Serious Questions For Those Who Oppose Gun Laws

In the wake of the latest example of America’s ridiculous and indefensible gun culture, a few questions for those who perpetuate this idiocy:If an armed society is a polite society, then do you agree that the problem in Chicago is that there just aren’t enough guns?In which of two fantasy worlds—one where everyone had a gun, and one where no one had a gun—would more people die by violence?If we promise not to confiscate your guns, can we have the bullets?If you support gun rights to oppose tyranny, are you worried that members of the military are just going to follow orders and attack you, even though they predominantly come from the same places, have the same background, and most of the same values as you?If the U.S. government comes after its own people, what’s your plan to defeat missiles, grenades, aircraft bombers and drones with your guns?How do we tell the difference between an Open Carry activist and a murderer who just came to the fast food place to kill as many people as possible? Do we just wait until they start shooting?How can we tell a good guy with a gun versus a bad guy with a gun? How can you tell?Can you explain why the Second Amendment receives special recognition as the only thing protecting you from an unjust government? What about all of the other amendments?Do you think James Madison intended to protect your right to a rapid-firing weapon when weapons of the day could only fire a round every minute or so?If your love of the Second Amendment is based on your love of the Constitution, and the Constitution states “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court” and “The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution” and in District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court found that “the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” why do you refuse to believe the government has any right to restrict your gun ownership?Why do you think you should be able to carry guns anywhere you want—including places like schools and parks, where most people don’t want guns—yet guns aren’t permitted at gun shows? Are you worried that someone crazy might have a gun and kill someone? And if that’s the case, shouldn’t all those good guys with guns be able to stop that person?Every time a crazy person murders someone you claim that it’s not a gun problem, it’s a mental health problem. There are people with mental health problems all over the world, yet no other country has as many gun deaths as us. Do we just have way more crazy people than the rest of the world?If someone was angry with you, and they could attack you with a gun or a knife, which would you prefer they use?If guns don’t kill people (people kill people), should a person who accidentally kills a loved one with a gun be charged with a crime if the gun accidentally goes off?If guns don’t kill people (people kill people), then can we slash the Pentagon budget by not providing guns to our soldiers? If the guns don’t kill, why do we give them to soldiers?If you can have a handgun, and you can have a shotgun, and you can have a rifle, and you can have an assault weapon, at what point does the gun escalation cease? Can you have a bazooka? How about naval artillery? A tank? If not, how do you defend keeping me from guarding my home with naval artillery? Is naval artillery too crazy and unnecessary?Do you want to live in a country in which you have to sleep with a gun under your pillow in order to feel safe? Is that freedom?PREVIOUS POST: A Few Thoughts About SleepIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Repeal the Second Amendment+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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A Few Thoughts About Sleep

Sleep has to be the most important thing in our lives that we understand the least amount. How does it restore our energy and our bodies? Why do we lose track of time when we’re doing it? Why do we so often hate when it begins and when it ends?I have the typical love-hate relationship with sleep. I love sleeping, but I hate devoting time to it. I’d sleep ten hours per night if I could, but I never do because I don’t want to give it that much time out of my day. Besides, if you're sleeping ten hours a day, you better be nine-years-old.I’ve probably slept less this summer than in any summer of my life. There have been at least two nights during which I got literally no sleep, and another night where my head didn’t hit the pillow until after sunrise. On dozens more nights I’ve slept a few hours, but found myself awake at odd hours. I’ve even written a few blog posts in the middle of the night.Summer is usually my least-rested time of year. I love to stay up late—as do my wife and kids—and take advantage of not having to wake up early to get the kids up. Instead I set my alarm for fifteen minutes before I have to leave, and then race to get ready and get to work on time.I feel sorry for people who have insomnia. It must suck to lie in bed and try to go to sleep, but fail. I’m thankful I don’t have that problem. Usually I’m asleep within just a couple of minutes. Good thing, too. On the few nights in my life during which I haven’t been able to fall asleep, I’ve felt like I just might murder someone. If I habitually suffered from insomnia I’d be lying awake on a prison cot, no doubt.Sleep is also unique in that it’s perhaps the only basic bodily need that people brag about not fulfilling. No one brags about not having eaten all day, or managing not to pee, but we all know people who tout their ability to do without sleep.