Learning life lessons. Really slowly.

I had dinner the other night with my friend Jenny and a visiting co-worker of hers, Darren, a 49-year-old gay guy. He was warm, sophisticated and well-traveled, and he brought along his 23-year-old son.

Oh, wait, sorry, that wasn’t his son, that was his boyfriend. You can understand my confusion (as could the concierge at the Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood, who said to Darren, “He looks just like you”). When there are more years between the ages of a couple than one of them has been alive, it’s rather easy for unsuspecting onlookers to mistake the younger one for either spawn or a rental.

As someone who came out in my mid-twenties (which was already five or ten years too late and which involved a lot of unnerving man-on-girl activity and a near-miss wedding), I did not spend a ton of time dating guys for whom being able to order a drink was an exotic novelty.

But I’ve noticed that men who don’t come out until they’re 40 or 50 have a tremendous appetite for youth. They want to date it, they want to dress like it, they want to talk like it. My friend Sallie once said, “Guys who come out late spent so much time being someone they weren’t, that by the time they allow themselves to be who they really are, they have to live out the years they missed.”

Wiser words were never spoken. This late entry into the gay game results in a lot of men in their 40’s wearing super skinny jeans and hoodies emblazoned with One Direction, and using words like “Chillax” and “Hater”. It also results in relationship drama that would make the characters on Gossip Girl cringe. A 40-year-old man who has just come out has the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old girl, without the hormonal insanity to blame it on.

On the plus side, if you’re a 50-year-old man who was once married, your 23-year-old boyfriend can be BFF’s with your children, since they’re often the same age. Darren’s boyfriend spends more time with his kids than Darren does, although the kids sometimes tire of the boyfriend’s enthusiasm for skateboarding and prank calling the Apple genius bar.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against dating younger – you need somebody to wheel you around when you’re old. And unless you have kids that you can guilt into it by showing them pictures of the third world orphanage you plucked them out of, or an estate that makes nurses uncommonly interested in your romantic side, it’s up to the spouse. My partner is 8 years younger than me and will gladly push my wheelchair (off a cliff, I suspect).

I just think that one should marry someone within cultural striking distance of one’s own age. Because, after all, if you can’t share memories like Wonder Woman and Hot Wheels, what on earth do you talk about after you’ve redecorated the house?

I spent most of today bitching about President Obama.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I mostly love the dude. He’s done a reasonably heroic job fishing America’s lifeless body out of an economic dumpster. And this whole gay marriage stance is pretty nervy in an election cycle. The guy’s got nads.

But every time he visits our fair city, my 90-minute roundtrip commute becomes four hours, as the police  -and whatever secret service agents are not currently busy talking hookers down on price – close every thoroughfare within, it seems, a 30-mile radius of the President’s motorcade. Sure, I’d like to eat Peking duck and artichoke salad with George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Tobey Maguire, too, but not if it means 5 million people have to spend two extra hours wishing the guy selling oranges on the overpass was selling guns.

So I spent a lot of time bad mouthing the leader of the free world today. And then I read that, along the canyon roads that the he took to Clooney’s house, families gathered to cheer the motorcade.

And children manned a lemonade stand with a sign that said, “Presidents drink free”.

At another corner, a boy held up another hand-drawn sign that said, “Will trade Lakers for Bulls if you stop”.

And finally, two guys and two children stood at the end of their driveway with what may be the best sign of all:

“Our gay family thanks Mr. President.”

Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much. Any event that brings out that kind of togetherness and sense of community without planes being flown into buildings is probably worth those two extra hours in the car.

But next time, I’ll wear an adult diaper. ‘Cause once you pee into a coffee mug, you kinda don’t want to use it again.

I know you’ll be as excited as I was to learn that Living Social is offering substantially discounted subscriptions to the magazine, Garden and Gun.

Imagine the thrill of getting all your mulching and armor-piercing bullet information in one glossy monthly, and saving 50% to boot.

Consider the advantages of learning how to grow sunny yellow daisies that you can then insert into your 12-gauge and blow right through the torso of an unsuspecting deer.

Picture the rewards of burying that guy who stepped onto your property wearing a hoodie under your stunning new tulip bed!

Really, the uses for a magazine this comprehensive are virtually endless.

You can shop for Garden & Gun-branded shooting shirts and beer cozies (two things that always go well together) while pretending to read an article about Eudora Welty.

You can savor the high-quality photos of a dead moose surrounded by English wildflowers.

You can even join the Garden and Gun Club and be invited to periodic events where, one presumes, a bi-racial busboy is festively decorated with turkey feathers and given a head start across the woods.

My only real disappointment in such a valuable offer is that the subscription is for one year only. After that, if I wish to continue blending the zen art of gardening with the – some would argue – slightly less zen art of blowing holes in living things, I’ll have to pony up an extra $10.

And I’ll probably need that for bail.

I don’t know how I’ve surrounded myself with people who are so annoying.

A very close friend of mine and I recently took a weekend trip. Lars (not his real name) and I have traveled together dozens of times over the years and always had a blast. He’s so funny he makes me pee, and I am as comfortable with him as any human being on the planet.

But on this particular weekend, I knew things were gonna go downhill fast when we arrived at the hotel (which I had paid for) and he had issues with the décor.

