I Never Should Have Been Respectable

I realized last night what I really want to do with my life. I want to be a career grad student studying linguistics, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, but I want to change my major every time I get to the thesis. I want to tend bar at some hard-to-find dorkycool beer and wine bar in the basement of some old building in the part of town where all the cool kids go. I want to play bass for some mediocre rock band that plays to crowds of disrythmic, vaguely jiggling masses of guys, arms crossed at the chests or extended into their pockets, who don't really know how to dress and girls who really do, but pretend not to. I want to go to the shows of other mediocre rock bands at least four days a week and have a secret passion for underground rap, but never indulge in a live show for fear of not being cool enough. I want to take pride in the fact that I'm probably not cool enough. And finally, I want to drink too much and either burn myself out before I exit my forties or be the weird old guy who works at the pseudo dive bar where all the cool bands play and surprises the college kids when the bum setting up the stage knows more about current events, African history, and politics than they do.

And I probably would have ended up this way had I never gotten married. Instead, I'll spend a couple of decades being responsible and respectable, and then when I retire, instead of piddling around in my woodworking shop or buying an RV and seeing all the finest tourist gift shops the US has to offer, I'll move to downtown Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, or Anchorage. I'll get K to downsize our collection of crap, find a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and work bar in some nerdy beer joint until I'm too old or too bored to see the bottle labels.