“I stayed up all night studying for that test.” Or, “I was so excited for today that I didn’t sleep at all last night.” I’m guilty of that as well. If you want me to bore you to hell, just ask me about the time that I drove our family eighteen-and-a-half hours to Disney World, and then went to the Magic Kingdom all day when we arrived. Thirty-two sleepless hours in a row that time.(Just to be clear, the boring part about that story is me talking about not getting sleep. The drive and the park were tons of fun!)But without a doubt the most common no-sleep story comes from new parents. “I was up all night with the baby,” which precedes the obligatory explanation of why the baby couldn’t sleep. I think many new parents wear those sleepless nights as a badge of honor.I’ve got four kids, and sleepless nights were never my experience. Sure I stayed up a night or two with each of my sons when we brought them home, but my wife nursed and the babies slept in our bed. She went years without sleep. I rarely had to give up so much as ten or fifteen minutes. Yet she still looks fifteen years younger than me.I’ve had some inopportune sleep instances, too. Like the time I dozed for a few seconds in the middle of the night while driving on interstate 90 in Ohio. Or the time in elementary school that I fell asleep at my desk after taking some test and woke up in a puddle of drool.We spend a third of our lives sleeping, which means that we’re completely out of touch with ourselves and the rest of the world for that length of time. With my obsession with time, I’ll get rather aggravated about wasting so much time if I think too much about it.Still, that aggravation has to be better than insomnia.

PREVIOUS POST: When Did Ketchup Defeat Catsup?IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Forget French Toast Crunch, Bring Back Subway's U-Gouge+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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When Did Ketchup Defeat Catsup?

It’s very rare that debates are settled. We can go on for decades arguing whether Mary Ann or Ginger is hotter, or Batman or Superman is cooler, or if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is a bigger idiot. And don’t even get me started on the Less Filling vs. Tastes Great debate.Our penchant for everlasting arguments makes it all the more surprising to me that one issue appears to have been settled at some point in the last twenty-five years, at least in the United States. Everyone seems to have agreed that the red sauce on the table is ketchup, not catsup.When did this happen?As a little kid I remember being baffled by the two spellings. How can we pronounce two words the same that are spelled so differently? Tough. Though. Through. Thorough. Those words differ by just one letter each, yet we pronounce them with vastly different sounds. How the hell did we agree to this ketchup with a K or a C business?I might be misremembering this, but when I was a kid I think catsup was the working man’s condiment and ketchup belonged to the elites. Ketchup came in fancy glass bottles with attractive labels, and catsup came in cheap plastic and often just had the word catsup on it. No brand, no slogan, no picture. Just catsup.Now even ketchup comes in plastic bottles, although those bottles that are stored with the lid at the bottom are rather ingenious. And squeezing ketchup out of plastic bottles is much better than having to pound the shit out of a glass bottle to get it to flow.Has anyone done a study of just how many man hours the world has saved itself with the invention of the plastic ketchup bottle? If not, someone should. It’s like a whole new world. Such increased productivity. No way Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook if he had to waste time trying to get ketchup for his fries.But when was the ketchup v catsup debate settled, and who settled it? A quick Google search suggests that Heinz was the decider. Hunts and Del Monte both used to spell it catsup, but now use ketchup. I couldn’t find a picture of Heinz using catsup. They appear to have always been ketchup. What a bunch of followers those other brands are. But I can’t blame them for wanting to catch up to Heinz. (Good Lord, I’m funny.)Perhaps it has something to do with the word cat being right there in the word. Cat sup. Cat soup. Who the hell