“It’s just trying too hard,” he sniffed.

Then, he had issues with the hotel’s clientele.

“These girls’ dresses are so short, you wouldn’t even need to lift the hem to insert.”

And with the guy talking too loudly in the spa.

“Inside voice, please! Or do they not have those in Appalachia?”

He had issues with the non-working refrigerator in the kitchen.

“I’ve already unpacked,” he announced when the front desk clerk volunteered to move us to another room, “my unmentionables.”

He had issues with having to pay a brief visit to female friends of ours.

“Why can’t they come to us? Did Gloria Steinem empower women to do anything besides torch their boulder holders?”

He had issues with having to change hotels for the final night (which I had added on at the last minute).

“What are we, on the lam?”

 In short, he was thoroughly cranky and unpleasant.

When I returned home, I told my partner about all the nasty remarks and difficult behavior. I was appalled, absolutely appalled that someone I was so close to could behave so abominably.

“All I was trying to do,” I complained, “was give the two of us a fun getaway, and he turned it into an endless barrage of criticisms and tense moments. Why am I being so tormented?” I outstretched my arms in a subliminal Christ-like motion.

“Remember when we went on that cruise to Mexico,” my partner said gently as I unpacked, “and you hated the room and pouted for about a day and a half?”

“THAT,” I replied, “was different. It was under the pool!”

“Or when you couldn’t get the car you wanted in Portland and you threw a hissy fit at the counter?”

“I wanted a hybrid! I was trying to be green!”

“Remember when we were in New York and you said ‘Moving around this hotel room requires lube and a diet plan”…?

“And your point is…?” I snapped.

“You’re friends with Lars so that your rough edges can rub up against each other. You see in him some of the same behaviors you don’t like in yourself. He’s a mirror for you.”

This from a man who claims to have never heard a Marianne Williamson lecture.

“Well,” I said haughtily, “a funhouse mirror, maybe.”

“And God knows,” he added as a highly unnecessary afterthought, “what rough edges you’re scraping all over him.”

But I knew he was right. Lars and I have been major teachers for each other on a variety of awkward, uncomfortable, super un-fun topics for years. ( He could doubtless write a dozen entries just like this, about which the less said, the better.) I’m Oprah to his Gayle, he’s Edith to my Archie. He has his bad days, and, I sure as hell have mine. But hopefully, bad days like this one teach us both a little something about ourselves.

So I guess I should thank Lars for being my mirror. But next time, I think I’d rather him be my Dorian Gray picture.

My partner and I just returned from Australia, where we celebrated our tenth anniversary. Fortunately, since he travels for work, and since I’m a miles whore who will open any kind of account (credit card, checking, sperm bank) for free frequent flyer miles, this gave us enough mileage to fly business class.

Many of us have probably had some occasion to ride in the front of the bus on a domestic flight, which mostly consists of some free booze and a seat with almost as much legroom as coach seats had in 1978. But business or first class internationally, on the Airbus A-380? It’s like you’ve died and become the Sultan of Brunei.

Okay, there aren’t any solid gold fixtures on an A-380. Or Death to America posters (usually). And no virgins waiting to be deflowered, although I have heard rumors about what goes on among the flight attendants when we’re all asleep.

But there are egg-shaped seats (that turn into lie-flat beds) so far apart you could stage Riverdance in between them. Nonstop almost-delicious meals and snacks. Enough cocktails and wine to require the presence of a liver transplant surgeon. Designer amenity kits. Pajamas (the size of which are determined by your flight attendant, which can be incredibly flattering or a giant bitch slap). Ever-changing mood lighting. A small lounge and snack bar. And so many first-run movies on your personal entertainment system that you feel like Louis B. Mayer sitting in his private screening room firing underlings.

Sandy and I had never been on the A-380 (since they’re only used for flights that are long enough to require haircuts and a calendar). But I think we should do ALL our travel this way.

I would like to arrive for work fresh from enjoying a truffle omelet and a Bloody Mary. I would like to travel to my in-laws’ house while watching Moneyball, swathed in a duvet. I would like to make a supermarket run wearing Qantas PJ’s and an eye mask that makes me look like a pretentious homeless bank robber. Performing my day-to-day travel via the A-380 would mean that I arrived fresh, sparkling, and slightly tanked.

So if someone could lend me $300 milllion, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll pay you back, really. ‘Cause opening enough credit cards to get a $300 million cash advance should get me a shitload of miles.

Are you one of those irritating people who knew, from a very young age, what you wanted to do with your life?

If you are, and you achieved that career goal, well, bully for you, congratulations and get off my website.

But if you didn’t know who you wanted to be, or you knew and never quite got there, I think you and I may have a profound kinship that should be celebrated over appletinis and fried cheese.

You see, for my money, there’s nothing wrong with standing in your bedroom in your 20′s (or 30′s, and well, actually, maybe your 40′s) singing, “Who am I, anyway…am I my resume?”

This is a Chorus Line reference, and if you didn’t get it, clearly “Broadway Star” was not the future career you envisioned. Broadway Star WAS one of the future careers I envisioned. Along with Trumpet Virtuoso, Nationally Syndicated Newspaper Columnist, Travel Writer, Advertising Mogul and Television Sitcom Creator.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not being clear about your goals. I mean, from a very young age it was obvious to me that I was destined for greatness (although this appeared to be news to everyone else, who considered my litany of widely varied career options a desperately unfocused need for attention). As far as I was concerned, it just wasn’t clear how that greatness was gonna manifest.

