“Come Monday, it’ll be alright….”---Jimmy Buffett
Flying in the face of convention, I like Monday. No longer is it back to class, back to work, back to reality, now it’s Day One of a new opportunity. Whatever happened before is relegated to a back burner while a new adventure awaits. I sit at a computer to tell or create stories, you sit by an easel, work on your plies, pick up a guitar, learn a new role, design a clever building, chase a cure for Alkaptonuria.
Tuesday is not an acceptable substitute, although a perfectly fine day for following Monday. When you start a project on Tuesday, you feel a little behind schedule, perhaps a tad rushed, irritable with your lethargy, overly attentive to your timepiece. Insufficiently inspired until Wednesday, you throw up your hands in defeat and swear you’ll do better next week. Thursday is a day of repentance, followed by heavy drinking on Friday, excessive ribaldry on Saturday, sad reflection on Sunday morning and rededication at sunset. Now you’re ready, eager for a go at another glorious Monday. Try to up your game this time.
“Well, the road rolls out like a welcome mat to a better place than the one we’re at.”---Chris Stapleton
Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, the overpass looks a little low but this truck will clear it by a good six inches. Toss the coke overboard now, Roy, I was wrong about the maximum speed of Coast Guard FRBs. So after the rally, we’ll sneak up and hit the Senator with a lemon-meringue pie, it’ll be a riot. I’m sure Marie will stop messing with the voodoo dolls after we get married. Hey, Mick, let’s hire the Hell’s Angels for the security gig at that Avalon concert.
Nobody’s perfect. But if you’ve made one colossal, irreversible mistake or piled too many errors on top of one another and now find yourself down so long it looks like up to you, it’s time to take the cure. A new and better life awaits somewhere in the sky, Lord, in the sky, and it’s yours for the finding. Here’s what you do:
1. Get on the bus, Gus. You live in a small town and your wife ran off with the blacksmith, twenty years younger. Now you see them everywhere you go and all your friends are snickering. Last night you found yourself down at Criminals ‘R’ Us, buying ether, twine, plastic handcuffs and a shovel. It’s time for a relo, Bub. You’ll forget all your troubles sucking down umbrella drinks and watching the sun set at lovely Pismo Beach. It’s only a $137.99 ride from Jacksonville on Greyhound.
2. Make a new plan, Stan. Everybody told you going into the lawn care business in Nevada was a bad idea, but would you listen? No. People succeed in business by filling a need, that’s why you see so many funeral homes in St. Petersburg. Right now, they’re looking for aging gigolos in The Villages, so take off a few pounds, get your teeth whitened and buy a Tommy Bahama shirt. Okay, you’re ready.
3. Slip out the back, Jack. Your life sucks, big-time. The wife gained forty pounds in the last six months and gets an Amazon Pie-of-the-Week every Tuesday. Your job at the rendering plant has lost a smidge of its original glamour. Most of your friends are chain smokers, dopers, alcoholics or bagpipe-players and you’re still driving a 1966 Studebaker. You find yourself unable to discuss your problems with anyone and feel like you’re walking in quicksand. Time to take a ride on the midnight express. Sure you’re a coward, but you’ll live to fight another day. Camden, Maine is nice this time of year, and nobody up there asks any questions.
And you haven’t a clue what to do,
If your wife has run off with the pool man
And left you incredibly blue;
If your children will no longer write you
And your mother is locked up in jail,
If your business has recently folded
And you don’t have the money for bail;
If your car burns more oil than McDonald’s,
If your house is about to fall down,
If your health is a bit of a shambles,
If your boss thinks you’re Bozo the Clown;
If there’s nothing to enhance your spirits,
If the road winds eternally down,
If you can’t fill the bill with a happiness pill
And the bars are all closed in your town;
If you don’t think you’ll find satisfaction
In a lemur, a goat or a guppy,
Resort to the ultimate weapon--
Just go out and buy you a puppy!
