March to Your Own Beat

It's good to be unique, however, unless you're rich enough to be considered eccentric, most will just label you as nuts.  The other day I went to Menards and asked if they had any bat houses.  The lady says, "you're the first who's ever asked for one of these."  If no one asks for them, why are they selling them?  At Walt Disney World, I requested a Coca Cola half regular/half diet. The vendor says he's waited on hundreds of thousands of people and that's the first time he's ever gotten that request.  What's so weird about that?  You get let less calories, but more of the real Coca Cola flavor.

Life's too short to be boring.  Even as a child when most were asking for dolls, I wanted stilts.  Guess I secretly wanted to join the circus.  Another item I wanted, but never got was a unicycle.  My parents thought it was just a passing fancy, but then the next year it was asked for again, and the next and the next.  Guess they thought the idea would eventually pass.  My mother must have felt guilty because she bought me a unicycle Christmas ornament one year.

While other children quietly watched the t.v. while their parents square danced, I was outside in the field attempting to catch a mouse.  One the way home, I was telling my parents about my mouse encounter and my dad said, "you shouldn't play with mice, they might bite you."  It was at that moment I realized I had never heard either of my parents swear.  Mom said things like "bug juice" when she was mad, but when I announced that the mouse did indeed bite me, dad said "s**t."  I was more stunned at his swearing than the fact I was bit by a mouse.  He whipped the car around and headed for the hospital.

Now it can also be said I was a bit of a smart aleck as a child.  When the nurse asked if we had the mouse, I'm like "no, I flung him off my finger."  She asked if we could go back and retrieve the mouse.  I asked "How?  By looking for the one with the blood on his teeth?"  Ah, my parents were so proud.  Because we had no mouse, my parents had the fun decision of debating between my getting rabies treatments or crossing their fingers and taking a chance.  Not sure if they flipped a coin or what, but they opted out of rabies treatments.  Maybe they decided it was a win/win situation.  They saved money on the procedure and if it turned out badly, they would have one less mouth to feed.  Everything turned out fine, but it could explain why I sometimes foam at the mouth when I'm mad. 

To this day I still want to try new things.  At 30 I tried ice skating and at 40 went to night school to work on completing my Bachelor's degree.  Now at 50 I just want to be able to bend over and tie my shoes without blacking out from the jeans cutting off my air supply as they dig into my abdomen.

As long as my heart keeps beating, I'll march to that beat, however offbeat it may be from others.