Bowl of Cherries

A BOWL OF CHERRIES

  You know, my life hasn’t been a bowl of cherries or a bed of roses. All my picnics featured heavy doses of ants, flies, or mosquitos. And all my best laid plans just about always went awry. But looking back, I don’t think I would do too much of it differently.  If I did do things differently, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. Yeah, right! How many times have you heard that said? Well, there are a whole bunch of things I would do differently, starting way up at the beginning of this rodeo. And yes, everything would be different, and I wouldn’t be where I am today. Maybe. Hindsight is 20-20, but after all the pain and grief I lived through and put some other very important (to me) people through, tweaking a few things here and there sounds like a good idea to me. So bring on that time machine, and let’s see what happens. I was a very shy kid growing up, and most of my childhood was miserable. Not too much I could change there except that if I could go back, I would slap myself so hard and make myself get over the shyness stuff. I had to do it eventually anyway. Not being shy would have at least made high school and dating much more fun. Next, and this one’s the biggy, is I wouldn’t give in to peer pressure and break up with my girlfriend before I went into the Army. I didn’t break up with her because I didn’t love her. I broke up because my buddies convinced me that no one would wait around for four years for me. She proved to be totally devoted to me, and I have no doubt she would have waited. She didn’t give up on us until I married someone else. I won’t go into details here, but from that point on my life was one big rollercoaster ride. It had its ups and positive things (my kids!). But it also had some terrible downs with long lasting consequences that affected me and everyone else that has ever been in my life. So yes, there are plenty of things that maybe I should have done differently. But since I know that you can’t go back and change not even one little thing, I resolve to just enjoy the rest of the time I have and try not to make too much of a mess of it. After all, life is messy, noisy, and very unpredictable. And maybe that’s the point of it. I often hear people complain and ask why God allows it to be so messy? Why does he let bad things happen? And since they do happen, those people chose not to believe in a God at all. I still say that heaven on Earth would be…well…boring as hell! So if your life is messy, and things always seem to go differently than you would like -- I say pull up your boots, plaster a smile on your face, and get on with it the best way you can. The rollercoaster always pulls into the gate sooner or later.

                                                 Life is just a bowl of cherries;

                                                 Don't make it serious;
                                                 Life's too mysterious.
                                                 You work, you save, you worry so,
                                                 But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

                                                 So keep repeating it's the berries;
                                                 The strongest oak must fall.
                                                 The sweet things in life
                                                 To you were just loaned,
                                                 So how can you lose what you've never owned?
                                                 Life is just a bowl of cherries,
                                                 So live and laugh at it all.

                                                 (by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, sung by Ethel Merman in Scandals -1931)