Example: after being blown out of the water by a trumpet player who had the temerity to upstage me at the high school state band finals (a minority student who, by my calculations at the time, should have been busy dealing smack or selecting a tasteful gang tattoo), I decided to abandon the dream of becoming the next Miles Davis.

Example: following an audition for the Six Flags theme park show, where I sang Some Enchanted Evening while performing a tap combination, and the judges just stared at me open-mouthed, I determined that my fame did not lie on the Broadway stage.

Example: when the editor of the college newspaper found my column too “breezy” for the school newspaper (even after I reminded him that it was a humor column, not a series of op-eds on the Iran Hostage Crisis), I concluded that newspaper syndication was a pipe dream.

Although I knew there was something great out there for me, I was always ready and willing to move on to the next career possibility.

Hmmm. It’s funny. Now that I look back, perhaps I wasn’t being patient in my search for greatness. Maybe I was just being too willing to give up. Maybe I was being too thin-skinned. Because, truth be told, whenever somebody implied I wasn’t good enough, I not only believed them, I agreed with them and then ran home to eat Ding Dongs and cut myself.

In fact, I became so good at this self-flagellation that when the actress Tracey Ullman called me in to meet with her about a spec script I had written for her HBO series, and she praised me to what felt like a ridiculous and distinctly unwarranted degree, I tried to unwrap a Ding Dong right there.

But then, sometime in my 30’s, I turned the corner. I began working in television marketing and realized that I was pretty darn good at it.

And then I decided to write a memoir. And I didn’t give up. Even as everyone around me clucked their tongues and said, “Well, at least you’ll get it out of your system.” (After all, I create promos for television series for a living – I couldn’t possibly write something entertaining that was longer than 60 seconds. Could I?) And even as my partner, who was trying to protect me, said, “Don’t be hurt if it doesn’t happen. About 1% of authors actually get published.”

But I kept pushing forward.

And then an agent at William Morris decided to represent me.

And the editor of The Help bought the book.

And Sony and Adam Sandler’s company optioned it as a TV series.

And wow…as I look at those things, I realize that I finally achieved a teeny, tiny bit of greatness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly retiring on the profits. I’m not lunching with Oprah (sadly) or The Kardashians (praise Jesus). But I published a book. And I’m writing two more.

So maybe I’m just a late bloomer. And if you’ve taken a similar route, maybe you are, too. Because, look, if I can finally achieve some miniscule measure of fame and success, maybe the only thing stopping you is a razor blade and a box of Ding Dongs.

Me:  “Oh my God, look – 60% off a coffee enema!”

Virtually Everyone Within Earshot:  “You really need to see someone about this.”

I am, as almost anyone will attest (if properly threatened) a man of extraordinary taste. Regrettably, I am a man of ordinary means.  And short of a career in shoplifting – which, although chock full of excitement, danger, and hard-to-remove security tags, also comes brimming with untimely incarceration and the bothersome issue of morality – I realized years ago that if I wanted to live in the kind of style to which I’d like to become accustomed, I had no choice but to embrace coupons.

And that notion always seemed like a giant, inconvenient, badly dressed bummer.

Until Groupon came along.

Did you know that these daily deals – offered on everything from fast food to facelifts – can fill you with enormous satisfaction and pride in your own fiscal cunning? You are, after all, getting liposuction for 60% off.

Of course, the fact that I don’t really need liposuction – or that giving it as a gift can set a friendship back ten years – is really beside the point. And since these coupon clubs like Groupon, Living Social and Travelzoo have apps that you can check from your phone – first thing in the morning, on the toilet – there’s really no limit to the amount of money you can save.

Which appears to be the problem.

As someone who has now amassed an impressive collection of pilates classes, psychic readings, bouncy house rentals and beekeeping suits, I’m saving so much money that I’m going broke.

Me:  “Look, a customized bobblehead for just $69 – regular $149!”

Anyone With Sense:  “I’m taking away your phone.”

Of course, it’s not like I have a problem. I mean, sure, I have taken to keeping a log of my purchases and their expiration dates so that things don’t slip through the cracks.

And I’ve begun to forgo group outings, because all my dinner coupons are for two.

And I do occasionally drive all over town to three different branches of a store because they’ll only accept one coupon per visit.

And there’s that pesky issue of refusing to go to any establishment for which I do not currently possess a voucher.

But I am just someone who appreciates the value of a dollar. Someone with a keen eye for financial conservatism.  Someone who understands that a defibrillator at 72% off is the kind of bargain that just doesn’t come along every day.

Now if I can just find someone who’s having a heart attack.

Oh, wait, my partner’s opening the VISA bill. That should do the trick.

Lately, it has come to my attention that I have, over the course of my fairly long and completely stupid life, constantly envisioned myself to be grander, wiser, more successful, and less of a boob than I actually am.

And I’m starting to think I should be concerned about it.

