Cut-throat

Cut-throat: (adj) involving the use of ruthless measures.

Human vice is not nice.

Sin will never actually win.

Mean is obscene.

Most of the end results of our actions are not accidental, but instead, deposits we’ve made which finally produce a dividend.

These deposits could be kindness, creativity, generosity, humor and tolerance.

Such soul-stirring emotions offer remedy.

But we can also deposit disappointment, despair, prejudice, anger, envy and lust.

These pernicious villains always bring about a cut-throat conclusion.

Yet the debilitating devastation left behind is not accidental.

  • It’s not because we “lost control.”
  • It’s not because we “got pushed too far.”

It’s just that we were not wise enough to know what to keep and what to throw away.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cut-offs

Cut-offs: (n) blue jeans cut off and turned into shorts.

There is certainly the possibility that if you’re willing to speak your fears out loud, you can save a lot of money on therapy.

So I will tell you bluntly that for the first twenty-one years of my life, I was frightened to death to go without a shirt or even think about wearing shorts.

When I was a teenager, I went to the swimming pool and waited until it was either empty or everyone had gone over to the snack bar before I would feverishly remove my shirt and jump in the water, hoping nobody noticed the recently submerged whale.

It was worse with my legs. They were bare.

For some reason, my genetics gave me absolutely no hair.

When I was sixteen, I took a magnifying glass, examined them, and found that there were follicles, but for some reason the little hairs became discouraged upon reaching the top of my skin—too frightened to make a public appearance.

So I was fat.

Very white because I got no sun.

And had no hair on my legs.

Not a great teenage turn-on.

So it was the summer of my twenty-first year that I found myself traveling, landing with my music group in Miami, Florida—still scared shitless to go shirtless, and completely unwilling to drop my pants.

Then, one beautiful hot day when the ladies in the group were anxious to go to the beach—tired of magnanimously staying behind with me—I grabbed an old pair of jeans, took scissors and snipped them off the best I could. I slid them on and walked outside with my two comrades.

At first, I held onto their arms, hiding and hoping nobody noticed me.

Apparently, I got my wish. Nobody noticed me.

It was Miami. There were oddly shaped people of every color, everywhere.

For the rest of that two-week trip, I did nothing but walk around shirtless, wearing my ugly cut-off jeans, walking the beach.

By the time I flew back to Nashville, Tennessee, to meet up with my producer, I was gloriously toasted brown and my confidence was at an all-time high.

I have never and will never feel the relaxation to walk into a room believing that everyone will accept my obesity or my hairless legs.

But I’m happy to report that the comfort of being comfortable in cut-offs finally comforted me.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cut and Paste

Cut and paste: (adj) assembled or produced from various existing bits and pieces:

I do not think there is anything we used to do that is better than what we’re doing now.

I know, as I get older, I should be cranky about losing favorite practices, which have been swept away by trending winds.

I just don’t feel that way.

I think the human race has one endearing quality. We like to find an easier way to do things and then later pretend it was complicated—developing a story about our struggle.

Years ago, I published a street newspaper. It was a combination of news stories, commentary, cartoons and a sprinkling of creative notions. There were no home computers which could be used to lay out this newspaper simply by punching buttons and shifting keys—and if there were, they were experimental, being tested at the New York Times.

We had to cut and paste.

All we had to assist us was a word processor, on which we typed the articles, a pencil set used to draw the cartoons, a pair of scissors for cutting out the pieces so they would fit into the space provided, and a jar of rubber cement, which was put on the back of the stories so they could be glued into their proper place. Then the master was run through a printer and translated, ala Gutenberg, onto newsprint.

Two things were necessary—a ruler and patience.

The ruler was needed to put the stories down straight so they wouldn’t look crooked. And patience—because miscalculations caused the formatting of the master copy to be a-kilter.

The only salvation was convincing oneself—and I mean thoroughly—that cutting and pasting copy onto a master layout was great fun. Matter of fact, nothing had been so delightful since Belgian waffles received their first dousing of powdered sugar.

Yet I would never want to go back to that era.

I don’t think it was better.

But I do think we have many journalists, cartoonists, writers and contributors who believe all they have to do is splatter some random paragraphs onto a screen, and suddenly they’re vying for a Pulitzer.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Customer

Customer: (n) a buyer; patron

I have settled an age-old conflict in my well-traveled mind.

I am weary of philosophy, bored with theology, lack the “self” to give to “help”—and I’m allergic to politics.

I have decided life is not nearly as complicated as pundits, theologians and Madison Avenue may wish to portray. You just have to decide one quandary:

Am I the customer and God the store owner?

