It may not be much, but this much I do know

For most of us, life has been a pastiche of good and bad decisions. Some are probably still feeling the residuals of their bad decisions and faulty judgment calls. But, there is Balm in Gilead, and that balm is to be found in our good decisions. I’ve had a few of those. So have we all. Mine are as follows.

The best things I ever learned:

1. To read. I cannot begin to assess the value mastery of this skill has given me at so many levels. I once learned that one of my journalistic heroes, the ‘Sage of Baltimore,’ HL Mencken suffered a stroke in his later years and for the last decade of his life he was unable to read and comprehend a word on the printed page. I’d rather have died.

2. Never to take up heroin or cocaine.

3. Don’t really like acronyms, but have come to fully appreciate the virtues of KISS as a mode of living life.

4. Like Jimmy Carter I have lusted in my heart (oh, too many times to be counted), but I have in later years come to realize that emotional infidelity is probably just as dishonest as actually doing the dirty.

5. Realized we are the products of personal history. Personality quirks can often be explained. I have an inordinate fear of somebody I love dying in a traffic mishap. My beloved grandmother was hit and killed by a car. I now realize that has impacted me throughout my life. That realization was a good thing for me to arrive at.

6. Learned (the rudiments at least) of a different language. It not only broadens one’s horizons, but it facilitates ease in dealing with services in a country where that language is spoken. The French might have regarded with curled lip my attempts at their language (they’re like that), but it made me feel good to have ‘tried’ at least.

7. Realized that whatever personality or even sexual quirks I might have are not really abnormal. Most people have ‘stuff’ that they wouldn’t necessarily want revealed if they were, say, running for public office.

8. The laughter of children keeps a fellow going at a time when life might be bogging him down.

9. That my father had many virtues that I didn’t really come to appreciate, alas, until after he was gone. If yours still lives, make your peace with him. Unless he’s a complete prick, of course.

10. If you’re hosting a cocktail party or ‘at home’ and are planning to serve devilled eggs as one of your hors d’oeuvres, make twice as many as you think you will need. That still won’t be enough.

11. How to change a tire.

12. How to change a diaper.

13. How to sew on a button.

14. How to iron a shirt.

15. How to prepare the best damn potato salad on the continent (hint: It has something to do with horseradish.)

16. Being prepared to concede an argument (even if I know I’m right) for the sake of maintaining domestic harmony. Nothing is that damned important.

17. If you suspect that you might drink too much; you do.

18. To never hold the gaze of an attractive stranger for more than three seconds unless you are planning to do something about it.

19. To never eat ‘fresh’ seafood in Mexico.

20. What the ‘stinkeye’ means in Hawaii and how to avoid it.

I could keep going with this for much longer, but I have also learned that everything has an optimum limit. It’s the lesson learned from the film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Too many comic geniuses carrying on for far too long do not make for an uproarious movie.