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A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE - Ignorance is bliss

Two stories suggest that the road to inner peace is through living in the moment - even if you haven't a clue what is going on.

Talking to my sister on the phone, she told me she wanted to buy a new game for her computer. She’s into ‘tame’ games—none of the first-person shooter things that might make me worry about going to sleep at night if she were in the next bedroom.

She’s more of a Yahtzee, Bowling-For-Dollars or solitaire kind of a gamer.

I asked her what she was planning to get.

“Oh I don’t know,” was her reply.

I told her that would be easy to fix her up with. I’d get her the most complicated, hardest-to-understand computer game I could find. Then whenever she was using it and someone asked her what it was she could say, “I don’t know.”

And her life would be perfect—every little desire she held close to her heart having been realized.

***

Jamie Romak, a 29-year-old Canadian baseball player, finally got called up to the bigs.

Romak was born in London, Ontario and played minor league baseball for most of the last 13 years. While he has done several spring training stints with various teams, he had never made the cut.

But it came to pass one day late last month that Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford sprained his ankle and was put on the 15-day disabled list.

All of a sudden Romak got a call from his manager—he was in bed asleep in Sacramento at the time. “Hurry up, get dressed! You are going to the big leagues.”

Romak couldn’t reach his wife. He phoned his mother and she started crying.

When he got to LA he was asked about all those years in the minor leagues. What did he think about it?

The answer he gave really jumps out at you and it’s a pretty good lesson in any walk of life. Romak said, “I didn’t put much emphasis on where I wasn’t, I worried about where I was.”

***

I was moving stuff from one pile to another the other day and I came across this recipe-card size wooden box that Special K had kept on her desk all the time. She always had a desk lamp sitting on it and there was a note with an often-used phone number taped on the side.

I hadn’t thought much about this box until I came across it. I had always considered it to have no purpose other than as a lamp stand and memo board.

But when I opened it I discovered that this box contained what looked to be some of her dearest things.

There were two clay Christmas hand painted ornaments wrapped in tissue paper. One had the name of her daughter on the back and the other the name of her first granddaughter.

There were a few coins.

Among the few paper items in the box there was a cancelled bus ticket dated 2001. It was for the nine-hour ride she took from Boston to Atlantic City where we first met. How romantic, eh?

Though when I look back at the timeline of how things occurred I recall that we met in Atlantic City in September, but we really didn’t start connecting for regular online chats for another three months. So—you know the old saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” Maybe I’ve just discovered that the woman I married was stalking me.

***

Subaru is marketing a high performance car they call the WRX. Now this I don’t understand: you just spent 30 grand on a car the manufacturer has named the Wrecks?