Those of you who’ve read my first book know that the image problems started around age eight – the year when I first began pretending to be Endora from Bewitched.  Now, given my youth at the time, my stunning dearth of friends, a virtual cavalcade of bullies, and my mother (enough said), this particular detour through Crazytown could probably be written off as only slightly disturbing.

But it continued. As a teen and young adult, I was constantly imagining myself as various celebrities – from music superstars to fashion icons to authors. And while knowing where all the swells in applause were on the Liza Minnelli Live at Carnegie Hall album – so I could grandly sweep from the hallway (backstage) into the living room (onstage) to take my bows – might be considered a tad disquieting in a sixteen-year-old, they were downright alarming when I was old enough to knock back a whisky sour.

And now, as a middle-aged man, they have, apparently, worsened. What was once (according to a therapist) an unconscious device to help me cope with alienation and discover my place in the world has now ballooned into what appears to be Dial 911-level psychosis. To the consternation of those around me, I now imagine myself to be Oprah – albeit a tall, gawky, deeply un-tan facsimile.

Of course, I’m not completely insane. Although my best friend Kirk does call himself Gayle, I am relatively certain that I am neither female, nor black, nor beloved. Yet I do believe that I have a life path similar to Oprah’s. Maybe I’m not supposed to spring free houses on deserving people, or pay for the secondary educations of 68,000 kids, or haul my fat out in a Radio Flyer on TV. But I do sorta think I’m supposed to encourage mankind to be their best selves, by simply sharing the ludicrous things I do and the lessons I glean when it all comes crashing down around me.

So, is this crazy? Should I be concerned?

For now, I think I’m just gonna keep on doing it and hope for the best. I figure that as long as I don’t start signing letters with a Big “O” or yelling at the president of Hermes when they won’t let me in after closing, I’m golden.

As a general rule, I do not endorse the act of falling off things as a method of personal growth. But I have to admit – sometimes, it does kinda work.

You see, I’ve always taken my body a bit for granted. I’m a busy guy, forever running to and fro as if in some alternate universe I’m actually important. And it is my nature to just assume that my body is along for the ride, a total team player when it comes to being tortured in ways that defy the Geneva convention. Like Super Dave Osborne or the I-have-no-other-talent stars of a Jackass movie , I think I’m invincible.

To my dismay, however, I just discovered that, apparently, I am not.

The weekend before last, I was in Palm Springs celebrating the birthday of a friend. When my best friend Kirk and I returned to the condo complex where my partner and I have a unit (which we rent out, since it’s worth roughly 7% of what we paid for it), I realized that I had forgotten the gate opener and could not get in.

This was not, unfortunately, the first time this had happened. My friend Kirk sighed with the exasperation of a vegan at Jimmy Dean’s house and said something to the effect of, “You are dumb as a stump.”  We waited a couple of minutes for someone to drive through so I could jump out and whisk through the gate; but no one came. And in my embarrassment at having forgotten the opener yet again, I said, “Ahh, I’ll just jump over the gate.”

After all, I’d done it before.

I used to have an actor acquaintaince who fell off his roof and was paralyzed – and in the sloooow process of recovery, became a much better person. And since that incident I’ve always said, “God, please don’t make me fall off a house to ‘get it’.”

But apparently, that is more or less what I needed to do.

As I climbed onto the massive gate opener arm and hoisted myself to the top of the 8-foot gate, I reminded myself not to let my legs swing too wildly, since I still had a big, fat bruise from the last time I’d tried this. Then, I threw my legs over the top of the fence. And that’s when everything began to go horribly wrong.

It was raining this night, and the iron was slippery, and when I swung my legs over the top, I lost my grip. My foot got caught in the bars of the gate.  And suddenly, I felt myself falling backwards, eight feet, and slamming onto the asphalt. On my back.

The wind was knocked out of me so badly that, for about 30 seconds, I couldn’t inhale. Kirk stood on the other side of the fence, unsure what to do. Scream? Call 911? Check with my lawyer to see what his share was?

I laid there on the pavement, gasping, as the gate slowly swung open and a car sailed through, turning sharply to avoid the body on the pavement (which was clearly an inconvenience for the driver, who couldn’t be bothered to wave).

Kirk ran through the open gate.

“Are you okay?”

I laid there, wiggling my hands and feet, pleased to note that I had not performed a full Christopher Reeve.

“I can’t breathe.”

Several hours later, following a full-body MRI and x-rays at the emergency room of Desert Regional Medical Center, I was given some terribly unearned good news: I had not broken anything or hemorrhaged. I did not have a brain injury (Kirk would argue this). What I did have was a lot of blunt force trauma on the tendons and muscles of my side and back that would require 3-4 weeks and a few fistfuls of Vicodin to heal.

And this healing time has, curiously, been a good thing. Because I now find myself being more aware of my surroundings and more careful within them. I’ve realized that I am not indestructible. And I find myself totally, incredibly grateful for this body I have. It may be long and gawky and not exactly a 10 on the Calvin Klein Underwear Model scale, but it works.  And I’m happy to be inside it, like an astronaut with a sparkly new spacesuit.

Of the many blessings I’m counting this holiday season, one of them is that – although I did have to fall off a roof, so to speak – I didn’t have to suffer the worst outcome to “get it”.

But just in case – remind me not to climb any ladders.

