Poor Loser

I was just having my year end philosophy (bullshit) session with my sister Sue in California, and she reminded me about a sad sack my dear friend Edee, the neuroscientist told me about.

Edee recalled the life story of this schlub about 6 years ago. She met him in a bar, drunk and stoned as usual, unemployed, and divorced from his third wife. The fact that he even got women to marry him was a combination of the desperation of aging ladies, and the fact that he DID have a charming personality.

Anyway, Dave, as I'll call him because that's his name, grew up middle class, and won a scholarship to college. Things were going well. He was very close to his parents, and had a great girlfriend.

In January of his junior year, the girlfriend mysteriously broke up with him, leaving him broken hearted. She never told him why she no longer wanted to be with him, or why their talk of sharing a life together were so much garbage --she just left one day and never returned. When Dave called her family, they hung up on him, like all of a sudden he had become some sort of criminal.

He limped along his junior year, and then that summer, tragedy struck. His father had a massive heart attack, and died in his arms. It was surreal to him; he never experienced death personally, let alone the person closest to him. Making matters worse, his mother was from the old school --she never even knew how to write a check or pay a bill, so now Dave was expected, at 20, to become the "man of the house."

By the time Edee got to this part of her tale, I knew who she was talking about: me!

Of course, I hadn't turned into a drunken, drug addicted loser, so she made her point: that I was blessed with the wherewithal to deal with the misery that came my way, instead of allowing it to become the excuse for loserhood.

To this day, Edee's is the supreme compliment I ever received.

As I sit on my porch sometimes, I wonder about the other Dave. Would he have had more fun than I have?

One of my minor life's goals, like seeing baseball games in all major league parks, was to spend a whole week drunk in Key West. I've never gone past 1/2 day in that department, and doubt I ever will.

Some folks get more than their share of misery --like my client who has lost 2 beloved children, and her second marriage. She keeps on keeping on...

I hope to keep Loser Dave at bay...