they might say I had a sick sense of humor or that I played too many games but there is one thing they would have to agree on: I had a lot of love. And they would feel that love in their hearts and carry it with them for their lives and it might inspire them to pass that on to others. My risk was nothing but my impact was great. Isn't that all that matters?

Damn IT....I think I just, in some way, agreeded with hippies. Fuck me.

Anyway. I went from orange slices to "love everybody" hope it all made sense. Oh and I hope everyone remembers that you have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone else...work on that.

And I'm not even going to get into to it with the people that regret an emotional connection after the fact, because that's just silly. That connection gave you good feelings for months and sometimes years, a short period of pain, no matter how bad, is no excuse for regret.

Anyway. Evidently I get paid to lie to kids. I'm off to get paid.

Tommy "mmmm orange slices" Schubert