Tonight I learned a very valuable lesson.  You can not live your life regretting actions you took in the past.  Obviously I can’t say this as some global principal that everyone should live by, since I’ve never killed anyone (who didn’t deserve it) or anything like that where I might find living life with an ever-present regret a reasonable way to live life. But for the most part, we can’t regret what we did, or in this case, what we didn’t.

Tonight I learned that I’ve been living a lie.  Our story begins when I was just a wee little tot back in the red brick house off of Springfield Avenue in Essex County New Jersey.  It was the same hood that Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah called home just a decade or two before I.  It was the first time I lived in the Continental United States, my first residency in any of the 50 states, and it was a year or two before my life really jumped off (in which I rode the crazy train to Tokyo).  It was also the home in which my brother and I received our first video game console.

A shared Christmas present sponsored by a consortium/joint-venture between Mr. and Mrs. Baumer and Mr. and Mrs. Claus, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was bestowed upon us.  It was more than just the best present we had ever gotten (and ever would get), it would set the tone for what would be the rest of my life.  I write you now, nearly twenty years later, a proud owner of both an Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.  That NES helped sculpt me into the fine citizen that I am today (fuck all of you ‘video games make children violent’ idiots, I’ll kill you and steal your car).

At the time, that console was bundled with a game cartridge that had both the original Super Mario Bros. on it as well as the Duck Hunt shooting game (with light pistol included).  Also not to beat a dead anti-video game horse while it’s down, but to this day I’ve never eaten mushrooms that have made me feel larger than myself, nor have I indulged in ever firing a gun.  I have lived in countries where both are perfectly legal, and am regularly handed coupons to firing ranges here in Hawaii. So there’s Exhibit your an Asshole.  But that’s besides the point. The point is, many many many hours were spent on that NES machine with my brother.

We played Duck Hunt quite a bit.  Each waiting our turn to hunt those purple and blue faced ducks out of the single hue blue sky in hopes of seeing the giggle puppy come up full-handed and sans his giggles. Never, never, never, did it occur to us that the game was two players.  Tonight, while quickly catching up on some bookmarked threads in some forums that I frequent, I see a quick note about how Duck Hunt was in fact two players and my brain left my head (by way of my ears).

Destroyer Of Worlds

That’s right folks.  You could control the fucking ducks.  I hope your mind is blown as much as mine was.  So there/here I stood (I was actually sitting), uncertain of how I should react.  Should I pine for those years back in which me and my brother could have taken the helm and directed the ducks out of each others scopes which would have resulted in us both being much better shooters?  Would that extra challenge have laid the foundation to make my brother an even better Buck Hunter than he grew up to be? (That’s right it says: “Baumer is one of the most lethal shots on the East Side”).  Had we known, could that have been ‘the most lethal shots on all of Manhattan’ or perhaps ‘the world’?

We’ll never know. And I’m fine with that.  Well maybe not tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be fine with that.  Well maybe not tomorrow either, but someday soon I’m sure I’ll be fine with the fact that I never knew until almost twenty-six years of age that Duck Hunt was two players and that you could control the ducks.  Today I learned that one day I’ll let go of the past. Until then, I’ll just let go of the pants.

I never make my bed.  When we were younger, my mother sometimes told us to make our bed. Actually, she still does from time to time.  It was one of those ‘good habits’ that she attempted to instill in her two boys that her mother had undoubtedly instilled in her (and her brother and sister as well).  As if her mother wasn’t enough, she went to boarding school (as did her siblings) and I’m sure they got beaten there if they didn’t make their beds.

Fortunately and unfortunately our punishment when failing to make our beds wasn’t as harsh.  Fortunately because I don’t have any scars or ill-will towards my mother, unfortunately because I didn’t get into the ‘good habit’ of making my bed.  When I was younger I probably had several reasons not to make my bed.

1. It involved spending time on something that wasn’t awesome, like reading comics, playing video games, learning computer hacking skills, etc.
2. It involved doing something that my mother or father wanted me to do.  They never asked/made me do anything that was fun or awesome.  It was never “go read comic books,” “go play video games,” or “this is the last time I’m going to ask you to spend six hours in front of the computer screen.”  (So help me if I ever have kids, I’m gonna be the coolest dad in school.  The one who punishes his child by making them eat an entire snickers pie with their eyelids taped open and xbox controllers duct-taped to their hands for four hours.  I digress…)
3. It didn’t make sense.

Now that I’m older, reason 1 is still semi-relevant.  It still involves spending time doing something I wouldn’t ideally be doing, however the cost isn’t as great.  I now know that the comics will still be there when I finish, that the video games will still be there when I finish, and that no matter how much computer hacking skills I learn, there will always be more to learn.  I am also much better at managing my time now, so I have plenty of spare seconds to use making my bed.

Reason 2 is no longer relevant.  The requests that my parents now make of me since I am no longer under their roof, are things like “please help me make a decision about purchasing an awesome boat,” or “please delegate various gardening chores for us to do for you since we don’t have a garden in our apartment and even the chance to gather up fallen leaves again is fun.”

Reason 3 is the only one that really still holds true.  It doesn’t make sense.  The other day I saw my housemate making her bed and asked her why she did it.  Her reasoning wasn’t any different from any other reasoning that I’ve heard.  It looks nice and tidy, and if anyone comes into your room they can sit on your bed without hesitating about getting it dirty or sitting where you sleep.  Great reasons everyone.  Too bad they are shit.

One time I was watching an episode of Law and Order: SVU and the police went to one of the victims homes/apartment who was murdered and one of the detectives made some snarky comment about how “you should always make your bed, because you never know when you are gonna die.”  What the fuck? First of all, if I’m dead, I’m pretty sure I won’t care if my bed is made.  Second of all, if I’m alive, I’m pretty sure I don’t care if my bed is made. Why don’t you stick to catching pedophiles and leave the bed jokes to me.

If you are lucky enough to be in my room and to see my bed with your own eyes, you are having the best day of your life and won’t even have time to come-down from such a high to take note of my unkempt linens.  If you are also one of the chosen few who get to rest your weary little haunches on that sucker, you certainly aren’t going to hestitate no matter how digusting or unmade it may appear to be.  But seriously, let’s just think about all the things that happen in beds.  We will start tame.  People read in bed, they sleep in bed, they talk on the phone in bed, they eat in bed.  Great.  More importantly people have been known to commit the 4 ‘ates in bed. Urinate, defecate, masturbate and fornicate. No pointing fingers here, just stating the obvious.  So you’d hesitate sitting on my bed when it wasn’t made, but wouldn’t hesitate sitting on it if a thin layer of cotton separated your ass from the 4 ‘ates? Really? That’s all it takes? Right, thought so.

Let’s all just concede to the fact that making your bed is pointless.  You get out of bed most mornings (manic depressives and whores the exceptions), and get into bed most nights (insomniacs and whores the exceptions).  Sure it looks nice, but it’s not functional.  Getting into an unmade bed is quicker and easier then getting into a made bed.  Taking the sheets off an umade bed is quicker and easier then getting into a made bed (some beds are so unmade that the sheets are already entirely off).  No matter how nice and neat and made your bed appears to be, it is still the cesspool of sweat and filth and other disgusting bacteria and fluids that may have been on your body that one time you didn’t shower right before entering it.  The tidiness of it’s appearance doesnt change how disgusting it is.  So get over it, get out of bed, and don’t turn back to make it.  If we all spent those few seconds everyday making our beds doing something productive like harvesting rice for starving children in Africa, their would be a shit ton more Africans, and a shit ton more rice farmers.