What follows are my random thoughts. Some will make you think and some won't. I will add and subtract from them whenever the inspiration hits. So if you enjoy these thoughts, feel free to check back.

There Usually Isn’t a Right or a Wrong. Am I Right?

Have you ever encountered someone who is always right? Their political views are right. Their opinion of a movie is the only right one and the critics who disagree with them are wrong. There is even a right and a wrong way to blow one’s nose and however they do it is the right way. In truth though, very few things in life come down to someone being right and someone else being wrong but rather what we falsely attribute to being right or wrong is just a matter of different people having different opinions. Entire wars have been fought over right and wrong that didn’t have to be, and scores of relationships have ended just because two people couldn’t come to an agreement as to which one was right.  

There is something I do know—and I am right! That being that we shouldn’t be so obsessed by the notion that someone has to be the one who is right and someone else wrong. If you want a formula for happiness, then here it is. Instead of doing battle each and every time on the principal of being right say to the person you are in disagreement with, “I thought about it, and I agree with you,” and then 75% of what causes angst in relationships will disappear from your life. You’ll find it’s a pretty good payoff for simple surrendering being right.   

The Exception is Ice Cream. There Clearly Is Only One "Right" Flavor

Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors, and has since 1945. If you want to know how many flavors they’ve had throughout their entire history, the answer is nobody knows, not even Baskin-Robbins themselves, but it is somewhere over 1,000 flavors. Coromoto, an ice cream shop in Merida, Venezuela holds the Guinness record for current flavors, with 850 total ice cream varieties on their menu including garlic, chili and salty shellfish ice cream. They even have a flavor called Viagra Hope, mixing ingredients to combine the pleasures of ice cream with a somewhat different pleasure.

In a survey by the International Dairyfoods Association of America’s to determine America’s favorite flavor of ice cream, fifth place went to Neapolitan with 4.2% of the votes; fourth was Strawberry with 5.3% popularity; Butter Pecan came third with 5.4% of the votes; Chocolate won the silver metal with 8.9%. As for the gold medal winner, it wasn’t even close. We have plain old Vanilla, with a staggering 29% of the favorite flavor votes. Hey, those popularity numbers even have Donald Trump beat. If The Donald was an ice cream flavor it would have to be nothing but nuts. And by the way, much to everyone’s shock, Salty Shellfish Ice Cream didn’t make the Top 5 list.

Myself though, I don’t get it. In my mind there is only one right choice and it should be number one on any ice cream favorite’s list and with 100% of the votes. It’s Chunky Monkey, of course, after all what other ice cream combines banana with fudge chunks and walnuts? I ask you, how could anything sooooo good possibly be more right than Chunky Monkey is?  

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

And I suppose neither does a Beatle, a Foo Fighter, or a Red Hot Chili Pepper. Where do the expressions we use each day even come from? 

I don’t know about all of them, but, “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” is attributed to Publius Syris a Latin writer, circa 50 BC.  I can only imagine that one day Publius saw a big bolder rolling down a hill and just after it bowled him over, Publius observed blood stains on his tunic, but much to his surprise—no moss.

One of the side benefits of being a writer is that we writers get to make up expressions and use them in our books. If these expressions then resonate a few people might start quoting us and then before we know it a few hundred years goes by and people are still using an expression that we made up and wondering where it came from. The king of coining new expressions was Shakespeare with 100’s to his credit. There is a good chance that you may have even used one of Shakespeare’s expressions yourself today, such as: “As good luck would have it”, “Bated breath”, “Break the ice”, “Dead as a doornail”, “Fancy-free”, “For goodness sake”, “Good riddance”, “Knock knock! Who’s there?”, “Laughing stock”, “Love is blind”, or, “Wild goose chase.”

Here are a few of my own made-up expressions I now submit for mankind to contemplate 500 years from now, together with my own notes so they will know exactly what I was intending:

“Let’s put it in the oven and see if it comes out pie.”   Kind of like running it up the flagpole but I happen to prefer pie to flags. Who doesn’t?

“Life is the ultimate bend over experience.”    Because we have to accept that not every event in our lives will be good ones. For instance, you may not like my expressions.

“Whoever has the best stories in the nursing home wins.”    A bit like the most toys, but I happen to believe that collecting great stories in life, and collection adventures, is far more enduring than toys are. 

“There is a fine line between the heroic and the pathetic.”   Lots of things start out as a good idea, but then they get taken too far.

“It is not about how I feel about her, but about how I feel about me when I am with her.”   It was the final line in a play I wrote called “Hating! Dating!” It captures what a relationship ought to be about, finding a life partner that when we’re with them we become—our happiest me.  

Elevator Conversations

Elevators are the ultimate hubs for unnatural social encounter, where people briefly go belly button to belly button with total strangers. Many of us will react by pretending that we are the only person in the elevator by staring up at the ceiling, the one place in the elevator where we know here are no other people. It is as though if we dared speak it would set off an alarm or cause the cable to break. If there is any conversation at all that takes place in an elevator then there is an unwritten rule that there is one, and only one, permissible topic—the weather. As a gesture of friendliness one elevator person will make a weather observation such as, “It’s raining out,” and the other person will then agree, confirming the fact that it is indeed raining.

I however propose that we need to add a few more topics to acceptable elevator banter, if for no other reason than to have a little non-weather elevator chatter variety. I am proposing my own list of “New Elevator Acceptable Conversation Topic List” which I hope will quickly become adopted from Des Moines to Bombay. In order to determine what topics should be on such an important list, I went to an authority of the subject of what strangers should talk about—eHarmony. You might call my list— eElevator Harmony. Here are some choices that, thanks to me and eHarmony, you can now nudge a stranger on an elevator and ask:

“What do you think are the secrets to a happy marriage?”    

“What is a bad habit of yours that you would like to change?”

“What are the three things you need to have in an elevator relationship?”

“What is an interest of yours you would like to share with other people riding the elevator?”

“Where do you see this elevator ride going?”

What Is Your Reincarnation Animal?

And while we are on the topic of permissible ice breakers on elevators, here is another question that is sure to get a rousing debate going in any crowded elevator, “If you were going to come back reincarnated as an animal which one would it be and why?” The question can also be asked as first date fodder, or when your insurance agent asks you if you have any further questions following a lengthy insurance discussion, you could answer, “Yes I do, if you could be reincarnated as any animal which animal would it be?”

When I’ve posed the question to others, “Dog,” has been the most popular choice. I suppose the taste of Kibble and the indignity of begging for table food is not considered. My own choice is, however, to be reincarnated as a sea lion.  I am speaking in particular about the sea lions that live in the San Francisco Bay and spend their day sunning on the rocks that overlook Fisherman’s Wharf. For starters, consider the value of the real estate alone, their homes are in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world and they have a 360 degree view of the entire bay including Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. I am thinking five million per sunning rock on the MLS, and if a sea lion bidding war takes place it could go higher. Add to that the fact that sea lions are the ultimate Zen creatures, with very few pressures or responsibilities, and almost no worries other than the odd shark attack. To my way of thinking if sea lions aren’t leading the idyllic life, then whom amongst us is?