The Diarrhe

Today, as I was walking through my old stomping grounds at STC I overheard Girl #1 tell Girl #2 something: “Katie said she thought these shoes were cute. She was like, ‘Oh my god your shoes are so cute!’”

I think I’m going to start paraphrasing people before quoting them in conversation because it really gets the point across. I mean, I don’t even know Katie but I absolutely know how she feels about the shoes. It’s like that time my English teacher told us that in effective writing, rhetorical devices were nearly as important as actual content. She said, “using rhetorical devices is almost as important as the actual content.”

Part of the reason there’s a glass ceiling is the proclivity of men to bear larger risks. This indisputable fact is documented by everything from insurance premiums to dating patterns in recessions. Essentially though, there are real gains that can be translated into business success by being socialized the way a man is. Anecdotally, we can all see scores of businesspeople who take out frightening loans or speculate on apparently dumb shit who now drive German-made cars.

I raise this point because it’s dawned on me that I’m not a huge risk taker. Anecdotally, I’m very aware of the risk-bearer who instead spends his day’s earnings at the LCBO. His coin flip was tails, so he now shrewdly targets German-made cars at stop lights to ask for spare change.

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I could die today. I mean, it’s not good timing but I could if I wanted to. And I wonder how many people can really say that. As justification for idle hedonism and lack of forethought, many of us in our twenties cite our mortality as reason enough to live in the moment, to take that leap or kiss that girl given a shred of opportunity.

On the other hand, I’m much more aware of my own mortality. I’ll often ask myself what would happen if I died today, and I can say with relative certainty that I’ve done what little I could to prepare. Those twenty-somethings are using one another as validation; if it’s not clothes or music it’s who shows up to their birthday parties. It’s how drunk they were last night while they were “living life”. And maybe they’re studying hard on the side to be somebody later. But what if you died?

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