wants to eat cat soup? Not me. Although I suspect cat stew is a more likely concoction than cat soup. Felines are a chunky meat.Heinz may have lead the way on the chosen terminology, but they really tried to screw with us by changing ketchup’s color. Remember purple ketchup and green ketchup? What’s wrong with those people? Luckily they came to their senses and stopped making that crap.They still make fancy ketchup though. I always sort of snickered when I’d see “Fancy Ketchup” on those packets at McDonald’s. How fancy can ketchup in a packet be? Turns out that fancy actually refers to the thickness of the ketchup. Fancy ketchup is thicker than regular ketchup. So it actually is a bit fancier. I regret rolling my eyes when ketchup decided to get fancy. Sorry, ketchup.One other thing about ketchup. Since the ketchup v catsup debate is settled, can we all just agree that the word ketchup refers to a sauce made from tomatoes? If it’s made from anything else it’s not ketchup, okay?I’ve seen banana ketchup mentioned a few times the past month or so on cooking shows I’ve watched. Banana ketchup? That sounds like something my four-year-old daughter invented. “I like bananas. I love ketchup. Let’s make banana ketchup!” There may well be some condiment made from bananas that’s sort of like ketchup, but it should have a different name.And mushroom ketchup? I love mushrooms, but I get the dry heaves just thinking about that level of nastiness.Ketchup’s a simple condiment, so let’s keep it simple. We’ve settled on a spelling, let’s settle on ingredients. It must have tomato.There. That’s done.Oh, and despite what any yahoo in the Department of Agriculture tries to tell us, ketchup is not a vegetable. Nothing that’s 25% sugar can be classified as a vegetable.PREVIOUS POST: My Summer of Ice Cream Cones IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Forget French Toast Crunch, Bring Back Subway's U-Gouge+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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My Summer of Ice Cream Cones

I probably don’t know you. And even if I do know you, chances are I haven’t been with you every second this summer. Even so, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve eaten more ice cream than you this summer.Don’t believe me? Well I’ve got eleven pounds gained since May 31 that support my theory, my friend. (You too, my enemy.)It’s rather unusual for people to brag about being a glutton. “Look at me, I can shove high-calorie, high-sugar, low-nutrient food into my mouth in copious amounts!” That’s not a claim that too many people shout from the rooftops.But to me, summer ice cream is different. Sure, summer ice cream is junk, and it takes no particular talent to eat ice cream, but still, my claims of ice cream eating superiority shouldn’t ring hollow.Eating ice cream—especially in the summer, when it’s hot and ice cream is the quintessential summer “food”—is something to be celebrated. What other foods have a jingle written about them? “I scream, you scream, we all scream, for ice cream!”And yes, other desserts and sweets are good, too, but when was the last time you saw some kids chasing a cookie truck through the neighborhood? Is there a pie truck that passes your house every afternoon blaring a catchy tune?Of course not. But I bet you’ve memorized the jingle your neighborhood’s ice cream truck repeats. And despite the high likelihood that the ice cream truck driver is a murderer or a maniac, who doesn’t love ice cream trucks?(Actually, I once heard of parents who told their kids that the ice cream truck plays music when it’s out of ice cream. Can you imagine a childhood with such self-centered jerks for parents? What other fun things have those miserable people ruined for their kids?)Although I sing the praises of the ice cream truck, I have yet to purchase anything from one this summer. Cut me some slack, I’ve been too busy devouring real ice cream cones to even consider paying five bucks for a Spongebob novelty with gumball eyes.My ice cream obsession has taken cone form this summer, as usual. I don’t know who invented the ice cream cone, but I’m pretty sure they were a genius, and if there’s not some great scientific or culinary award named in their honor then there’s no justice in the world.The cone reigns supreme. There's nothing more annoying than people who go to an ice cream shop and order anything but a cone. Except for the Dairy Queen Blizzard. Those are acceptable. Anything else is an abomination.As usual, ice cream cone season began on April 1, which is when Dairy Belle opens every year. Dairy Belle is in Hammond, Indiana, and it just so happens to have the best ice cream cones in the world. A grandiose claim? Yes, but disprove me. I double dog dare you.In the meantime, go to Dairy Belle and order up a large twist cone (chocolate and vanilla) dipped in chocolate, butterscotch, cherry, blue raspberry, peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, rainbow