FIXING STUPID STARTS EARLY, BUT NOT TOO EARLY

After your first breath you begin fixing stupid.

If you’re lucky, you’re born into a family who wants you. That makes the job so much easier.

And if you’re really lucky, you’re born with a run of good health ahead of you.

You’re ready to start fixing stupid, but you need a little help getting yourself started, help from Mom and Dad.

Why? Because you’re a baby.

Getting started to the rhythm of a solid heart is the sound of life, your life, but you’re too young to know how important that is.

Ask a teenager about their heart, or someone in their twenties or thirties. If they’ve never had a heart problem, they’ve taken their ticker for granted.

And why shouldn’t they?

And why shouldn’t you? It’s just your heart and if it’s beating right along, just leave it alone.

Fixing A Stupid Heart

If you’re born healthy, then you’re born with a smart heart. It knows what it’s doing,

And what it’s doing is pumping oxygenated blood throughout your body.

Then the blood returns, picks up another load of oxygen, and pumps out another round.

It’s called a pulse, but enough with the science.

Look at an open heart surgery in action and you’ll see a shiny mess, a bloody lump, not like this color-coded model I broke in a doctor’s office.

Or a Valentine.

The closest I’ve come to seeing a real heart was the meat cooler at Cash and Carry.

This guy isn’t carrying a clod heart into your hospital room for your approval.

But this is a possibility.

The Tipping Point For Fixing Stupid

I hear what you’re thinking, ‘another old f#ck fearing for his life for the first time.’

Well, besides that, It’s not the first time, pal. I had an older brother. I played dead more than once.

And I hear what you’re thinking, ‘My heart’s fine. I’m not old like you.’

The only reason heart stuff gets in the news is because it’s the top killer.

It’s on top of the list no one wants to be on, victim to, or touched by.

But here we are.

And it’s not you. It’s your mom and dad, your uncle, a friend, a neighbor, the circle tightening with each turn around the sun.

Then it’s you, your wife, your sister in-law, your niece, the knot tightening and twisting in shared tears.

You either take the twists and turns and blame them for choking you off from who you ‘really’ are, tying you down from achieving your ‘potential.’

Or go the other way.

The tear drenched knots that twist and turn eventually dry out and tighten even more with memories and feelings for each other.

To keep them close.

That’s the other way, the other side.

It’s the side you want to share when you say, “Hello.”