Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about a couple of tales.

THE PROMPT: "Describe your favorite fairy tale, myth or legend from your childhood. Discuss why it’s your favorite."

Good evening everyone...wow, talk about a mind-boggling prompt. I'm having a hard time reconciling with the days of my youth and this one, and I ain't all that old! It seems the farther you get in real life, the more disconnected you become from fairy tales and myths and legends. The more you live and experience things, the more you find yourself saying, "But that's not how it goes in the movies!" or, "This woulda never happpened to Snow White or Cinderella!"

But I suppose the real beauty and magic happen when, well, events occur that do have that "storybook ending"...perhaps some are more optimistic than others that these things do happen. Maybe I've seen enough to not believe in them, and that's ok too. I mean, Disney never made a story about a Princess Charming...ok, I'm setting the bar low there, I know. Moving on...

Let's throw this grenade out there. I'm a cynical romantic. I've not led by any means a storybook life. I've had more of a True Confessions sort of existence. One day, I'm the cat havin' roses sent to you at work...and the next night when we're out at a bar and I bump into an ex I'm still friends with (yes, that can happen, and no, it doesn't have to include sex), you ask me a question about her that has no right answer, ("Do you think she's prettier than me?") and a nice night ends early (true story, brah). I'm almost 37 and never really bothered to be as settled down as I am now. Never married, no kids of my own (that I know of), none of it. And I've had chances, but never really pulled the trigger on 'em for one reason or another.

So what I'm trying to say (in order to satisfy the prompt), is that tales like Beauty And The Beast and Cinderella and a lot of those other Disneyfied fairy tales resonate with me a little because they end in marriage and "happily ever after", even if "happily ever after" isn't always what it's cracked up to be. I'm not even saying I want to be married or anything like that...to me, it's all in due time. And being married doesn't automaically come with "happily ever after", nor do two people have to be married in order to experience that either.

That said, the topic of marriage has come up once in awhile, as it should when you're with the same person for 3.5 years. She's divorced and on her way to 41, and like I said, I'll be 37 a few days after. She's done the big wedding with all the fancy shit and the ceremony and the party and the whole shootin' match. So she doesn't need to do all that again. And at this point in my life, I've been to and been in enough weddings to know that I don't know if I want to go through all that stuff, personally. So we decided, if and when it's time, we'll head to Florida, invite a handful of the closest friends and family, and have a small little ceremony on the beach. When we get back home, we'll have a reception for everyone else (I've been a part of the "destination wedding" thing too, and man, I would not want our friends and family to have to worry about all that that entails, let alone having to be on everyone else invited to make sure they got the hotel and the travel arrangements and all the other bs involved) who couldn't come down. That, my friends, will be how my fairy tale wedding goes down.

BONUS TO THE PROMPT!!

I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier when I was struggling with the prompt! I could've just made an entire entry out of the next part of my typings you're about to read, but luckily I came up with this little bonus section. I make no apologies of my love for indie hip-hop legends Atmosphere. They released an album a few years back, and if you bought the deluxe edition, the cd came bound in a cloth booklet that contained an illustrated childrens' story.

It's a beautiful little tale about a shrinking boy lost in a sea of people, trying to find his way among the crowd, and the princess he admired. She was unlike any other princess, in that she needed special glasses just to help her see others beyond her own negative self-image. One day, some of the boys stole her magic glasses. The boy seized the opportunity to address the princess, out of fear of her not being able to notice him. He asked her if he could be his "Seeing-Eye Boy". The moral to the story (and the title of the album) is "When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold."

And I believe this. You have to make the most of any opportunity at any given time, no matter what kinds of adversity you're up against. I think it's a great lesson to teach anyone (and probably reason #468 why I don't have kids).

MUSICAL BREAK!!

This is a beautifully played, nearly acoustic, spare-sounding track off of "When Life Gives You Lemons...", which I think anybody who's struggling in this economy can relate to in some way. The lyrics explain a lot of realities for the 99%'ers. I can definitely identify with it.

VITAL STATS:

I notice I'm a lot more palatable to be around at work when my boss isn't there...that goes for customers and coworkers. I spend less time thinking about how I'm gonna make her happy or what she's going to berate me for and more time accomplishing things or just not letting stupid people bother me as much. Even if I didn't accomplish much today...

We had a visit from the county's Weights And Measures Bureau. Typically they come twice a year to verify our pricing. The laws in this county are so effed up and seemingly unlike the laws across the rest of the county (to my awareness). The law states that if an item is priced (for example) at $1.99, and the customer is charge $2.29, the customer is entitled to the difference plus ten times the difference, up to $10 (and believe me, it's a big issue with me because too many people work the system just to make a few extra bucks). So we had an audit today, and we passed. We scored a 99% (passing is 98.5...yes, 98.5), but where the county gets you is if an item doesn't have a price tag on the shelf. And for some reason, we took a big hit there. I won't say how much, but it was more than a lot of other stores were reporting. And that was after spending my morning scurrying around, making tags for new products and other tags I saw missing all over the place.

And then I came here, and that's my day, folks. Off to other normal-people stuff...peace, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!