sprinkles or the mysterious Krunch Kote. Then proceed to eat said cone, enjoying every single lick, until at some point you realize that the damn thing’s too big and you’ve got a stomach ache.If you can’t make it to Dairy Belle—or if, like me, you prefer to save Dairy Belle for a special treat—then McDonald’s is a satisfactory alternative. They’ve got good ice cream, it’s cheap, and if you’re lucky you might find a location that will dip it in chocolate.The dipped cone is the special bonus. Last year, every McDonald’s had dipped cones. This year, none of the locations by my house offer them. I should know, I’ve called or visited nine McDonald’s in northwest Indiana this summer, and I’m 0 for 9 in securing a dipped cone. However, just over the border into Michigan…dipped cone!I spent six days in Michigan with my family a couple of weeks ago. At one point we wanted dipped cones so we went to McDonald’s only to find that their ice cream machine was broken. So we naturally drove fifteen miles to the next closest McDonald’s in Michigan so we could get a dipped cone rather than drive ten miles to an Indiana McDonald’s and give up the chocolate dip.Priorities people.So just how much ice cream have I had this summer? I’m sorry to say that I haven’t kept count. However, I did have a cone yesterday, which marked the sixth day out of seven that I consumed such pleasure, and it hasn’t seemed excessive. If I had to guess, I’d say I’d say I’m right around 100 ice cream cones since the season began on April 1, with more to follow. Next year I’ll keep track.And lest you think that my four kids are driving this ice cream craze, I should point out that yesterday my wife and I got cones from McDonald’s and sat in the car and finished eating them before going in the house.Frequently, we wait until the kids go to bed before making a late-night cone run. Luckily, McDonald’s is literally one minute from my house. And just a few weeks ago, after treating the whole family to Dairy Belle, my wife and I made a just-before-closing run to Dairy Belle and treated ourselves to our second cones of the day.That time we just ordered junior cones though.We didn’t want to be ridiculous about it.PREVIOUS POST: Home Field Advantage is Good in Sports and in LifeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: PB&J the Right Way+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Home Field Advantage is Good in Sports and in Life

For those whom the phrase “Things to Do” just isn’t sufficient, the term Bucket List has been invented. A bucket list is just a list of cool things someone wants to do before they die.The Chicago Tribune recently ran a feature about sports bucket lists. They divided the feature into three parts: Places to see, events to attend, and events in which you can participate. Most of the list is comprised of places to see.This only makes sense, especially when related to sports. There are many historic old places, fancy new places, and just plain beautiful or awe-inspiring places in which to watch sporting events. The Tribune’s list includes many of them.However, what interests me most about their selections is how many of the places to see provide a distinct advantage to the teams that play there. These places aren’t just cool places to see a game. They’re places in which the fans are so rabid, the setting so unusual, the atmosphere so intimidating, that it’s practically impossible for a visiting team to emerge victorious.I’m thinking of places like Allen Fieldhouse where the Kansas Jayhawks play basketball, or Cameron Indoor Stadium where Duke does the same. Tiger Stadium at LSU is notoriously difficult for visiting football teams, and even the Cubs have won 450 more games at Wrigley Field than they’ve lost.There’s definitely something to the idea of home field advantage.I also think the idea transcends sports. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the phrase itself: home field. It has the word home right in there! What bigger advantage do any of us have than our own homes?Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home. A man’s home is his castle. All of those phrases tell us that we have a special advantage in our home that just isn’t present anywhere else.We can accomplish things in our own home that no visitor could ever hope to accomplish. Don’t believe me? Try getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night in your home. Then have a visitor come and try to do the same. See who has more success.The same holds true in international affairs. Had Vietnam not had home field advantage during that war, there’s no way they could have defeated the United States. But somehow, this country of just 40 million people defeated a country of 180 million people.Home field advantage.