Life Notes

Growing up I never liked the idea of PE in school. Don't get me wrong; I see nothing wrong with being healthy and active. But something about being forced to change clothes with other people and then being made to sweat with them hit a sour note with me. Forced merriment has never been my thing. Which is why, so often, I would have my mother write notes excusing me from PE.

At the time I thought it was clever. I knew for certain that my mother genuinely thought I didn't need to do PE because of a headache, a cough, a hurt ankle, you name it. If all the things that got me out of PE had actually happened to me, I would say it was a near miracle I made it out of grade school. I realize now that she knew the whole time. Kudos to mom for writing the notes anyway.

The impulse to "sit out" doesn't seem to leave us just because we get older. Sure, there is no longer someone making us change clothes in front of other people in rooms where only a fool would walk around barefoot. But we still get the urge to cry injury every now and then just for the sake of catching our breath. Wouldn't it be great if we could get a parent's note for a day of life?

I imagine it would say something like, "Dear , Please excuse from life today. She has a headache. Signed, A Parent." At this point we now have free license to sit back and watch as everyone else continues to run laps. Round and round the gym they go while we sit back and cool it on the bleachers. It would be a temporary reprieve, as almost all gym notes were. But it would allow us to sit and gain perspective on things so that when we do rejoin our peers the next day we will realize that what we are doing (in most cases) is in fact running around in circles.

The problem here is that all good things will come to an end, and while most of us would use the privilege of the life note responsibly, there would be those that would take advantage and ruin it for everyone else. At some point life itself would start limiting excuses to doctors' notes. At that point (I don't know about you), I would rather run the laps.

Is Nothing Sacred?

They say there's nothing new under the sun. But they say a lot of things, some true and some not so true. (What do they know? Who are they anyway?) Perhaps, though, they're onto something.

In a world in which we have so many avenues to communicate with each other in order to generate new ideas, where have all the original thoughts gone?

Several decades ago American muscle cars prowled the streets as guys of all ages panted after them. But all good things must come to an end, and so the muscle car slipped into our collective memory, a rusting piece of nostalgia. Until recently, that's where it stayed. Apparently now is the time for resurgence of these particular cultural relics, albeit remodeled shadows of what they were before. Never mind their sounds, emissions, or the fact that they've now morphed into semi-family-friendly cars; we have managed to clumsily resurrect that which was probably best left untouched and untarnished. Where are they with a good cliche when you need them?

We do this with movies (Footloose), cartoons (Scooby Doo), and songs (for an example, select any newer pop song containing a remix of an early 90s hit in the background). We also do it with written ideas.

Writers are inspired by other writers, and we begin to generate what we perceive to be original thought. That's until we consult the original only to find that we have, in fact, produced a copy, a retelling of another author's thoughts. And who knows: maybe that author copied another author ad infinitum. As writers we walk a thin line between original thought and cheap imitation. We create fascinating dialogue via social networking and coffee house conversations, yet somehow we don't conceive anything new independently. Just when we think we're onto something, we find that someone else has beat us to the punch. Am I saying there is no original thought going on? No. Do I believe that there are original people generating original ideas? Of course. But I also believe that somewhere along the way we get lazy, and it becomes easier to "create" that which has already been created.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Can we not seek inspiration from others in art, music, writing, design, and entertainment without churning out mediocre counterfeits of our own? They also say history repeats itself. A dangerous thought, this. Creativity beware.