Success!

winners The only thing worse than having peers who are more successful than you is having people who are younger outdo you. (My friend Jenn came up with the latter point when a young alumni from her college starred in “Carrie, Part 2.”) You know Morrissey, lead singer of the Smiths? He recorded the very peppy, sweet-sounding tune “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful,” which makes me laugh.

Do I want my friends to be well, happy, productive, and successful? Of course I do! But I wouldn’t mind cornering one of those adjectives for myself either. I have a friend who is an internationally renown poet (in fact, I no longer refer to her by her name but by Internationally Renown Poet, and she’s friends with all the young, hot novelists whose books are being turned into movies. She’s a really nice woman and when she heard me bemoaning my average fate, she tried to comfort me with “Don’t worry, you’re young. You’ll get your book published,” which I thought was very sweet, but I also think untrue. I don’t live in a world where you can presume success is yours the way she, and the other top literary talent of the country, are able to. I might have a few years ago, as a promising young undergrad at a prestigious Ivy League university, but baby, those days are long gone along with my awesome (never appreciated) metabolism rate.

Briefly, I thought of joining the Alumni Club, to, I don’t know, somehow assimilate myself into greatness, listen to lectures, quote Kierkeguaard and Kant over a hot toddy and cigar in tastefully decorated, revered halls. I would breathe a sigh of relief, knowing I have finally arrived. BUT the fees to join are insanely high and frequent, and I don’t really need to spend money like that to fantasize when there’re plenty of places I can do that for FREE, like I dunno, at the library, in front of the boob tube, over my favorite jigsaw puzzle, etc.

The trick is to be happy anyway. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

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