I love kids. I love my nephew, my partner’s niece, our friends’ kids, unsuspecting four-year-olds that I try to lure into my van with candy, all of them. They bring me joy, they light up my heart, they give me hope for a better world, because as pre-crack Whitney Houston once said, the children are our future.

Yes, I love kids. I’ve always loved kids.

But after what just happened, I think I may no longer love kids.

Last week, my partner and I (and 15 other friends) went on a cruise to Mexico. We’ve been on a number of cruises, mostly international ones that left out of places like London, Barcelona, etc., where the children on board numbered maybe 50.

This was a cruise to Mexico. Over Thanksgiving week. Leaving out of LA, where most of the schools gave kids the whole week off. And among the 3,500 passengers were at least 1,000 kids – of all ages, from roughly 15 minutes post-epidural to teens.

And all, seemingly, unsupervised.

Apparently, there’s an underground network of parents who know that if you take your kids on a cruise, you can be off getting hammered somewhere while they’re busy depositing bowls of cereal in the elevators, tearing through the adults-only pool area screaming like burn victims, and throwing up in the swimming pools.

After all, you can’t really lose them. Little kids are too short to fall overboard, and the older ones are too busy popping their zits in the hot tubs and hitting on each other in the buffet lines to try. And what better place to unload your offspring than into the arms of 998 other kids who would love nothing more than to try to either, a): beat them senseless with a floating noodle in the water park  or, b:) make out with them.

It appears that what I really should say is, “I love well-behaved kids.” “I love properly dressed kids.” I love sanitary, non-pukey kids.” “I love chaperoned kids.”

So, really, it seems quite clear to me that I do, in fact, love kids.

Provided we’re sailing on the Queen Mary.

In 1937.

My mother has been going through a rather dramatic extended illness this year, and at one point, I announced to my partner, “If I ever get this bad, just hit me over the head with a brick and call it a day.”

Of course, I was kidding. A brick is unwieldy, and most people don’t have them just lying around. Sleeping pills are the way to go – you can make pithy last-word proclamations, and then drift off attractively as your family members gather around you in a circle of love and light and start slipping off your jewelry.

Actually, I’ve always believed that even the most difficult of circumstances has lessons in it for everyone involved, annoying and inconvenient as they usually are. But when you watch someone you love lose almost everything that mattered to them, that idea gets tested more than a Jersey Shore castmate for brain damage.

My mother, who has always been an incredibly dynamic woman, now spends her days in one room of their house. She hasn’t seen the lower level of their home since Jesus rose from the dead last spring.

Although she has always preferred books and magazines to television, she now watches endless hours of the Food Network because, thanks to a wide variety of medications, she can barely read a watch without falling asleep.

She used to love sitting amidst the three acres of lawn and trees in their backyard, but the only trees she has seen since April are the ones whizzing by the car as Dad drives her to the doctor.

All her life she has worshipped a, shall we say, “orderly” house. (Growing up, our home was so disturbingly clean the CDC could have used it to store vaccines, and I used to have to rake myself into my bedroom at night so that our carpeting was a pristine, undisturbed meadow of shag.) Now, although a maid comes occasionally, Mother barely has enough energy to write her own name, much less a To Do list.

She loved to go to the Missouri wineries, some of which are quite beautiful (and which would provoke a Norm-from-Cheers response upon her arrival). Now wine interferes with her medications, and even one glass would likely turn her into a cast member of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Her hair is no longer perfectly coiffed. She wears no makeup. She sports no diamond rings or fashionable pantsuits. And this woman, who has always had a steel trap mind, will ask me three times, in the space of seven minutes, if she’s had her pills.

“You should have been here the other day,” she’ll say and begin to recount a story. One that occurred 20 minutes ago. While I was sitting there.

Yet, curiously, this formerly glamorous go-getter doesn’t seem to mind that everything that was once important to her has, at least for now, fallen away.

I, of course, initially ascribed this to the drugs. “She must be high as a hot air balloon, or she’d be really pissed.”

But as I’ve watched her very slowly improve, and she’s no longer stoned on drugs, I’ve realized that some of those things just aren’t so important to her any more. It seems that now, her happiness comes from her determination to enjoy each day, no matter how small the events, or how large the annoyances. (And when you go to the bathroom twenty times a day, the annoyances add up.) She’s enjoying the slow process of recovery, not the idea that, once she’s recovered, she’ll be happy.

Every Friday, Oprah’s Lifeclass show is about what Oprah calls “Joy Rising” – those moments of pure joy when something wonderful happens. And although I think we’d all agree that Oprah giving you a house could be considered “joy rising”, my mother seems to have discovered her own version. The diamond rings and trips to far-flung locales and a perfectly ordered house are no longer her joy. Her children coming to vist, my dad quietly holding her hand, or a really good episode of Paula Deen – that is some joy rising.

You know those sweet, toothless, double-wide dwelling hillbillies you see on newsmagazine reports who’ve gotten scammed out of their life savings?

As an extraordinarily compassionate human being, I used to cluck my tongue at these tragic situations and think, how sad that these idiots are foolish enough to hand their money over to some grifter. How ironic that they’re too clueless to see through the ludicrous promises of extravagant returns. How pathetic that they’re reckless enough to trust someone they barely know.