Or am I running a little storefront and God is the customer?

Am I trying to impress God with my wares, my righteousness, my worship and my Bible study? Or is God running a pretty magnificent manufacturing plant, and merely wants me to come in and enjoy the process, learn the assembly line, pick a car of my choice which will propel me in life—and be thrilled with the quality?

You do see the difference, don’t you?

In one scenario, I am a sniveling shopkeeper, certain that the customer is going to show up, despise my ambiance and find my products inferior.

In the other case, I arrive with great anticipation to a well-oiled operation, and it’s my job to enjoy the good stuff and admire the hell out of it.

If heaven is going to be about God and me discussing my attempts at purity and goodness on Earth, it’s gonna be a snoozer.

But if I show up as a satisfied customer from one of his plants to the Central location to be further wowed by the Boss’s management skills and ingenuity?

Then, gee.

It’s almost worth dying.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Custom

Custom: (n) a habitual practice; the usual way of acting in given circumstances.

I’ve done a lot of traveling in my life.

I’ve spent more time with strangers than family.

That’s why I learned to never know a stranger—to make all humans part of my family.

But I thought I would stop in today and tell you seven of my favorite customs I encountered during my journeys:

  1. Smiling when you first meet a new person.
  2. Walking away from a stewing pot of gossip.
  3. Eating what is set before you and discussing it later.
  4. Believing that women and men are basically just human.
  5. Not listening to accents—just noticing what people accent in their lives.
  6. Loving your neighbor as yourself.
  7. Asking twice as much as you think you should and saying thank you three times more.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Custody

Custody: (n) the right to provide residence, protection, care, and education of a minor child or children, especially in a divorce

We think we’re wiser than Solomon.

It was this King, who was embroiled in a battle between two mothers who claimed the same baby, who decided to determine which mother loved the child and which woman just loved being dubbed “a mother.”

He dramatically threatened to cut the baby in half and give an equal share to each Mommy.

Unbelievable as it may seem, one of the women agreed to it, while the other immediately abandoned her claim to ensure the safety of the little one.

Not in today’s courts.

We are thoroughly convinced that a child can be emotionally and even physically divided between two households, and benefit by having “even more people to love him or her.”

How audacious we are.

How arrogant our reasoning.

It’s all based upon the fact we haven’t learned how to pick a good mate nor how to reside with one another. Therefore, the children must suffer our childishness, while we whisper to them, “Both Mommy and Daddy love you.” Then we fight like cats and dogs in court to prove that we are the better parent.

I have no intention of offering a solution which can be shot down by the cynical pundits of the present fiasco.

I’m just stating aloud that joint custody of a child will teach him or her that a certain amount of hypocrisy is permitted, or maybe even necessary, to prolong human relationships.

God forgive us.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Custodian

Custodian: (n) a person entrusted with maintaining a property; janitor.

No one is born a goddamn brat, but we are quick studies.

It’s because of what that position—brat—affords us:

  • We can claim to be superior without having to offer evidence.
  • We can hold our breath until we get what we want.
  • We can become the most important person in the room by making other folks jump and beg.

Unfortunately, the buckets of puke that accompany “brat” make it a tad obnoxious.

I have been a brat.

I did more than play it on television. I took my experience with the role and incorporated it into my personal life.

When I was about to graduate from high school and my classmates wanted to dedicate the yearbook to our school custodian (it was that kind of era—championing the underdog and a search to lift up the obscure) I was against it.

I thought it was stupid.

I could not imagine giving an award to anyone who wore a matching shirt and pants.

The worst part of it was, they asked me to interview this custodian and write the blurb that would appear under his picture in our annual.

I was pissed off.

Worse than that, I was rude to this aging gentleman, who worked very hard to clean up all the snot from the noses of the brats who walked his hallways.

Another problem immediately came to the forefront: trying to get this servant to speak.

He didn’t want to talk about himself.

He didn’t want to elaborate on his past.

So finally, to meet the deadline, I wrote my impressions about him. For you see, over the half-hour encounter, they had changed.

Managing to get a few words from him about his daily activities, immediately I realized that I would be unwilling to do what he performed. But what struck me was his final statement, which I inserted into the prose of my piece.

I’ve never forgotten it, and it remains in my mind even today as a true pearl of wisdom. He said, “I think what I do is important, because it’s what I’ve been given to do.”

It was a brilliant axiom.

One that I wish our national leaders would take into consideration.

One which daily haunts my soul.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Custer’s Last Stand

Custer’s Last Stand: The defeat of Colonel George A. Custer and his cavalry detachment by a large force of Native Americans at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

It was Franklin Roosevelt who changed the game.

