Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [57]
One of the jobs my subconscious is best at putting me off getting at is painting. My subconscious is absolutely right. I probably shouldn’t start
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it even though I enjoy it once I get going. Once again, my subconscious remembers what I forget.
I look at a door or a fence or a room and I say to myself, “I ought to give that a coat of paint. It’ll take two quarts of paint. I’ll need some turpentine and a new brush. No sense fooling with those old brushes.”
My subconscious sometimes puts me off the paint job for months but eventually, against its better judgment, I buy the paint, the turpentine and the brush. I put on my old clothes, get a screwdriver to remove the top of the paint can and then I look more carefully at the room. Now I begin to see what my subconscious saw all along.
There are many things to do before I start to paint. I have to move everything out of the room, I have to replace a piece of the baseboard that is broken and I have to scrape and sand the places where the paint is peeling. And I better go back to the hardware store to get some spackle to fill the cracks in the ceiling. While I’m there, I’ll pick up some undercoater for the new piece of baseboard and the
Fired 121
spackled cracks. I’ll have to let it dry overnight so I can’t start painting today.
It is quite probable that it is this wonderfully intelligent subconscious part of our brain that makes us want to stay in bed another hour every morning. We want to get up. It knows that just as soon as we get up, the trouble will start all over again.
Fired
T here’s something wrong with anyone who’s never been fired from a job. If I’m ever in a position to hire someone, I’m going to be very suspicious of anyone who comes in looking for work with a resume that doesn’t include the information that he or she got the ax a couple of times either for incompetence or insubordination.
What’s all this resignation business? Doesn’t anyone get fired anymore? You read the business pages of the paper, and presidents of corporations are always resigning. From a cushy $250,000-a-year job? Come on, fellas. We’re not business tycoons, but we’re not that dumb. You got canned.
The whole business of resignation is false, and it’s part of a new philosophy we seem to have adopted. There aren’t any losers anymore.
At children’s birthday parties, they play games in the cellar or the backyard, and the parents having the party give away prizes. It doesn’t matter how well or poorly a child plays a game, he’ll probably get a prize anyway, because the adults don’t want to damage his little psyche by making him think he might not always win in life.
Most high school teams in any sport have co-captains now. Sometimes they have more than two. No one wants to hurt the feelings of a good player by choosing someone over him for the job. Sometimes the professional football teams have six or eight men trot out on the field for the coin-tossing ceremonies.They’re all co-captains. Not a loser in the crowd. I hope we never decide not to hurt the feelings of one of the presidential candidates by electing co-Presidents. One President is plenty.
Last week I read where someone won $34,000 for finishing second in a golf tournament. Second! Imagine making $34,000 for losing a game of golf!
The President is always saying he’s “sorry” to have to accept someone’s resignation. If he was really sorry he shouldn’t have accepted it. All of us are using the word “sorry” too lightly. We’re always saying we’re sorry when we aren’t really sorry at all. It’s all part of the same refusal to face things as they are.
We’re excusing everyone for everything. A boy of seventeen kills the man who runs the candy store for $1.35 and a Tootsie Roll.
The boy’s parents find a bloody hammer under his bed and they confront him with it.
“I’m sorry,” the boy says. “I killed him, but I didn’t mean to do it.”
The father looks at the mother with tears in his eyes and says, “At least he’s honest.”