Remember alleged Colonel Harland Sanders? For two-thirds of his life, he couldn’t get out of his own way. He failed as a lawyer, then as a salesman of various wares including lamps, insurance and tires. During all those years, however, he carried with him his ace-in-the-hole, his secret chicken recipe. Sanders once said he tried to sell it 1000 times with no luck, but did he give up? Not on your sage and savory and Tellicherry black pepper! On his 1010th try at age 62, he got a bite and the rest is history. So don’t give up on that silly idea for double-decker ambulances.
Then we have grouchy old Steve Jobs, who had massive success in his early years before falling off the mountain. Jobs was forced out of his own company, Apple, as the company spiraled down toward bankruptcy. He was widely considered a laughable failure. The company promptly went from being the leader of the personal computer revolution in the 1970s to an also-ran by the 1990s. With Apple just months from bankruptcy in 1997, Jobs returned like Mighty Mouse to save the day, fundamentally changing the computer, music and smartphone industries by coming up with the iMac, iPod and iPhone. “I didn’t see any of this happening,” he said in 2005, “but it turned out getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.”
These days, whenever a human superstar does anything big, next thing you know they’re headed for Disney World. But where would everybody be going if Walt packed it in after he succumbed to his early failures? Disney was fired from his first job at a Missouri newspaper for not being creative enough, then his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City went bankrupt in less than two years. Walt got on the bus, Gus, and motivated to Hollywood, founding the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, which prospered. “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me,” he said. “You may not realize it when it happens but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”
Henry Ford’s first two automotive companies failed. Star Wars, of all things, was rejected by several film studios for being too unconventional and risky. Lord of the Rings was turned down by multiple publishers for being too long and complex. Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers. Abe Lincoln lost his first job after one month, was defeated running for the state legislature that same year, failed in business the next year, experienced a clinical nervous breakdown, ran for Congress and lost three times, then lost a campaign for Vice-President. He was elected President of the United States in 1860.
You never heard of Gary Dahl, right? Even now, after an unlikely success, he is a comparative unknown. But Gary had this crazy idea that no one, not a single soul, bupkus, gave the remotest chance of success. It was Gary Dahl against the world, and rightly so, it seemed. When no bank would lend him a dime to get started on his goofy project, he took out a second mortgage on his house to the horror of his family and friends, and for a while it looked like everyone was right. Gary advertised in newspapers and magazines to no avail, and the walls were closing in fast.
Then, with his last $200, Dahl placed a small ad in a Chicago newspaper during the November pre-Christmas shopping rush, marketing his Pet Rock as an ideal Christmas present. A lot of people were amused by the idea of giving a piece of granite which required loving care, and at Yuletide everyone is desperate to find the perfect gift for the man who has everything, and nobody had a Pet Rock. Dahl sold over 1.5 million little stones, pocketing $2 on each one sold. The fad didn’t last too long, but long enough for Gary to build a money bin in his back yard and share stories with his hero, Scrooge McDuck. “I was between a rock and a hard place,” Dahl giggled. “And the rock won.”
In the late 1970s, the American Pet Rock was quickly imitated in Canada because the creators hadn’t secured north-of-the-border rights, but there were also other imitators. An Ohio company named ProArts began selling “Kryptonite” rocks which glowed in the dark. In 1979, an enterprising Canadian sold canned dirt from Alberta to “people who always wanted to own a piece of real estate.” Another entrepreneur sold “Martian” soil.
Gary Dahl, himself, took repeated stabs at a second act with sand breeding kits and red China earth. His collaborator on the Pet Rock, George Coakley, released a metric watch, a toothbrush ring, canned air from Nebraska and a potful of Earthworms, all of which bombed. “The Pet Rock, the hula hoop, is a once in a lifetime thing,” mused Dahl. “It was big. I didn’t realize how big until I tried to come up with something comparable. There was nothing. Nothing at all.”
Success and failure, elation and collapse. Ships passing in the night.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