And as a benevolent and empathetic soul, my heart would break for these boobs.

And then I met Lloyd Belsmack (named changed to protect the guilty).

Lloyd is a commercial real estate developer who my sister – in her kind and trusting naiveté – got us involved with. Together with a couple other investors, we bought a piece of commercial property with the intent of building office condos.

Six years later, we’re nearing a trial date against Lloyd – and his posse of degenerate cohorts – for a scam that has cost us in the neighborhood of a half million dollars. And I’ve come to realize that: a) not everyone who gets swindled is a cousin-humping mouth-breather; b) they are, and I might as well buy a home with a steering wheel in the living room, knock out some molars and start humming the Deliverance theme, because I’m one of them; or c) even reasonably savvy folk can lose their shirt in a con.

Oprah’s Lifeclass topic the other night was on the power of forgiveness. Which was particularly ironic given that I’d written the latest $5,000 check to our attorney that day. Although I no longer spend countless hours envisioning Lloyd dying in a fiery – and highly entertaining – car crash, having to constantly deal with the court case, and having our (albeit wonderful) attorney attach an industrial vacuum to my savings causes the issue of forgiveness to continually to rear its ugly head.

Oprah says that forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. In other words, it’s the process of accepting that something happened exactly as it did.

But here’s the thing: when I first met Lloyd, my intuition – what I like to refer to as God whispering in my ear, although, since I’m deaf in one ear, I always hope he remembers to whisper into the right one – was screaming at me that there was something fishy about this guy. But, I didn’t listen.

So I guess I’ve had a little trouble accepting that things happened the way they did, because I’m mad that I didn’t listen to myself. If I could just get Doc to fire up the DeLorean and take me back to the future of 2005, I could save my sister and I a world of pain.

I’m really not angry at Lloyd anymore. I view him simply as the messenger of the lesson of forgiveness. (Don’t get me wrong, we still hope to have him living in a Kenmore box by the time we’re done, so that he doesn’t do this to anyone else.)

The thing that’s weird is that, apparently, it’s not really even Lloyd that I ever had to forgive…it’s myself. And that’s one bastard that REALLY doesn’t deserve it.

I’ve always wanted to be a better person.

Oh, don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I consider myself unkind, or selfish, or hateful. In fact, I pride myself on hardly ever wishing that selfish drivers or old ladies with coupons were dead.

I would just like to be REALLY good, since emanating pure and utter virtuousness would not only feel incredibly fulfilling, it would allow me to rub my moral superiority in other people’s faces.

Perhaps this is what led me to last night’s premiere of Oprah’s Lifeclass, which was – coincidentally, I’m sure – on the subject of ego.

This nightly one-hour show on the OWN network, featuring the return of America’s Spiritual Leader (and I say that with no irony – she really is, people, get with the program) is an intimate, docu-style show where Reverend Oprah offers one life lesson each episode.

“How does your ego get in your way?” was the question posed last night. Naturally, my immediate answer was, “Oh, it doesn’t, thanks for asking. My goal is to be nothing more than a deeply spiritual, highly evolved human being whose only purpose is to love and be loved…all while driving a nice car, becoming a famous author, and (courtesy of friends who buy the tickets) attending celebrity-filled benefits for good causes, the names of which I sometimes even know before I see it on the gift bags.”

As the hour progressed, and Oprah began to illustrate how insidious the ego is (by using her famous “fat wagon” episode as an example – where she lost a ton of weight and lived to regret it after she trucked it out on a Radio Flyer for the world to gag over), it began to dawn on me that perhaps my goal could use just the tiniest bit of tweaking. Perhaps my desire to be a spiritual master comes with caveats – albeit minor, insignificant-in-the-scheme-of-things caveats.

Sure, I suppose I have a small attachment to driving around in a Lexus. But come on, I spend at least 90 minutes a day in my car, and I drive the cheapest Lexus they make (essentially a Prius with a little lipstick slapped on it). If I were attached to the image a luxury car provided, I’d be driving the $80,000 convertible. Right? (Sure, I can’t even remotely afford it, but still.)

And maybe I find some sort of personal aggrandizement from having my first book in development as a TV series. But come on – we all know how difficult it is to get a series on the air, and then have it be a hit. In Los Angeles, having a TV series in development is like saying you’re “taking meetings about your screenplay”. Right?

And I guess some would say that the idea that giving to others involves drinking signature cocktails at charity events – instead of just donating money or doing any actual work – is not necessarily the most evolved form of philanthropy. But hey, I work 60 hours a week and write books on the weekends. How am I supposed to dish up food at the LA Mission – right?

Oh, and I suppose I have a minor, insignificant obsession with appearing to be a spiritual master in the first place. Apparently, real spiritual masters don’t announce this as their goal – as if anyone would know that’s what they were aiming for, otherwise. (I mean, come on, in LA, sandals and a Tibetan gong just means you’re headed to your Yoga class in the Palisades.) But isn’t wanting to appear spiritually evolved better than wanting to appear to be ball-busting, or slutty, or Republican?

Apparently, Oprah doesn’t think so. Apparently, Oprah thinks my ego is getting in my way. And I have just one thing to say about that:

See you in Lifeclass at 8:00.

