Bland is grand...

At the ripe old age of 33, I must proclaim that I Am An Old Fart.
I don't look like one, unless you're fifteen. But oh God do I act like one.
I go to bed between nine and ten at night...sometimes earlier. Even on Saturday nights, when there is no reason for me not to stay up. I watch old farty things like Antiques Roadshow and enjoy it. These days, nearly every artist who wins a Grammy is an artist I've never heard of.
No, I'll tell you just how much of a fogey I am: my meals are planned. Not all of them, I hasten to add, but quite a few of them. Wednesday night's supper is often roast chicken; Thursday night is stew night; Friday night brings pork chops. Sunday lunch is almost always grilled cheese sandwiches and soup...and it's usually the same soup.
And you know what? I like it this way.
We just managed to settle into this routine, almost unnoticed, and by now I've gone beyond acknowledging the routine: I feel the need to celebrate it. The meals become touchstones in the week, events to look forward to.
I am a simple man with simple tastes, easily pleased. I know that this, above all, causes a stale odor of wrinkled butt to cling to me. And I don't care.
It's not as if I didn't come through chaos to get here. Actually, I created a good deal of it for myself.
Life used to be quite different, and not all that long ago, either...

1997

They say money can't buy happiness. In testing this assumption I have learned that money can buy nearly infinite varieties of loneliness. and boredom. You can eat nearly every meal out if you want, but an endless smorgasbord eventually pales...as does your wallet, rather more rapidly. You can go to a theater to watch Hollywood's latest release twice a week, and sooner or later you realize that most of what Hollywood releases should never have been caught in the first place.
It's taken this thought a long time to occur to me. Like human beings everywhere, my standard solution to the pain I felt was to keep doing exactly what I'd been doing all along, only more of it. Search long enough, I thought, and I'd find The Good Stuff--whatever that was.
I work at 7-Eleven. Mostly nights. I won't bore you with the stories about obnoxious asshole drunks...if you've met me I've probably told you enough stories as it is. Some day, maybe, I'll write all that down in some online diary someplace. Right now I'm just too damn tired.
The fatigue is all-encompassing. It defines my life. I've come to think of it as a garment, a tight-fitting, malodorous strait-jacket. Some days, I go to sleep at ten in the morning and wake up at ten at night, still exhausted. A couple of times now, circumstances have forced me to stay awake until three or four in the afternoon. I'm a right bastard when I'm this zonked. It's really no wonder all my friends are some distance away. Any closer and I'd probably lose them.
I'd do speed if I was the kind of guy with any interest in drugs. As it is, I drink more than a half gallon of Coke every single day
And the food I eat! I can't be bothered to cook anything; it takes too long. It's much easier just to grab a 7-Eleven burger or two, maybe some chips--a big bag of them, what the hell--a tub of Haagen-Dazs, yeah, a chocolate bar or three...add a newspaper to keep my mind occupied while I mindlessly scarf all that down, and that's breakfast. Or supper. Or food of some kind, anyway...
You may wonder how it is that a man who works at 7-Eleven, on a 7-Eleven salary, can eat nothing but 7-Eleven food. Very well, I'll tell you: by means of a nifty device known as

THE CHARGE

When I started here, it was more like THE CHARGE, but it's kind of....grown... over the years. Now it's taken over my life and made me its slave. Actually, it's more like a god than a master. In return for all those yummy empty calories, it merely demands about ninety percent of my discretionary income. Having devoured most of my paycheque, it leaves me with no money for groceries (not that I'd willingly walk the three-mile round trip to a grocery store...hell, no! What do you think I have, energy or something?) So the cycle renews itself, again and again and again.

I left home much too early, in hindsight. My parents didn't really kick me out, but the script of my childhood called for me to finish high school as quickly as possible, for reasons never fully explained to me. I even went to summer school, not for remedial reasons, but to put myself ahead a year. Living life in the present the way I did, I never thought to question this mad rush..it was simply life, to be lived a day at a time. And, let's face it, the idea of leaving home, to a teenager--even one as stunted as me--is certainly appealing.
My parents didn't exactly raise an accountant, either. Money was a private matter in our house, an adult matter. I never learned how much my parents made, or what kind of bite the mortgage took out of that, or the heating bill, or anything. If someone had asked me, growing up, what my household income was, I probably would have been off by tens of thousands of dollars.
It seems odd to me now, but it didn't then. Ask my parents about money? It would have been easier to ask them to describe the last time they had wild animal sex...and I'd probably get much the same response.

So--predictably--I was unpredictable when I finally left the nest, flying hither and yon, only alighting for an instant, scattering money to the four winds. I didn't spend it on booze or smokes, but there's a defunct arcade in Waterloo that made off with probably a thousand of my dollars, a whole bunch of restaurants that rely on my patronage to keep afloat, and you should have seen my monthly phone bill! It was usually the highest in our dorm.
Speaking of residence, my room-mate that year (who is the epitome of responsible) still blames himself for not reining me in. I've told him again and again that blowing that money was my decision. It's been seven years. Maybe in another eight he'll stop apologizing for something that was entirely my doing.
I'm still stuck in this rut, though...THE CHARGE has sunk its talons deep. Someone else is going to have to pull me out of this one, I think. Not that I'm ever likely to meet anyone, working this godforsaken night shift.

2005

My store closed soon after. I had to quit THE CHARGE cold-turkey. The store closing started a sequence of events that led, inexorably, to my marriage. Eva ruthlessly stomped out any remaining inclination I had to spend beyond my means, but she accomplished that in such a positive way: when she took over the financing, she made sure. I still had perks, but they were in sensible proportion to the rest of my life. Much-needed stabilty ensued. After the self-inflicted disorder of the previous decade, I found myself craving the mundane, and discovering the little joys that lurk in it.

It's been great for me. Other people may look at me and see Dull personified, but I'm living this life, and let me tell you, I've found an inexhaustible supply of The Good Stuff.