Things the People in Charge Didn't Tell You

Your first question must be, “Who are these so-called people in charge who aren’t telling me things?” And your second must be, “What aren’t they telling me?” I’m afraid I can’t answer either of those questions.

Just kidding. I can answer the second one, but I’m not sure I have a definitive answer on the first one. In fact, I’m not even sure who is in charge, let alone which people in charge are keeping secrets from us. But I’ll bet a lot of money that one of them is Donald Trump. I am still recovering from the disappointment of Trump un-running for office. Half of my brain isn’t functioning properly so I think that means I’m still in a state of shock. I mean everyone’s so hard on the guy and I feel for him - his reality show sucks, he has a terrible comb-over, which means he is either bald or likes comb-overs, which is weird, and hopefully he got his money back for his bad tan job. Not that he needs it, the guy has a jillion dollars and still nobody likes him.

Whoever these so-called people in charge are - parents, teachers, doctors, the Prime Minister, Helpdesk - they always seem to forget to mention the things that end up being the most important in the end, which is so like them. People in charge in general (not sure how you can get more general than people in charge) are often not telling me things, maybe because they don’t think I can handle it, like it would crush my little brain under the weight of it’s magnitude, but I think they are underestimating my brain size. Considering how little I use of my brain, the thing’s humungous. Anyway, I guess I just wish someone had told me these particular things as a wee lass (spell check wants me to change that to “as wee lass,” or “as a wee lasso,” but neither seem appropriate). It would have saved me a lot of wasted time and energy… and humiliation… defeat… loneliness… and all-around life confusion.

WARNING: the importance of many of these things that you didn’t know you never knew may disturb you. If you experience dizziness or vomiting, don’t worry, it’s a natural reaction. If you experience brain hemorrhaging and bleeding of the eyes, see your doctor immediately. Better yet, skip the whole doctor thing, call 911 and while you’re waiting for the ambulance shoot off a quick will. You are dying.

