Column

Kunal Patil

Mrs. Cronin

Honors English 1B

5 May 2014               

"Have No Regrets"

In the Style of Mary Schmich

Inside every crusty, old man lurks a young teenager dying to get out. Some mischievous, trouble-causing kid eager to venture through dangerous places and go on dates with girls that are a major catch. Now I know what you're all thinking. "We've already lived through our dangerous days." Well first off, ask yourself, "How jealous would my fellow senior citizen friends be if I had a motorbike, played 10 sports, and had a girl around my arms that was 20 years younger than me?" The answer is quite simple. They would be jealous beyond measure.

Ladies and gentleman who need dentures, have white hair, or have been called "Old Man Jenkins",  I encourage you to try this and thank me later:

HAVE A MIDLIFE CRISIS.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, it would be to engage in a midlife crisis. Imagine yourself right now. You've been married for eighteen years. How many times a week do you get fed up with your wife? Ten, fifteen? You have three kids and another one on the way. How much money have you spent on them? I don't care, probably too much. On top of that, you're wasting your money on your house insurance when in reality, you should obviously spend it on a brand new golden corvette. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth! Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until you've divorced your wife (preferably in a vivacious, dramatic way), leaving her with the children while you enjoy your young life in a brand new corvette. But trust me, in 10 years, you'll look back at your photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how wild you really looked. You are not as obedient as you imagine.

Don't worry about what's to come. Or worry, because you might be getting a stranger pregnant, but know that worrying is as pointless as actually paying your bills. The real troubles in your life are things that you never actually tried.

Do one thing in your life that's gonna leave you saying "Wow, I surely have no regrets".

Be bad.

Be a jerk. When you're in your grave, you won't know who actually attended your funeral.

Change the way you live.

Don't waste your time reading the newspaper, trying to learn a new language, or travelling the world (unless you're running from that wife you should have divorced).

Forget the angry, disapproving faces you'll receive. Forget the head shakes. If you succeed in receiving these, you should feel accomplished. The imbeciles are just jealous that you're "livin' like Larry" (If you will).

Throw away your old love letters, the past is the past and right now, we're here in the present.

Call everyone dude.

Don't feel guilty if you get an evil eye from your boss for calling him a "dude". He doesn't know your past. He doesn't know what you've been through. The most interesting people I've known have gotten to meet the president... And have called him a dude.

Get plenty of credit cards. Make some new teenaged friends. Buy them shiny cars that make them seem smug, then bribe your new friends to sneak you into their school's dance.

Mess your hair up because all teenage girls dig it. When you've lost all your hair, buy a wig and start this cycle all over again.

Don't pay attention to the people who say "But you'll have to pay child support, alimony, and still have your 'great life' to pay for." If you really feel the need to actually respond to this questioning buffoon, simply chuckle a little and nudge them till they're sore. Then say "Silly you should ask my friend, that's what credit cards are for."

Midlife crises are a deep, traditional form of nostalgia. Going through one is a way of fishing through the past to find something you deeply miss.

As mentioned before, you can thank me later for making transforming your future into a past.