I had a moment of perspective again yesterday, and wanted to share it with you.

My wife gets tired of my sayings (rightfully so), and one that I beat to death when talking about financial matters is…
“Life throws you curveballs.”

The thing is, for many of us, for as much planning and saving as we do, life has a way of consistently presenting us with the unexpected. A lot of us are merely six paychecks away from financial disaster at any one time.

So yesterday I noticed these gentlemen in their wheelchairs, making their way along the street. And I thought about how that can easily be any of us, given a cruel twist of fate.

But I smiled as I found perspective in even their situation…they both have a runnin’ buddy. And whether or not they realize it, friends are invaluable.

I am gonna try to be sensitive to your feelings, but it’s getting harder…

I am the worst kind of smoker. An EX smoker. I buttered my lungs with carcinogens for the better part of 17 years before my then girlfriend declared that she would never marry a man who smoked. I knew I would never do better than this woman, and so finally, my need to smoke was beaten by my need for, well, her.

Now, I literally can’t stand it. Hate breathing it, hate the smell, abhor the concept, and regret all the money, time, and insistence I threw at such a disgusting hobby.

Today I walked out of a store into the Wal-Mart employee cloud, and once again, caught a nose and lungfull of filth. To add to my disgust, I managed to hear one of these folks in the middle of a diatribe about how he is fed up with people telling him he can’t smoke, or where he can’t smoke. It’s his right, dammit… And all that BS about second hand smoke…blahblahblah…

Some of our surrounding cities have recently adopted legislation prohibiting smoking in eating establishments, some in public places. And where my knee-jerk response to that would normally be along the lines of…”Yay!”, I quickly reign in that opinion to replace it with another that I believe in even more wholeheartedly.

I believe that we should not be telling businesses that they cannot cater to certain groups, including smokers. I believe this, because I think that people can vote with their feet, and dont need government to limit free enterprise just to give us all one more place to eat. I hate the thought of ever setting foot in another Chucky Cheese, but I am not about to suggest that they shut down and stop scaring kids with that freakshow mouse of theirs, and I think that people can decide for themselves whether or not to head over to Chucky’s House of Pain and Tokens.

My wife and I went out one evening to dinner at a local place we had to been to in years, since we were dating in fact. As we walked in the front door, the smell of smoke slapped us in the face, leading to our looks of shock and disgust. Regardless, we chalked it up to the fact that we had not been out in a long time, and had forgotten what it was like. We went and sat at the bar to await our seating, where we lasted a whopping two minutes before giving up and running for the door…we have never returned. And herein lies my point…I’ll never go back there, but someone else loves that place, and I am not about to take that aways from them.

All that being said, Mr. Smoker, you are correct. You have the “right” to smoke. Until it is deemed illegal (and in some places it already is), you can keep stuffing those grey dripping lesions you call lungs with as much asbestos and landfill as you see fit. I totally understand, by the way. 10 years after quitting, I still miss it. But now, my lungs and nose are clear, and I can smell you. And with all due respect, you smell… And you make me smell.

How about being just a tad more sensitive about where you do it? I fight for your rights to smoke, but your care-less attitude about where you smoke because it is your “right” isnt doing you any favors, and is probably the main reason for doors closing to your patronage.

Keep it away from my kids, and if I get creamed by my Karma one day and have to ride in an elevator with you, don’t be offended if I hold my breath…the entire damn way.

And finally, the next one of you I see smoking in the car with your kid next to you, I am following you to your destination to write you a note…with my keys on your paintjob.

Thanks for listening. Smoke up, Johnny.

After reading Snow White again for the Nth time one recent evening, my wife and I were suddenly hustled out into oncoming traffic by my 4 year old daughter with a topic I thought I still had years to prepare for. As Snow White lived happily ever after with her prince, my daughter noticed the last picture in the book…Snow White as a bride with her Prince husband.

“Why is she married?”

“Because she found her true love, and when you do, you get married”, my wife threw out without hesitation. Clearly, she had been through some training on this as a child.

“Well, I want to get married.”

At this point, knowing full well I might scar the child for life if I interjected with my thoughts on reality and pagan rituals, I left the girls to explore the world of make-believe, and went downstairs. Shortly thereafter, Kat came down and walked into the office with a concerned look on her face.

“We may have a problem.”

“Super, honey, we haven’t had one of those in a long time. What’s up.”

“She wants to marry you.”

Now, I could have happily gone without any conversation like this one for at least the next 30-35 years, yet here it was already, and my wife appeared to be the conductor of the Pre-K Misguided Crush Express.

“Well, what did you say?”

“I told her that she isn’t going to marry Daddy, she is going to find someone else that she loves, and marry them.”

To which Lil Miss C allegedly got a look on her face that was described to me as a cross between “Shock and Awe” and utter dismay.