(Determination helps also. Consider Ho Chi Minh’s famous quote: “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.” Home field and determination are a dynamite combination.)Home provides advantages that are hard for adversaries to overcome. The most obvious advantage is time. We spend most of our time at home. We get to know our home and all of its quirks. We understand how it works. We improve it, find ways to make it better than it was before. And all of those things are possible because of the extraordinary amount of time we spend there.Comfort is another advantage. Despite the plea to “make yourself at home,” no one is ever as comfortable in our homes as we are. We may intend to be welcoming when we say, “Mi casa es su casa,” but a visitor is a visitor, and our home is our home. Comfort, or maybe discomfort, is the advantage that’s most prevalent in sports.Maybe the most overlooked advantage of home is influence. If a player from the visiting team asks the crowd to cheer louder during a game, it’s likely to get quiet. But if a player from the home team asks for more noise, the place will erupt. The Vietnamese capitalized on millions of citizen helpers using this idea.Home influence is greatest within our own homes. The previous two advantages—time and comfort—allow us to exercise our influence at home. We know the past and the present, and with time and comfort, we can greatly influence the future. Good luck to the outsider who comes to our home and tries to change the way things are. They’ve got a pretty tall order, and success is unlikely.Home sweet home, indeed.PREVIOUS POST: Sometimes Just Being Summer is Good EnoughIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: It's Good to be the Incumbent+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Sometimes Just Being Summer is Good Enough

Tomorrow’s the first day of school around here. If you think that’s early, consider that the last day of school was May 22. That’s eighty days ago. And unfortunately, the older we get, the faster those eighty days pass.As I tucked my three youngest kids into bed tonight, I asked each of them about their summer. It’s probably the most common question spoken in our town this week, “How was your summer?”To my extreme pleasure—and frankly, my partial surprise—each of them proclaimed their summer to have been great. My oldest son, who will turn eleven next month, and is most like me when it comes to nostalgia and reminiscing, began to tear up. “I don’t want the summer to end,” he said. “I had so much fun.”What more could I hope for as a parent than that?Sometime in early spring, usually right before spring break, when it’s been quite a few weeks since the last break from school, and the winter has beaten us into submission, and forty degrees feels like shorts weather, I tell my wife, “I’m going to make a list of things for us to do this summer so we don’t waste any days.”And then I do nothing. Something else comes up. Or I think, “Oh, it’s only March, we’ve got a couple of months to think about it.” Or it’s just too difficult to imagine the possibilities that accompany warm weather when we’re still freezing, so nothing comes to mind. Whatever the case, the list is never made.Still, we do a pretty good job of keeping active during the summer. We try to have adventures, travel a bit, spend some time at the beach. Inevitably there are a few days where we ask the kids, “What do you want to do today?” and they have no suggestions.But this summer was different.Because of a number of factors mostly involving adults and adult problems, I suspected my kids didn’t have as much fun as they should have this summer. We didn’t make it to Holiday World. We didn’t go camping. No family outing to the drive-in. Even the sprinkler was barely used, and never mind the usual water balloon fight.I worried about this all summer, but particularly the last week or two as I saw the first day of school approaching. I’m obsessed with time and feel its passage acutely and intensely. Our kids only have so many summers, and those summers only have so many days. And it seems the loss of a summer day is much more heartbreaking than the loss of a winter day.I panicked that my kids would forever talk about the Lost Summer of 2015.It seems as if I worried for nothing.“It was great!” my oldest son said. “So much fun,” said his brother, who just turned nine. Their four-year-old sister who’s not even starting preschool for a few more weeks agreed. “It was good!”Of course they had fun. Anything goes during summer in these parts.Stay up until one or two o’clock in the morning? Sure. Sleep until noon? Of course! Video games? Why not.But lest we think they wasted their summer sleeping and staring at screens, I don’t want to forget the fun we had. Walks to the park. Canoeing. Days at the beach house and on the beach. Lincoln Park Zoo. Community pool. Fourth of July fireworks and parade. Ice cream cones galore. Pizza and beer (although the kids didn’t have beer).So no, maybe this wasn’t summer that I had intended. Maybe things didn’t go exactly as planned, and maybe we left some fun on the table.But maybe those are just things that adults worry about because we know that our kids now