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06-10-2008, 08:59 AM
(Taken from the The StarPhoenix article: 'Willpower is resisting the urge to pop bubble wrap')
Bob Florence
The StarPhoenix
Monday, June 09, 2008
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
- The flavour of potato salad is always enhanced by a paper plate and a plastic fork.
- The faster a 100-metre sprinter runs, the slower he walks.
- Garden hoses and extension cords have contests in the shed at night, seeing which can twist themselves into the more aggravating knot.
- Blowing on soup cools it off. Breathing on hands warms them up. Weird how that works.
- Then: Sunday best -- the dress code everyone observed at church.
Now: Sloppy Saturday -- a pair of sweats and a concert souvenir T-shirt; the standard weekend get-up for a trip to the grocery store.
- Real people don't wrap gifts the way they do in TV land, with the lid individually wrapped and another sheet around the rest of the box.
- The two most contagious things in the world are a child's laughter and a widow's tears.
- The push button on a pedestrian walk light isn't wired. Never has been, never will be. It's all for show. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and lean on the button longer and harder the second time you press.
- Willpower is resisting the urge to pop bubble wrap.
- Success is defined as continually raising the bar. Except for limbo dancers.
- You've hit middle age when your idea of an adventure tour is a trip down the breakfast cereal aisle with a couple of preschoolers.
- Movie theatres and concert halls should be declared cellophane wrapper-free zones.
- Cold fronts or heat waves, thunderstorms or blizzards, weather systems always come from somewhere else, no matter where you live. So where do they begin?
- The way to win in any team sport can be summarized in a sentence: Make space and deny space.
On offence create room. Make holes. Find an opening. On defence take it away.
- Do you remember that doofus in the bumper car ride at the exhibition midway who spent his whole time wedged nose first into a corner, going nowhere? He is grown up now. That's him gumming up traffic each day at rush hour.
- Two lawn chairs and a beach blanket still make for the coolest fort in the neighbourhood.
- Three things older, but better:
1) The smell of laundry fresh off the clothesline.
2) The look and the feel of a '50s diner, with arborite counters and swivel stools and a bottled soft drink cooler over in the corner.
3) The Children's Day Parade, featuring the city freckle king and queen riding up front in an open convertible.
- Life is like summer camp: At first you don't want to join. At the end you don't want to leave.
- Rap music is the arch-enemy of slow dancing.
- Sales of shag carpet and Brut deodorant are expected to rebound once customized vans become popular again.
- Graduation day for a teenager is the day they learn where to step on the stairs at home without making it creak, allowing for safe passage in and out of the house at any hour.
Bob Florence
The StarPhoenix
Monday, June 09, 2008
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
- The flavour of potato salad is always enhanced by a paper plate and a plastic fork.
- The faster a 100-metre sprinter runs, the slower he walks.
- Garden hoses and extension cords have contests in the shed at night, seeing which can twist themselves into the more aggravating knot.
- Blowing on soup cools it off. Breathing on hands warms them up. Weird how that works.
- Then: Sunday best -- the dress code everyone observed at church.
Now: Sloppy Saturday -- a pair of sweats and a concert souvenir T-shirt; the standard weekend get-up for a trip to the grocery store.
- Real people don't wrap gifts the way they do in TV land, with the lid individually wrapped and another sheet around the rest of the box.
- The two most contagious things in the world are a child's laughter and a widow's tears.
- The push button on a pedestrian walk light isn't wired. Never has been, never will be. It's all for show. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and lean on the button longer and harder the second time you press.
- Willpower is resisting the urge to pop bubble wrap.
- Success is defined as continually raising the bar. Except for limbo dancers.
- You've hit middle age when your idea of an adventure tour is a trip down the breakfast cereal aisle with a couple of preschoolers.
- Movie theatres and concert halls should be declared cellophane wrapper-free zones.
- Cold fronts or heat waves, thunderstorms or blizzards, weather systems always come from somewhere else, no matter where you live. So where do they begin?
- The way to win in any team sport can be summarized in a sentence: Make space and deny space.
On offence create room. Make holes. Find an opening. On defence take it away.
- Do you remember that doofus in the bumper car ride at the exhibition midway who spent his whole time wedged nose first into a corner, going nowhere? He is grown up now. That's him gumming up traffic each day at rush hour.
- Two lawn chairs and a beach blanket still make for the coolest fort in the neighbourhood.
- Three things older, but better:
1) The smell of laundry fresh off the clothesline.
2) The look and the feel of a '50s diner, with arborite counters and swivel stools and a bottled soft drink cooler over in the corner.
3) The Children's Day Parade, featuring the city freckle king and queen riding up front in an open convertible.
- Life is like summer camp: At first you don't want to join. At the end you don't want to leave.
- Rap music is the arch-enemy of slow dancing.
- Sales of shag carpet and Brut deodorant are expected to rebound once customized vans become popular again.
- Graduation day for a teenager is the day they learn where to step on the stairs at home without making it creak, allowing for safe passage in and out of the house at any hour.