Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) Read Online Free Page B

loud should my sound system be?
    A. It should emit individual bass notes capable of killing a dog at 50 yards.
    Q. I’m a middle-aged male, and I like to put on skintight, junk-displaying Lycra® cycling shorts and a skintight Lycra® cycling jersey covered with logos for corporations that don’t actually pay me anything, then ride around with a large clot of other middle-aged pretend racers screwing up traffic. I don’t have a question about driving, but I HAVE JUST AS MUCH RIGHT TO BE IN THIS Q & A AS ANYONE ELSE.
    A. Everyone hates you.
    Q. I’ve had a few drinks. How can I tell if I should drive?
    A. Take this simple test: Are you wearing your underpants on your head?
    Q. Not MY underpants, no.
    A. Then you are good to go.
    Q. What is all that shouting?
    A. Are you a senior citizen?
    Q. Yes.
    A. You have struck a pedestrian.
    Sophie, I know you think your old man is just kidding. I am not. Ask anybody who drives here: This Q & A reflects the actual situation on the roads of Florida far more accurately than the so-called
Florida Driver’s Handbook
. But I didn’t write this letter to make you nervous about driving here. I wrote it to make you
terrified
about driving here. Because I love you a lot, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I will do everything I can to make sure you’re really ready to drive. I’m going to keep coaching you until the day you finally get your license and are allowed to drive alone. Even then, as you leave our driveway, I’ll be standing next to the car, giving you last-minute instructions. When you finally drive away, solo at last, you’re going to feel as if I’m still right there next to you, guiding you.
    In fact I
will
be right there next to you, walking at a leisurely pace alongside your car.
    Your 1961 Valiant.

THE REAL MAD MEN
    * * *

* * *
    Looking back, I think my parents had more fun than I did.
    That’s not how it was supposed to be. My parents belonged to the Greatest Generation; they grew up in hard times. My mom was born in Colorado in an actual sod hut, which is the kind of structure you see in old black-and-white photographs featuring poor, gaunt, prairie-dwelling people standing in front of what is either a small house or a large cow pie, staring grimly at the camera with the look of people who are thinking that their only hope of survival might be to eat the photographer. A sod hut is basically a house made out of compressed dirt. If you were to thoroughly vacuum one, it would cease to exist.
    My mom, like my dad, and millions of other members of the Greatest Generation, had to contend with real adversity: the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, hunger, poverty, disease, World War II, extremely low-fi 78 rpm records and telephones that—incredible as it sounds today—
could not even shoot video
.
    They managed to overcome those hardships and take America to unprecedented levels of productivity and power, which is why they truly are a great generation. But they aren’t generally considered to be a
fun
generation. That was supposed to be their children—my generation, the Baby Boomers.
    We grew up in a far easier time, a time when sod was strictly for lawns. We came of age in the sixties and seventies, the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll. We were cool, we were hip, we were
groovy
, man. We mocked the suit-wearing Establishment squares grubbing for money in their 9-to-5 jobs. That was not for us. We did our
own thing
, you dig? We raised our consciousness. We tuned in, turned on and dropped out. We lived in communes. We went to Woodstock. We had strobe lights and lava lamps. We wore bell
-
bottom trousers, and
we did not wear them ironically
.
    And we had fun. At least I did. I am thinking here of my college and immediate post-college years, when my main goal in life—a much higher priority than academics, or a career—was to have fun. I’m not talking about “fun”