have one fewer summer remaining. And we know next summer will seem shorter than this summer. And we know that like any other great thing in life, a great summer is not guaranteed.The kids don’t worry about that though. They’re just having fun. They’re staying up late, playing games, talking to their friends, watching their favorite shows, climbing on swing sets, riding their bikes, building sandcastles, skipping stones, catching fish, listening to cicadas, and forgetting that summer doesn’t last forever.For them summer is enough. It doesn’t matter what they do. They’re not in school, it’s warm outside, and they’re young.What more could they ask for?I mean, besides another summer.PREVIOUS POST: Persistence and Its RewardsIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Summer is Worth Complaining About+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Persistence and Its Rewards

The popular phrase proclaims that “Good things come to those who wait.” That may well be true, but if good things come to those of us who wait around, then they come by mere chance. If it were up to me and brief addendum should be attached to the end of that statement: “and try.”Good things come to those who wait and try.Persistence.It seems like a word we don’t think much about these days. And why should we? We’ve been conditioned to think that with all of our fancy technological gadgets that we shouldn’t have to wait around for anything. The duty to expend a steady, uninterrupted effort toward the purpose of achieving a goal has been replaced by the idea that a machine or a computer can likely do it much quicker.But often there’s just no substitute for good old fashioned persistence.I’ve always been impressed by persistence. The idea that patient, continuous, hard effort is likely to be rewarded is a comforting one. It helps us realize that even when the work is difficult and unending, and the rewards are intangible and few, that if we just keep at it there might be a payoff at the end.Some of the most amazing examples of persistence go unnoticed. I’m thinking of everyday people whose lives are a struggle and who have to keep fighting and working hard just to keep their heads above water.I always think of the folk legend John Henry when I think of these people. John Henry used a hammer to drive steel into rock to make holes for explosives. He was so good at his job that he raced against a steam driller. He hammered and persisted and kept going and eventually beat the steam driller, only to die after his heart gave out due to his persistence.But there are plenty of real-life examples of remarkable persistence as well.I like the story of Dashrath Manjhi, a man in India. His wife died because his village was too remote for her to get medical care in a timely fashion. Shortly after her death Dashrath used a hammer and chisel and began carving a path through a nearby mountain to shorten the distance to medical care. For the next 22 years he worked almost non-stop with his hammer and chisel, and eventually carved a path 360 feet long, 25 feet deep, and 30 feet wide. When he was done he’d shortened the distance to the hospital from 55 km to 15 km!One of the most surprising examples of persistence comes from Richard Nixon. Everyone thinks of Nixon as a slimy, heartless dude whose own personality failings led him to resign the presidency. However, when he was a younger man who showed unbelievable persistence during his pursuit of Pat, who eventually became his wife.He loved her at first sight. She didn’t reciprocate. He asked her on a date. She declined. He asked her again. She declined again. On the third time he asked her, he told her that he was going to marry her. This didn’t make her acquiesce to his dating request though.For more than a year Dick pursued Pat. He bloodied himself trying to learn how to ice skate just so he could spend time with her. He drove her to L.A. on weekends to visit her sister, and then went back on Sunday afternoon and waited for her so he could drive her back. He even drove her on dates with other men. But in the end it paid off. He got the girl.That’s the thing about persistence. Even when it’s difficult to see how things can possibly turn out the way you want them, you have to keep trying. The only guarantee is that a goal is never reached if it’s never attempted. Better to keep trying. Keep hammering that steel into the rock. Each individual hammer blow may feel futile, but the collection of ten thousand hammer blows is enough to penetrate the rock.It’s enough to break through.And if the hammer blows don’t work, then it’s time to change tactics. There’s more than one way to be persistent.With a little persistence, water can work wonders on rock.PREVIOUS POST: What If I Didn't See About That Girl?IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: When Not to Text+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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What If I Didn't See About That Girl?