1. I never understood why people didn’t like musicals until I grew up and got cynical. Then I knew: musicals are lies. The people in charge want you to go along for the ride, no questions asked, but we have to wake up and smell the wilting flowers. People don’t just break into song and dance in the middle of the street, and if they did they would be shot. More importantly the random group of citizens walking down the street don’t all happen to know the same song and choreography to make this magic happen. In recent times musical-lovers have tried to replicate this magic through what they are calling “flash mobs,” but these are also lies because they are made to seem out of the blue when really they are pre-planned contrivances trying to convert the public into becoming believers. I have a confession to make. I am one of those believers.
2. Here’s a shocker: success isn’t actually having a big house and a nice car. There are many kinds of success, success going to the bathroom for instance. The people in charge want you to think success is the most important thing because it means you will work really hard for no reason and they can make you pay ridiculous amounts of money for actually insignificant things. It’s hilarious. Did you buy a disgracefully expensive car or a preposterously expensive dress because you thought that’s what life was all about? SUCKER.
3. They say don’t be afraid to cry, particularly to men, as if by saying it they’re hoping they will cry, which is always very satisfying for the cryer as well as the cryee, er, person who witnesses the crying (not that we are so heartless that we like people to be sad,  but heck, if they’re already sad, at least have a good cry). However, in reality there are many situations where it will only be to your detriment to cry in public, if your order was messed up at a restaurant for instance, your tamagotchi dies during class, or the surgery you’re performing isn’t going as well as you’d hoped. They also say don’t cry over spilt milk, but they’re wrong, if you wake up and you are almost out of milk and you look forward to your bowl of cereal every morning and there’s no bread as a back-up and you spill that last bit of milk, you should definitely cry. A lot.
4. They also say be yourself. But what they don’t say is that it depends on who yourself is. If yourself is a murderer, then no, don’t be yourself. If yourself makes a fool of yourself in public, sure go ahead, but you’ll be making a fool of yourself in public. If yourself is lonely and looking for a soul mate but is very, very strange and likes to eat toilet paper like that girl from the show “My Strange Addictions,” it’s probably best to hold off on being yourself until, well, forever, because nowadays divorce is like cancer and you are never safe.
5. Credit cards are not extra money. Have you seen Confessions of a Shopaholic? If you are a boy and say "yes" you better darn well have a girlfriend. She could have benefited from reading this blog post. No, credit cards are like Monopoly money pretending to be real money. In the real world if you try to use Monopoly money to buy something, the cashier may or may not compare the money you gave to the money in the register and if you’re lucky they won’t notice that the old man on yours has a monocle but the old man on theirs has no monocle. If they do notice and if you were under the impression that the Monopoly money was real money and don’t actually have any real money, you would have to return the item or go on the run for the rest of your life. Also important, you cannot pay off your credit card with Monopoly money, at least not in my experience. So if only we saw credit cards for what they really were, there wouldn’t be as many misinformed fools on the run.
6. After I saw the light and gave up my meat-eating ways I soon realized that as a small child I had been hoodwinked. I am positive that if someone had made the connection clear to me that by eating a delicious ham sandwich I was actually eating Babe, I would never have wanted to participate in such barbaric practices. Legally, when children reach the age where they can understand, the parents should be made to carefully explain that meat = death and that by eating an animal they are an accomplice in its murder. Parents should then put the question to their child, “Do you want that on your conscience?” Then if the child says yes the parents will know they are probably raising a heartless monster and to take their child to therapy at a young age to nip those murder-tendencies in the bud (see point number four). And then make the child sign a document saying it agreed to eat meat so that the child doesn’t sue them later.
7. Teachers may lie to you and tell you that you can be anything you want to be, when really they should tell you that if you have the money and health and life circumstances there is an okay chance that you might find something you can settle for. It probably won’t be exactly what you hoped for as a child, but then again, if the rest of your life was determined by what you wanted most as a child, you would have to spend all your earnings on candy and POGS even though POGS lived a short but happy life and are no longer cool. And though as a child you may have wanted to be a fire fighter, as an adult you realize that it takes a special kind of person to run into burning buildings to save people and though you used pretend you were a superhero, superheroism now sounds like a lot of work. Instead teachers should encourage kids to place their happiness on more important values like family and friends and God and the ability to use both of your legs. (On that note, you should all participate in the poll at the bottom of the blog for important unfortunate events research.)
8. You can’t dig yourself to China. The only way you could possibly dig to China was if you lived in say, Kazakhstan, or India, and you could simply tunnel your way over a lá Bugs Bunny. But digging straight down into the earth will merely get you closer to the earth’s intensely hot core and therefore death. Besides you might be aiming for China but most likely you will end up in the wastelands of Russia and die of starvation, or in the Pacific Ocean where if you’re lucky you’ll notice a leak in your tunnel first and head back before it’s too late. Or if you have really bad aim like I do you’ll probably end up in the middle of Australia and be eaten by a pack of wild dingos. Besides, what makes you think China will accept you? I hear it’s pretty packed over there so they might just try to use your tunnel to send immigrants to Canada in the hopes of lowering their population rate.
9. There may or may not be WMDs in Libya. I'm sure Qaddafi has got them hidden somewhere, probably a collection in with his sunglasses. And I'm sure once the States almost comes close to finding them, they'll take some pictures and make their move with finality and then a couple years after some scientists will take a microscope to the pictures and it will turn out the alleged WMDs were actually just a couple kids with BB guns. From an aerial view, though, those BB guns sure looked bad-ass. I don't know what fool would have believed it anyway. I mean the name “Weapons of Mass Destruction” alone screams, “We made this up in a boardroom full of uncreative morons."
10. Aaaaannd I can’t think of anything else. But I may do another one of these later because I know how much my wisdom is valued. And no, this wisdom is not from age, or copious amounts of research, or really smart educated guesses, just a random gift - some have it, some don’t. Like Solomon, only less of an endless supply of proverbs and steamy love poetry* and more of a make-it-up-as-you-go kind of wisdom.

*More on Solomon’s steamy love poetry to come.