or important to me, at least, I've made it happen. I like to think so, anyway.
The most trivial, obvious example: back when I was single (riding dinosaurs across the still-molten Earth), I really loved connecting with young women. As in, the sex.
I was not a bad-looking fellow, and those were more promiscuous times, but it still required some degree of luck (that's why they call it "getting lucky"), as well as persistence and patience. Then as now, most young women had a lot more opportunities in that area, so they were (and are) more selective than most young men, and the most common responses to the unspoken question "How about it?" were "No" and "I don't think so".
But again, it was important to me to make these things happen if at all possible, so, in those instances when I perceived even a glimmer of interest, I would find pretexts to hang around and "chat them up", as no American ever said. Sometimes they would eventually (or quickly) get annoyed enough to tell me to get lost, but other times, we would suddenly find ourselves alone and they would make it seem like it was all their idea. Which, hey, perhaps it was.
But as life unfolded, the most important things in my life became to be a good husband to my wife and a good father to my children. I'm more than thirty years into the first and 28 and 18 years into the second, and - knocking on wood with my fingers and toes crossed while throwing salt over my shoulder - I believe I've done OK so far. Works in progress.
At this point, it's difficult to the point of impossibility for me to imagine a life without my wife and children. But I have occasionally thought, well, everything has its cost; what might I have done if I had no wife or children? Would something else have taken the place of being a husband and father, in terms of what's important, what must be done as well as possible, no matter what?
No.
The most trivial, obvious example: back when I was single (riding dinosaurs across the still-molten Earth), I really loved connecting with young women. As in, the sex.
I was not a bad-looking fellow, and those were more promiscuous times, but it still required some degree of luck (that's why they call it "getting lucky"), as well as persistence and patience. Then as now, most young women had a lot more opportunities in that area, so they were (and are) more selective than most young men, and the most common responses to the unspoken question "How about it?" were "No" and "I don't think so".
But again, it was important to me to make these things happen if at all possible, so, in those instances when I perceived even a glimmer of interest, I would find pretexts to hang around and "chat them up", as no American ever said. Sometimes they would eventually (or quickly) get annoyed enough to tell me to get lost, but other times, we would suddenly find ourselves alone and they would make it seem like it was all their idea. Which, hey, perhaps it was.
But as life unfolded, the most important things in my life became to be a good husband to my wife and a good father to my children. I'm more than thirty years into the first and 28 and 18 years into the second, and - knocking on wood with my fingers and toes crossed while throwing salt over my shoulder - I believe I've done OK so far. Works in progress.
At this point, it's difficult to the point of impossibility for me to imagine a life without my wife and children. But I have occasionally thought, well, everything has its cost; what might I have done if I had no wife or children? Would something else have taken the place of being a husband and father, in terms of what's important, what must be done as well as possible, no matter what?
No.
