Pure Imagination and Pool Boys

If you want to view paradise,
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it.

These are words from "Pure Imagination", a song from the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Every time I wonder if I am doing good in the world, my mind races to this song. When Gene Wilder (Willy Wonka) sings the line “there's nothing to it” as he is plucking a hair out of Mike Teavee, I am reminded that we change the world every day.

This is an important notion – each day, every one of us changes the world. We may make it better or worse – intentionally or unintentionally – but we change the world. And I think most of us do this unintentionally. For instance, I got a really nice note from someone the other day, and it made my whole day. I was down, overworked, undersexed, whatever, and this little note made everything better. Was the writer trying to “pick me up?” No – and when I write “pick me up” I am referring to raising my spirits. But her note did make my day.

I have done a lot of soul searching lately – and might I add that it is hard work reconstructing oneself. Really crappy work, too. But I do ask myself whether I am trying to play it safe sometimes, not willing to risk things, get out of my comfort zone. I am overqualified at work – which means that I normally succeed at what I do. But I should be succeeding.

You know, I see the same thing with relationships – not mine, but others I read about. People seem to sometimes be playing it safe. And I am not talking about turning down some one-night stand who doesn’t want to use a condom because his penis is so big that it hurts him. P-lease. I have seen a sex educator put a condom over his head (and not the penis head, you people). Somehow, I wonder if someone would ever rob a bank with a condom over his head. “Officer, I did not get a good look at the guy. He was wearing a condom on his head, and, well, it distracted me. I just could not stop laughing.”

I mean, I know several people who have re-married the same person. Okay, I know one person (really), met another who was in the process of doing so (the re-marrying, not the re-divorcing). Is it because they were playing it safe (did not work so well, sort of like getting burnt twice on the same stove, and consoling yourself with “too much nerve damage to feel it the second time” or “I buy my burn meds in bulk anyway” or whatever).

Don’t you hate it when you get to the end of a sentence and forget what the sentence was about in the first place? If you write it, good ol’ MS Word can correct it for you. As long as you endure the freakin’ paperclip office assistant. What I want Microsoft to do is make a Spanish Pool Boy office assistant. Oh, and then I would never get any work done ever again. “Francisco, my office assistant, can you take your shirt off and conjugate this noun.” Talk about a dampened panties moment. Oh, my.

Okay, I have rambled on enough today. Francisco and I have work to do!