Mar 8, 2006

a plain morning

so, does anyone actually remember what life was like before the internet?

i was talking to irene earlier this week and we were saying how naked we felt without our cell phones. so strangely helpless. it's amazing we went half our lives without those little things. how did anyone get anything organized? i don't remember.

anyways, here's an interesting story. i might have mentioned this before, but i've been thinking about it a lot lately.

a few summers ago i got a job selling subscriptions to the national post. so i was doing my thing, out in front of a food basic store with my little booth and stack of newspapers.

this old jewish lady walks up to me, and we strike up a conversation about various newspapers. she says she hates the star, and happily obliges to subscribe to the senior rate.

somehow, we get onto the topic of me, and how i ended up standing in my dress pants in the vestibule of a budget grocery store in the middle of my summer vacation. she tells me she worked all sorts of crappy jobs once, and never regretted any mistake. and she says to me this quirky little quote that i'll probably never forget:

you gotta be young and stupid before you can be old and wise.


i never ever forgot that. sometimes i expect myself to know it all and do it all the way its suppose to be done. i mean, i'll be honest -- i've done a lot of stupid things in my time. but i can't say i didn't glean valuable experiences from them.

am i proud? no. but i learned. i have to catch myself everytime i say to someone "i feel old", because....i'm not. there's this huge margin of error for us to work with. we should probably take advantage of that while we can.

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