I sure hope tonight’s lesson isn’t on giving up potato chips. I mean, even Gandhi had limits.

But I did some NPR interviews that you can listen to on the Media page, if you’re hard up for new material on your iPod.

www.ericpoole.net/media

The other day, my friend Tracy told me a story about her elderly dad, Ira, who, when Tracy was a toddler in the late 60’s, took up with a neighbor named Lolita (I’m not kidding) and divorced Tracy’s mother in order to marry this woman. Naturally, I was all ears at this point, since you know any story about husband stealing involving a woman named Lolita is gonna be juicy.

Shockingly, Tracy and her sisters did not especially appreciate their new stepmother. Whether it was the fact that Lolita had so effortlessly broken up their parents’ marriage (as Tracy said about Lolita’s m.o., “If you don’t have a home, wreck one”) or the fact that Lolita wanted nothing to do with her new husband’s daughters, who she sent to live with their natural mother, there wasn’t a lot of Cumbaya going on.

Lolita and Ira remained married, and they’re now elderly and infirmed. A few years ago, Lolita talked Ira into turning over complete control of his money to her, apparently realizing that if anything happened to Ira, and the girls got involved, she’d be wintering in a Kenmore box.

Last year, Tracy and her sisters decided that their dad and “that woman” (as Tracy lovingly refers to her) could no longer live on their own. Because Ira and Lolita live in another country and will not move to the U.S. where the girls live, Tracy found a lovely nursing home there, and Ira dutifully prepared for this change of life.

Lolita, however, was having none of it. She declared that the home they had selected was a “s***hole” and that if she was going into assisted living, it would be at the facility of  her choosing. She found another, much more expensive home and announced to Ira that THIS would be where they were going.

Ira is a non-confrontational man. Which might explain how he ended up with a woman like Lolita in the first place. But for the first time in his life, he stood up to her, and simply said, “Go wherever you want. I’m going to the home Tracy picked.”

And go, he did. Alone.

Lolita was incensed. They have never spoken since. And curiously, Ira has been blissfully happy in the retirement home.

Then, recently, their longtime maid (who adored Ira) came to visit him, hat in hand. “I owe you an apology,” she said. “I’ve been harboring a secret, and it’s killing me.” she then told Ira a story.

Once Lolita got control of the money, she secretly put it into an account in the maid’s name. It wasn’t a loving gesture intended to reward the maid for her many years of service; it was to insure that, if anything happened to Lolita, Ira would never get a penny of it back.

Shortly thereafter, Tracy came to visit Ira. He’s 91 now, nearly blind and barely able to walk, but not too old, apparently, to learn a life lesson.

“It took me 45 years,” he said softly to Tracy as he squeezed her hand wistfully, “to finally see the truth.” He looked up at her with rheumy eyes. “I’ve gotta start picking better women.”

I’ve been flying back and forth to St. Louis one weekend a month because my mother is sick. As if this weren’t  enough cause for glamour envy on your part, I fly as a non-priority passenger, made abundantly clear by the nonstop parade of First Class, Platinum, Executive Platinum, and Mile High club members who board before me.

I can accept that because in a normal year I only fly every couple of months and not always on the same carrier, I am the kind of passenger airlines equate to rice cakes and expired pop tarts: lacking in any real taste or value and something for which you’re grateful only when the s*** hits the fan.

What I can’t accept is being treated like actual, hang-a-bell-around-my-neck cattle.

As I waited at the gate in St. Louis for my flight home, everything was proceeding in typical, reasonably orderly fashion. Then suddenly, as the cleaning crew exited the jetway and we were about to begin boarding, the gate agent decided to make an announcement.

Now, this in itself would not generally be a cause for stress among an entire group of travelers. But this wasn’t just any gate agent. Either hard of hearing or oblivious to the fact that there were other human beings milling about in the terminal who were not on flight 27, he picked up the intercom mic and began to talk – at the exact same time as two other agents at nearby gates were also making boarding announcements.

The din was unbelievable, and unintelligible. Surely he’ll stop, I thought, once he pauses to suck in air and realizes that he is talking over two other people who are currently addressing their motley hordes. It was, after all, virtually impossible not to notice.

But our agent remained blissfully oblivious. As he plowed ahead, unfazed, the passengers all began to glance around wildly at one another, searching for the one flier upon whose forehead a transcription of the gate agent’s directives might appear, like some sort of human Times Square jumbotron.

When that didn’t work, the entire group of 200 lurched forward, EN MASSE, trying to get close enough to read his lips or discern patterns from the wind escaping his mouth. The lurch was sudden, fast and threatening, like a post-Super Bowl riot or a flash mob of terrorists wearing flip-flops and “I’m Not a Gynecologist, But I’ll Take a Look” t-shirts. Our gate agent, who had clearly seen this sort of thing before when he made these announcements (but hadn’t quite put two and two together) held up his hand as if to halt an unruly group of kindergarteners.  

“What on earth are you saying?!” one woman screamed.

“I don’t speak gobbledygook!” an older man hollered.

As if a member of a secret Synchronized Gate Announcement consortium, he ignored the cries and calmly concluded his directives. He replaced the intercom mic on its clip and began accepting passengers of a variety that we could, only from previous experience, assume were First Class and Those Whose S*** Doesn’t Stink (to this airline).

