Contributing Writer

In 46 years of living on this spinning, blue sphere, yours truly has learned

a thing or two about life. And since The Boy won't listen to me anymore,

I'd thought I'd write them down here, someone out there aught to

be able to use them. Now, I'm sure I've missed some of life's

undeniable truths, so feel free to e-mail me them. Who knows? They might

even make into the column next time.

The best motivator for a senior to get good grades is getting accepted into

a major university. There's no such thing as eating too many cookies,

too much chocolate, or drinking too much Starbucks coffee. If you're

late for an appointment, the police officer (that you needed last week and

couldn't find) will be right behind you, signaling for you to pull over

so he can have a nice little chat. All the stuff you promised when you were

a teenager that you would never do or say to your kids, you will do and say

when they become teenagers. Kids really don't appreciate their parents

until they have kids of their own. All the stuff you think you're getting

away with? You're not. Remember that your parents were kids at one time. Your

child's hearing problem will suddenly disappear when you call him down

for his allowance. Don't ever say, "I will never do that," because

you will. In a blink of an eye, your newborn baby will be off to college;

take lots of pictures while he or she is still young.

The things that were the most important to you at age 10 will be replaced

then again at 40. I'll let you know if they change again when I reach

50. A good partner in life can lift you up and help you achieve things way

beyond your dreams. A bad partner can hold you down and destroy those dreams.

Marriage is never bad; people are. Most of the time you don't get out

of life what you think you should; you get out of life what you're supposed

to. Some of the happiest people I've met have been the poorest, and

some of the most miserable people I've met have been the richest.

You never get lost driving when your fuel gauge reads full. You never get

lost unless you have to use the bathroom really, really bad. Once opened,

a street map is impossible to fold back up the correct way. As soon as you

tell The Wife you know where you are going, you will get hopelessly lost. The

person who needs a vacation the most is the person who just came back from

one. The stock that went nowhere but down when you owned it will go through

the roof right after you sell it for a loss. It's a very bad idea to

buy stock in an airline when it files for bankruptcy the next month. And

this one really hurt: you buy $2,000 of a certain donut stock, right before

the new low-carbohydrate, low-sugar craze sends the stock into the toilet.

The seminars on retirement aren't important to you until you reach

40, then they're the most interesting meetings you'll ever attend.

The toes you step on at work will one day be connected to the very person

you seek a promotion from. The geeks from your high school are still geeks,

unless of course they know a lot about computers. Then they're called

computer consultants and cost $125 an hour. The kids who were jerks to you

when you were in high school and were in and out of the principal's

office have all grown up by now. They're still jerks, but now they're

just in and out of jail.

No phone call after 11 p.m. is ever good. When we're young, we spend

our time trying to look old, and when we're old, we spend all of our

time trying to look young. No one ever drops over to visit when your house

is clean; they wait until it's filthy. Don't wear anything white

when you eat Italian food. The small country town where you grew up was in

the middle of nowhere and held nothing for you to do. It seemed to have more

cows than people, and you couldn't get away from it fast enough when

you were grown and went off to college. Now that you have a family, that

same small town out in the middle of nowhere that had nothing for you to

do looks like the best place to raise your family. Too bad a one-acre lot

will now cost you $70,000.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and

Emergency Services. He can be reached at [email protected].]