A few months back I wrote a post about how I met a girl at a bar. The pretext for that post was to write about the most memorable night of my life. However, by the end of the post I’d begun to consider what might have happened had I not met her at that bar.“What if?” can be a fun game sometimes. It can also be agonizing, sad, and frustrating. It’s almost always a pointless game though. Things happen one way, and unless you can change how they’ve happened (which you can’t), then it’s wise to be careful with “What if?”That’s why I don’t play “What if?” very often. But when I do play, I prefer to think of downside What Ifs rather than upside What Ifs. It’s better to wonder “What if I hadn’t accepted that job offer that turned into my dream job?” than it is to wonder “What if I’d held the leash tighter and Fido didn’t run in front of that car?”Better to ponder the downside of the first question, than the upside of the second question. That way you appreciate the job you have, instead of beating yourself up because you didn’t protect your dog.Anyway, I mention “What if?” because it’s always the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the big hill.Sixteen years ago yesterday, on a very warm Thursday night, a friend and I went for a drive.Earlier in the evening I’d left a co-ed softball practice early when some big oaf ran over my sister at first base and we thought she might have a concussion. She and I stopped for ice cream, which is the universal concussion-detector, and determined she didn’t have a concussion. So I dropped her off at home and left.I met my friend and we tried to think of something to do. After a few minutes I said, “We could go see about that girl. I think she’s working tonight.”So I went to see about that girl.The girl lived in a town twenty-five miles away from me. We’d talked on AOL for the first time four days earlier. She’d sent me a picture, but I’d met enough people online to know that pictures can be deceiving. I had to see her in person.My friend and I drove twenty-five miles to the town where she worked. I’d sent her my picture also, and told her I might come see her at work someday, but I hadn’t told her that would be the day.I also hadn’t thought to look for the address of the Target where she worked.Even though the town where she grew up wasn’t too far, I’d never been there. It was just a name on a map as far as I knew. But come on, how hard could it be to find a Target store? They’re usually located in a bustling commercial area. I knew the town it was in. Go to the town, find the commercial area, find Target. Easy as pie.Or not.My friend and I drove up and down the three or four main thoroughfares in town with no luck. We passed grocery stores, Dairy Queens, McDonald’s, car dealerships, and strip malls, but no Target. We doubled back and covered streets we’d already driven on, just in case we’d somehow missed a 125,000 square foot Target store.Traffic was heavy. We spent more time at red lights than we did driving. We’d left my house shortly after 7:30. We watched eight o’clock, eight-thirty, nine o’clock, and nine-thirty all pass as we wandered aimlessly.I began to wonder if maybe the girl had invented the Target. Maybe she wasn’t interested and enjoyed making creepy AOL guys waste their time looking for her. Maybe she’d sent me a picture of someone else. Maybe she didn’t even exist.As we drove around and around, my friend and I had stopped our search on the south side of the town, just before a big hill that seemed to lead to the open rural farmland we thought bordered the area. We couldn’t see over the hill, but it looked awfully dark on the other side.Out of other options, I said, “Let’s check over the hill.”So we drove up the hill and as we got to the top I felt like Dorothy finding the Emerald City, or Columbus finding dry land. Spread before us was a mecca of twentieth-century America consumerism: Borders, Meijer, Office Depot, Jewel, Kohl’s, and, yes, Target!My friend and I screamed with delight as we descended the hill, feeling like a conquering army. The store closed at ten—only a few minutes away—so we had to hurry. I parked the car and we went inside.Almost as soon as we walked in the door I saw her. She wore Target’s required red shirt, a khaki skirt, brown shoes, and her long, blondish curly hair fell down almost the entire length of her back.She was walking toward us, and my friend noticed her at exactly the same time I did. The rational thing would have been to say something to her, but instead I just stared for a moment, then looked ahead, pretending like I wasn’t there to see her. My friend was less subtle and whisper-screamed “That’s her!” She looked at us, and I might have seen a smile.We kept walking.I wished that I said something to her. My friend and I walked around for a couple of minutes, and I promised I’d talk to her if we saw her again. But when she emerged from a back room through two swinging doors I maintained my silence. Idiot.We left.Later I found out that she knew it was me, and she was surprised I didn’t say anything. Much later—almost six months later—we talked on the phone for the first time and had our first date. Much much later we got married. Sixteen years later we’ve built a family and a life together.What if I hadn’t driven over that big hill?I don’t even want to think about it.PREVIOUS POST: What's Wrong with Inaction?IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: In Online Dating, Beware of Ax Murderers+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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