LLT: Don't Take Life So Seriously All the Time

I couldn't find the map. Rod had told me where it was. It belonged back on top of the filing cabinet. But it wasn't there.

I levered myself down in a squat and shoved the cabinets away from the wall. Voila (you say viola, I say voila...I once dated a very nice Muslim woman from Albania named Viola. I hope she's doing well...I digress), the map had fallen behind the cabinet.

I reached to it and, stretching as far as I could, I clasped the corner of a page with between my ring and pinky fingers. I pulled. A four by four inch piece from the front page of the map was now in my hand. Oh man.

It's my second week on the job at Adamson Appraisal, and my boss, Rod Adamson is not going to like his zoning map of Sierra Blanca torn. My stomach drops and I feel my forehead go cold as the sweat beads up. I try reaching the map from the other side of the cabinets and I easily pull it out.

But it's not in good shape. Not that it's trashed, you know, but it's got creases and that big tear off the front page.

I'm devasted. It's my second week at my first "professional" job. Oh, I'd worked for my father at his animal hospital, starting at $1 per hour when I was six years old washing syringes (they're disposable now of course) and cleaning cages and so on and I'd worked at Pan-O-Rama, the coolest job a high schooler could ever have I do have to say, doing maintenance and gardening and cashiering and stuff at the local mini golf course. And here it was, my ninth day on the job in my first summer out of high school and I just messed up my new boss' (who is a bit of a perfectionist and serious about having things neat, I might add) map. Oh, man.

He walks in from getting his hair cut (He once asked me after a haircut I happened to be particularly proud of, "Cody, did you MEAN to get your hair cut like that?" Nice one.) and I bring the map out to the front office to meet him.

"Rod, uh, I'm so sorry. I messed up the map," I say weakly, meekly, hoping he's not going to be too upset or even fire me.

But he was just like, "Oh, man. All well. Let's go shoot some nerf hoops and blow off some steam."

And as I followed him into what eventually became my office as Rod guided me through lots of hard work and discipline to becoming a Registered Real Estate Appraiser over the next couple summers and Xmas and spring breaks, I told him I was confused by his mellowness about this messed up map.

"Hey, Cody, you know what? You just can't take life too seriously all the time."


He's so right. And I do have to say, I need to work on this one (including recognizing the fact that saying I need to "work" on not being so serious is indeed part of needing to chill out. And what's with the "needing" word too, eh?)

And with that Life Lesson Thursday, I think I'll get up off this desk and shoot me some darn nerf hoops. I need practice anyway, seeing as I still owe Rod eighteen-billion-trillion pieces of gum from past nerf hoop free throw losses.