I sat thru this story with this sinking pit in my stomach, realizing I have yet to buy my shotgun AND start digging my basement. As far as men and their emotional baggage full of joy and pain are concerned, this little girl only knows a love for her daddy at this moment. And at the tender age of four, she is about to abandon that blissful ignorance, never to return.

Assuming she can get past the armed lunatic at the top of the basement stairs.

Presenting the next installment in our series tribute to hurricanes, men and Darwinian Theory… I hope you enjoy the show. Make sure you are not holding a beverage for the final moments. Ladies, this really is a tribute to YOU, for wanting to be with men at all.

After taking you thru the courtship process yesterday, and having spent a day recently with the guys, I am reminded what a lottery win it is for jackasses like us to find sympathetic partners. I hope you enjoy the pictures below from “back in the day” before the deranged found their lives rearranged.

Debbie submitted the following question: “how did you meet your wife, and what did you do to trick her into marrying you?” Thanks to Debbie for playing Stump the Moron…If you have a question you would like to ask Jay, submit it here.

I was the marrying kind. Nobody said it, but half a brain could see that I was the guy that girls got to know and THEN saw as a prospect. But for a long time in my twenties, after a couple of relationship choices that went awry, I found myself hanging with a bar crowd. A group of guys who found our way out to the proving grounds 4 or 5 nights a week, and tried our damnedest to impress a female.

Only, I had zero game. In fact, one of my more sensitive buddies once commented, “Carl has some jokes, Brian has the body, Brad has the great approach, and Jay, well…Jay has the hair.” And he was right. I had good hair. Once I got into a conversation with a pretty girl, I could sometimes develop some interest, but I was certainly not the guy that most women picked out of the testosterone-laden herd of morons and said, “mmmm…yummy.” I had no approach. If I hoped to find a pretty girl to make my wife, I was gonna have to rope her in, tie her down (figuratively, if not literally), and force her to listen to me.

Which brings me to that fateful night.

The venue in question was the picture of class, the perfect place to find a spouse, Lulu’s Bait Shack. Such a cosmopolitan locale of poise and blue blood was a regular stop for our group of wayward pigs, and this particular night, we brought our friend Cindy to add a touch of “hot” to our “not”. Cindy was a 6 foot blonde beauty who found us more amusing than anything, and we happily brought her with us anytime we felt she might make us look like we had…something…anything.

Cindy and I stood near the bar, both surveying the terrain for subjects to suit our individual tastes, when I noticed her. She walked past, attached to her own friend, and appeared to be making a familiar lap around the establishment, and immediately I was drawn to her. There was something very familiar about her looks, and I found myself trying to decide who she resembled…there was a touch of Tea Leoni…some Jenna Elfman…and enough of both to deepen my interest. I pointed her out to Cindy right off, again when she completed her second lap, and then her third. And finally, Cindy called me out.

“Go and talk to her, moron!” While I always appreciated her company, Cindy could very quickly dissect my manhood.

“I seriously have nothing to say, Cindy, let alone the fact that she has her friend in tow, and I would be on stage for both.”

Cindy looked at me as only a woman with absolutely no respect for a man could, and said, “FINE. I am gonna do it.” And then, to my horror, she crossed the 8 feet between our huddle and Tea Leoni, and said with disgust, “My friend wants to meet you.”

The blood drained from my face, regrouped with the rest of the blood in my body, and flooded my face once more. I placed one pathetic foot in front of the other, crossed the 8 foot abyss to take my place on stage in front of now THREE, and introduced myself.

Now, to say that I could now recount anything that came out of my mouth from that point on would underestimate your intelligence, and overestimate my 40 yr old capacity for long term recollection, so I wont even try, but we covered the basics at least. Her name was Kat, she was a nursing student, her friend looked enough like her to be a sister, but wasn’t, and despite my repeated attempts to make a fool of myself in front of her that night, she stayed and heard me out. And at the end of the evening, as Lulu’s upper crust was ushered out into the night air, she gave me her number, and then it happened. She kissed me.

It seemed at the time that it was an evening of gifts, you see…Cindy’s introduction, Kat’s audience, and then the utter shock of a kiss from a pretty girl…all of which unexpected, and yet pathetically appreciated. Turns out my biggest hurdle that evening was 8 feet, and regardless of the process, I had enough to cross it.

You know all the times you have heard people say “Don’t look for Mr./Mrs. Right in a bar”? Those people are right, but not about what you think…they are more right about the “going looking” part…Finding someone who will give you their life is more about being the best person you can, which opens you up to the world and makes you more beautiful inside and out, regardless of surroundings. Develop YOU, and be found by the person who likes the person you built. Unfortunately, the real irony of this lesson is that by the time you really figure it out, you have already “caught your limit”.

Last night as Kat, our son, daughter and I created a memory dancing in our living room, I found myself thinking about our first night at Lulu’s. That was a night of gifts, true, but somewhere in there I must have done something good.