Since FDR, our Presidents have more or less taken on the appearance of being the CEO for a large corporation. Now granted, we’ve had some rotten pickles in the barrel.

But generally speaking, the job of President of the United States changed as of Franklin Roosevelt—because he found himself in a situation where for the second time, like the Civil War, our country was on the verge of collapse—this time by poverty.

Stability was needed.

A bit of tenderness.

And certainly a vision for all the people.

I share this with you because before President Roosevelt, the men who served in the executive office were a rag-tag mixture of renegades, scoundrels, bookworms and inefficient scholars.

Into such an atmosphere arrived a young gent named George Armstrong Custer.

He came in a season when being overbearing, irreverent and unable to take orders was helpful. We were in the middle of a war and the country was desperately in need of heroes to step out of the shadows and defeat the Confederacy.

Born in Monroe, Michigan, General Custer was a study in flamboyance and narcissism.

Known for his bravery—which by the end of his life had exposed itself as foolhardiness—he rose to the rank of General, where he believed that from his military might, he could easily run for President and win.

His disregard for the Native Americans was certainly bigoted, if not fringing on genocidal.

But because George Armstrong Custer was unable to listen to anyone else’s counsel or follow any advice but his own, he eventually ran up against a battle which was far beyond his control.

He was soundly defeated and killed when many tribes united at the Little Big Horn under the spiritual guidance of Sitting Bull and the field command of Crazy Horse.

There is only one thing you can learn from General Custer:

Believing you can do something may be considered a virtue, but it rarely, by itself, will take you to the finish line—unless by finish line, you mean you’re finished.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Custard Pie

Custard pie: (n) a pie made with custard

Some time ago, back when the only thing open in the middle of the night on a freeway was a truck stop, I was traveling—so sleepy that I decided I should stop at one of these establishments with my friends and get something to eat.

We were in the middle of Dixie.

Apparently had not received the notification that the Civil War had ended—because when we walked in with our long hair—a bit grimy and road-weary—the whole place fell silent.

Just in case you do not understand my meaning, this profile was not selected out of respect, but rather, to communicate shock at seeing “a bunch of hippies,” as they would have called us, stroll into the restaurant.

When I have encountered this kind of prejudice, I’ve always found that the best choice is to stay positive, don’t frown back at them, and keep your conversation within your group. Pretty soon, everybody is eager to get back to their own grits and corn beef hash.

This night was no different.

Except all I really wanted to have was just a piece of pie.

When I think of pie, I have visions of blueberry, cherry, maybe apple—but none of these were available because it was the middle of the night at a truck stop, when most people have turned off all their pie-eating instincts.

The waitress explained that all they had left was “custard pie,” which she said remained because “nobody ever orders it.”

I did. I wanted a piece of pie.

It came, and it was a rather feckless confection—a creamy, white color with just a bit of cinnamon dancing on the top.

I ate it and I loved it.

I treasured it so much that for the next several weeks, I ordered custard pie everywhere I went.

I bought one at a store. It was delicious. Some of these pies were not as good as others, but such is the travail of life. But overall, they had that gentle custard taste, with a hint of vanilla and great sweetness.

I was so enamored with custard pie, I decided to study up on how to make one for myself. I got all the ingredients, put them together, did everything according to the recipe, and ended up with a pie pan that never became solid. It still tasted all right, but it was runny.

I was so disappointed.

I never made nor did I really ever eat custard pie again.

Perhaps that’s a formula for life I should consider.

If I have a vice or if I know of a vice, if I try to do it myself and end up doing it poorly, maybe it will cure me of desiring the vice.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cussing

Cussing: (n) the act of using profanity in speech

Since I am not God and certainly not even piously positioned, I do have sins I think are worse than others.

When I was a kid, I was told that cussing was just as bad to God as killing.

Even as a young person, this pissed me off. How could words flung into the air be anywhere as volatile as bullets taking a similar path?

I didn’t buy it.

I don’t buy into it today.

If God is just, God knows there’s a difference between “get your shit together” and “get over there in the corner where I can shoot you.”

I think it’s religion at its very worst when people start pecking at other human beings for language just because they’re chicken to live their own lives at full throttle.

So I will tell you the top five sins in my mind, counting down from #5:

5. Stealing

4. Self-righteousness

3. Selfishness

2. Lying

1. Killing

Cussing doesn’t even crack my top five.

Why?

Because as human beings, there are times we need to release our frustration—so we don’t steal, get self-righteous, become selfish, lie and kill someone.

Cussing is a better choice.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C