Answer #136 - you buy a puppy

What do you do when the past comes back to haunt you?


I mean,

What do you do when the past comes back to haunt you?


Let's just say you're given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you choke.

Choke hard.  Because you've been driving for 15 hours, flying for 6, haven't had any sleep and look around and everybody else on the starting line is 16.  Or maybe 20.  But not older than 20.  And suddenly, you know, you've choked and you're drowning your sorrows in rot gut back stage, and calling Upper Slobovia to at least hear the Slobovians sing your praises... Even  though you don't speak Slobovian, they claim to love you...

cough. sputter. ack.

Do you acknowledge the choke.. do you cry yourself to sleep... do you pretend it didn't happen... do you set it aside, somewhere out of the 'once in a lifetime' category, and instead minimalize it and tell yourself that everybody chokes once in a while - except, you know, Olympic athletes and people who are destined never to choke - and that there are more important things in life than success? 

Well, damn it, there are.  Lots of things. 

 Like puppies and moonbeams.  Like rainbows and wishes on stars. 

Like warm guns and the heady smell of revenge.. er...
 

No, I mean, like sunrises and the heady smell of Vic's vapor rub from your hiding place in the bushes.

NO.  I mean, like puppies and moonbeams... like...

ah...

You suck it up.  You plod on.  You avoid mirrors for a while.  Then you buy a puppy.