Monday, April 25, 2016

Minute by Minute

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Nico (left) and Christopher enjoying lunch that dad brought to them during "lunch with your kids" at school.


April 25, 2016

Slow the hell down, life. Thank you, I’d really appreciate it. I just figured you out and now it seems you want to excel yourself through the second half of my life. This is just one request, for now, so back off! Let me enjoy the corrections I made from my past mistakes in the first half of my life while I excel into something better in my second half. You know what I mean, life? I DO believe I should be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, thing.

I know I’m getting old and I don’t need to look at my aging face in a mirror or hear a happy birthday song sang by a bunch of Chili's employee’s as the serve me a chocolate syrup covered vanilla ice cream to remind me that time waits for no one. And also life, there is no need to remind my ass is old by taking the icons I grew up with. People like Prince and David Bowie, Shandling. I’m still reeling from the death of Michael Jackson and that was in 2009. But man did that age me.

When I was a kid Bob Hope and George Burns were the ones dying and well, hell, they were old, they looked old and I was selfishly young. But when icons die young, way before their time , it’s pretty clear that my own mortality is creeping in, as it’s waving at me in a grim reaper like way.

And this simple request, life, to slow time down isn’t just a personal self-loathing thing because now your dwindling time affects my parents who are the older generation. That older generation I didn't understand when I was kid but totally now get the implications of their age.

My parents are now the grandparents of my kids and I’m now the grateful child who turned into my parents. Sometime I wish I could just rebel against the machine as Andrew Clark once fretted, "My God, are we going to be like our parents?" Damn, the Breakfast Club really is more prevalent now that I’m middle age because I still want to rebel and live in the moment of the defiant hell raiser or just be, “the  brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and criminal." I want to enjoy my own kids and selfishly max out my full potential while those around me prosper in good health. 

I’m grateful to be where I'm at this point in this life, trust me I'm not ungrateful. I’m feeling comfortable in my skin and I'm afraid this feeling isn't going to last.  But the lose of my wife and Twins isn't the main reason for feeling this way. I remember my forty year old uncle was diagnosed with cancer and I was half his age. That feels like a lifetime ago. It's mind boggling to think about him and remember how I hugged him and told him he'd win this battle only to succumb to it 5 years later. I'm 5 years away from his age of death and 2 decades older when he first told me! I remember like it was yesterday, my dad, being so active, he held down two jobs and still raised 4 kids. My God how young he was. But now he's 70 and slowing down.  I noticed that I was nearing the age when John Candy died. Didn’t I just see Planes, Trains, and Automobiles while I was still wearing Underoos?!

I have a lot of things that I want to accomplish and there’s hopefully a full lifetime ahead to figure it out. First I will hold my 6 and 8 your old kids in my arms while I watch television because I still can and they still want to. I will take my boys to the store with me because right now they would rather be near me than any other place in the world. I don't want to stop learning or dreaming. I want to see the rain fall and appreciate it. I want to shiver from the cold and enjoy the moment I warm up. I want to accomplish the impossible and look back and laugh when I doubted myself when I felt that I couldn't do it. 


Minute by minute is how I live my life now. I promise you, life, I will run my opportunities close to the edge of time while they slowly move to the tick tock of the passing days.  Let us all live and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Don’t sweat the shit you can’t control. Move with time not against it. Live in your moment now, not on what could happen in the future. Go get a tattoo if you desire. Be an actor or a writer if you so desire even if you think age has passed you by. Buy a new car or get a computer that you dreamt of. Just live, live in the minute because the next one may never come. And P.S.  Live and let live. 

Captain Imperfecto rocking a University of Florida shirt. (April 2016)

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