Such was not the case, however, for, after several minutes, he called – now loudly and clear as a bell, free from the interference of other gate announcements – Group THREE. “Where on earth were Groups ONE and TWO?” several dozen of us demanded. He ignored the angry complaints of Group One passengers, many of whom (including me) had paid $29 for the privilege of boarding at a time when there was still guaranteed to be overhead bin space, and simply smiled serenely.

Groups One and Two immediately bum-rushed the gate and there was a lot of hair pulling and crying, and several threats of the “You better hope you’re not sitting in front of me” variety. Our gate agent ignored the goings-on and focused his attention on scanning boarding passes, albeit with a lackluster attention to details, since one person who ended up on the plane was supposed to be going to San Francisco and had to be removed.

Onboard, passengers attempted to pound their carry-on’s into already full overhead bins and demanded that the flight attendants do something about “that moron at the gate”…who I can only imagine was now sitting in the frequent flyer executive lounge, sipping a martini, enjoying several stolen bags of peanuts and chuckling at the stupid cows who can’t figure out how to get on a plane.

I suppose I can’t blame him. Working for an airline these days is probably just about as grim as flying them. You gotta get your jollies where you can.

A good friend of mine is Chilean. This is, of course, tres exotique, and by all measures should score me impressive brownie points for my magnanimous tolerance of ridiculous foreign cultures.

Oh, don’t get me wrong – Chile is, by all accounts, a beautiful and welcoming country with much to offer in terms of art, history and folklore. And they have some tasty cheap wine. But it is also a country where someone who gets a facelift – and is rendered brain dead by a careless anesthesiologist – doesn’t even get free parking out of the deal.

Yes, this actually happened to a relative of my Chilean friend. The woman in question lived for 20 years as a vegetable until she died – with nary a dollar of support (or an apology) from the doctor or hospital in question.

Aside from the irony of looking fabulous as she drooled, this is a perfect illustration of the kind of thing that can happen in countries where the laws that protect consumers and patients are written on the back of an empanada.

Trust me, I’m no fan of lawsuits – I remember seeing a Phil Donahue episode in the 80’s where a couple sued for $5 million in emotional distress after discovering what they thought was a condom in a loaf of Wonder Bread. (It was the tip of a rubber glove, something every member of the TV audience  wanted to jam up their butts at that point.)

And I do believe that awards should be capped.  There was a comedian who said, “I wish somebody would have told me that I could work really hard in school for 16 or 18 years and then make $30,000 for the rest of my life…or spill hot coffee on my cooch.”

But until countries like Chile institute a litany of laws that protect people from stupid, careless or unscrupulous individuals like that anesthesiologist, I will continue to consider them ridiculous.

Fortunately, we live in the United States, the greatest nation on earth, where that kind of thing could never happen.

Well, of course, there was that banking crisis thingy.

And the BP oil spill.

Oh, and the tobacco industry advertising to kids.

True, there was Worldcom.

And Enron.

And Halliburton overcharging in Iraq.

Sure, there was Roche Pharmaceutical withholding an AIDS drug to countries that couldn’t pay enough.

And Goldman Sachs betting against the mortgage backed securities it was selling.

And Bernie Madoff.

But God bless America!

I hear Chile is lovely this time of year. I wonder if I could sell ceviche from a cart?

 My mother has been in the hospital. For five months now. What started out as a simple (!) open heart surgery has turned into Bedpanpalooza 2011, a festival for which I did not purchase a ticket.

And quite frankly, this does not bode well for our planet.

Those of you who’ve read my first memoir Where’s My Wand know that Mother – who I referred to as General Patton in pedal pushers, and a woman who Lemon Pledged the paneling weekly – is a dynamo of epic proportions. She’s like the Energizer Bunny with a crystal meth issue.  Her work ethic is more impressive than a hooker’s during fleet week. Her zest for life would make a host of Disney characters want to put a bullet in their heads. Bossy, opinionated and brilliant, she has never been the type to be sidelined by anything.

But she has been sidelined by this. Which means that the Earth has clearly tilted on its axis.

And that makes me wonder: what other horrifying, unforeseen events could occur?

Guess I’d better refresh my dodge ball skills before that asteroid headed for Earth hits me in the crotch. Guess I should learn to appreciate the title “President Kardashian”. Guess it’s time to start hoarding hotel shampoo bottles so I have something to sell when the dollar is devalued and martial law takes effect.

Sure, there are those naysayers who would contend that the earth hasn’t tilted on its axis, that nothing terrible is going to happen. They would claim that my mother is simply getting older. And that human bodies don’t last forever.

But that is patently ridiculous. Some people never slow down. Some people outlive us all. Some people are there for us, through thick and thin, in perfect health and mind, to bask in the glow of our accomplishments and comfort us in times of sorrow.  Some people are such good friends, parents and life teachers that they’re far too important and valuable, and needed to be sidelined.

Aren’t they?

I mean, I’m sure I can learn to live with a dumb slut in the White House. After all, with that asteroid headed this way, how long can it last?

I have a piece on CNN.com - for the magical thinker in all of us.

http://bit.ly/pa7Bbp

This piece is on the Huffington Post today.