The other day I was walking to the locker room at the private gymnasium to which I pay a monthly fee for services rendered and I got to thinking about Peter Piper and that old tongue twister: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

The goddamn thing is a lie.

Pickled peppers in jars
Peter Piper picked out a jar of pickled peppers at the damn grocery store, that's what happened.
There is no way for anyone to pick peppers that have already been pickled. Peppers must first be picked before they can be put into jars and marinated in the vinegar-based liquids that make pickling possible. Ergo, that tongue twister is complete bullshit.

As I walked and wondered if Shelly actually sold a shell at the seashore, a man grabbed my shirt (from behind) and said, "High school sucked!"

It was an old friend I hadn't seen in ten years. He works in my gym now (his wife, whom I have never met and of whom I had no prior knowledge took a transfer down to Tampa—small world and all that).

I was stoked (I am rarely ever stoked and tend not to use the word but I have to admit that in this situation, for at least a few minutes anyway, I was "holy shit that was a wicked aerial 900 Tony Mothergrabbing Hawk" stoked) and expressed as much.

And I wish I felt more than stoked and for longer than a few minutes.

A great writer once wrote: "As the bruises fade, the lightning aches." I still don't really know what that means but I think I understand it a little now.

Maybe "bruises fade" is just another was of saying, "aging." And maybe "lightning aches" is just another way of saying "emotions get less powerful." As we age, and life manages to get exponentially more screwed up with each passing market cycle, the effects of living tend to get less and less powerful.

"The world is filled with fucked up shit. It's not my fault Peter Piper's out there lying for alliteration's sake."Which is to say that I have developed a tolerance for the weirdness around me.

And so an old friend of mine is now a regular part of my life. Once a week we grab some beers and play some pool. He teaches me about supplements and the importance of not smoking ten cigarettes every time I get drunk. And I teach him the importance of shutting the hell up about how much I smoke when I drink. And occasionally we reminisce about the way things used to be, the world we knew back when we went to high school and dreamt of bigger and better things than our current lives.

But mainly we just live and last like everyone else does.

And so the first time Craig and I went out to the bar and bullshitted (my old friend's name is Craig by the way), my mind wandered to Peter Piper and his dubious pickled pepper picking. And I told Craig what I was thinking about that tongue twister when we bumped into each other in the gym.

He stared at me blankly.

"You quit doing acid, right?" he asked.

"Right," I replied. "Why?"

"Because you're still saying fucked up shit."

"That, my old friend, is because the world is filled with fucked up shit. It's not my fault Peter Piper's out there lying for alliteration's sake. I'm just the messenger, here. Don't shoot me."

"Whatever, man. You wanta play some eight ball?"

"Sure."

And so the world moves on. It's sticky and it's messy and it never makes sense and maybe there aren't any real answers or explanations for the way everything goes down. Maybe we're all just empty pieces of meat working each day to eat and maybe the Craigs of this world show up because coincidences happen and no further explanation is necessary. And maybe I do smoke too much when I drink and maybe Peter Piper did find a way to pick a peck of already pickled peppers from some kind of pickled pepper peck store. No one truly gives a shit and rightfully so.

Life is just too weird to swim through all the piles of crap and analyze the corn content of the turds.

But at the same time, I never asked for this shit.

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