Problems.

Everyone’s got them. Some more than others and in greater intensity but it is pretty safe to say no one in this world is completely free of problems. You know what bothers me about problems? They don’t seem to change a whole lot. It’s like life handed you a set and you own it and that’s all you get. Why?

I think of it as a wardrobe.

You open it up and sure, today you may choose to wear the late credit card payment and maybe tomorrow it’s your car with a flat tire and next week, just to shake things up, you’re going to wear a bad flu just when you’re out of sick days at work. But you know that next month, when you open your problem wardrobe, you’ll probably have to wear the late credit card payment again, because you had to spend that money to fix your flat and you missed two days at work because of the flu.

See, if you think about it, problems have this annoying tendency to recycle themselves like considerate cans of soda. For a guy living under a bridge and sleeping on a cardboard box, it’s a simple set: find food, get spare change, don’t freeze to death. I don’t necessarily want to try his set. But sure, perhaps you have a big wardrobe of problems with lots of variety and you may go months without wearing the same problem, but sooner or later, you’ll get back to it. It’s your set.

But wouldn’t you like to try a different set?

You know what problem I’ve never had? I’ve never eaten so much lobster that it made me sick. Never happened. I’m sure someone out there has had that problem. Not me. I’ve never lost two million dollars in the stock market. That would be one bitch of a problem. Never had it. I’ve never had someone break into my ten bedroom mansion and steal six hundred thousand dollars worth of jewelry. Someone out there must have gone through that. Not me.

And you know what? That pisses me off.

One of these days, just for kicks, I would like to try a different set of problems. I’m not saying that those problems are any better than mine, they’re just different problems. It would be like sneaking into your neighbor’s house and looking through their wardrobe. You might find that their clothes are not much better than yours, but dammit they are different and I’d like to wear them. I want to put them on and walk around in them for a bit.

At least that’s what I told the police officer as he handcuffed me, but that’s not important.

Is this so much to ask? Wouldn’t you like to wake up tomorrow morning and groan “Oh God, I hope I’m not harassed by those stupid paparazzi today.” Sure, if you’re Brad Pitt and that’s something you have to worry about every day… well, first of all, Hi Brad! I loved you on Fight Club. How the hell did you find my blog?

Second, it might not seem like so much fun to you because that’s your life, but maybe you’d like to try a whole other set of problems. Maybe for a celebrity, the neighbor’s wardrobe would be waking up and worrying that when they walk into a Starbucks, no one pays any attention to them. I know that’s one problem I have, but I’m guessing that’s not one of yours, Brad.

And maybe it will happen one of these days. It certainly happens. There is a guy out there for whom three months ago his biggest problem was whether he would pay the house mortgage or buy another bag of weed because he only had enough for one or the other. Then he buys the right number and suddenly his problem is that his family won’t talk to him because he did not buy them the house in Cancun they asked him for and two hundred different charities won’t stop calling him. But hey, at least he can buy weed.

The point is, everyone’s got problems and more often than not those problems are either caused by not enough money, or too much money. Well, I’ve had a good long taste of the “not enough money” problems so you know what? I’m ready for the second course. Bring it out waiter!

Also, if you’re still there, Brad… umm… Twelve Monkeys? What the hell was that all about?

Originally published 01/23/2012