Society should be more careful what they throw out of their car window. Personally, I’m not an advocate of littering, but if you’re inclined to do this, this is something you should consider. Some time ago, I was at a traffic light, about three cars away from the light. It was red. My car was motionless. Up ahead, three cars in front of me, some guy who will remain nameless (he remains nameless because I don’t know his name; never saw the guy before in my life) throw a wad of gum he was chewing out the window. “Distasteful,” I thought. That was nothing compared to the event that laid ahead.

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I consider myself a blessed man. There is no prevailing sickness in my life; crime organizations don’t have a contract for my head (or any other body part for that matter); I’ve had goals in my life that I’ve achieved. But the “big one”…yes, we’re all after the “big one”. The “big one” is what I call someone’s ultimate dream. Different people have different “big ones”. What’s funny is that whether or not we ever reach the “big one”, if we strive for it, we usually can look behind us and see that we’ve accomplished more than we would have if we had not strived for it. As you can see, I’m going through a stage of melancholy today. Whenever I’m melancholic, I become sentimental. Whenever I become sentimental, I begin to drift into nostalgia. Oh, nostalgia…you know, they called me the “big one” in high school (don’t ask why).

There is a legend, maybe just the whisper of a rumor, of a place and time more mystical and elusive than Xanadu, El Dorado, etc. That place and time is the perfect day! Oh, there are plenty of good and bad days. Not quite as many great or horrible days. But a perfect day is like finding a four-leaf clover; very rare indeed. (Side note: I actually did find one of those once while I was in the U.K. I didn’t know they actually existed. It was that incident that served as a catalyst for blowing a good part of my family’s fortune on a year long expedition in Ireland searching for leprechauns. But that’s another blog.)

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An old friend of mine; to protect the innocent, we’ll call him Jake. Saw him in town today. I yelled out his name; he was good twenty yards away. He looked in my general direction, dropped the the soft drink he was drinking, and begin backing away. “Jake, I said, it’s me…Guinn…” He kept backing up, and then he turned around and broke out into a dash. There are certain areas of the brain, psychologists say, where our primitive instincts rest, and at a moment’s notice, they take control of our thoughts and actions. Needless to say, when Jake ran, I started chasing him.

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Canton, the town in which my parents live, has an unusual welcome sign. In order to save tax-payers money, the town council decided to have one sign, placing the “Welcome to Canton” on one side and “You’re leaving Canton” on the other. This is what it says on both sides… verbatim:

On the welcome side:

Welcome to Canton: City of Lights, Camera, Action!

On the leaving side:

You are now leaving Canton: Are you certain you want to do this? Experts have all agreed that in the next ten to twenty years, Canton is guaranteed to experience growth and prosperity. Does the place where you’re going give you this same assurance?

Gotta love this place.