Keyword: life

  • How Many Licks?

    “How Many Licks?” by Jason Kotecki. 30 x 24. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

    A commercial that appeared on TV when I was a child asked that very question. It turns out that a number of folks have tried to get to the bottom of this.

    A group of engineering students from Purdue University built a licking machine, modeled after a human tongue, and determined that it took an average of 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

    A chemical engineering student from the University of Michigan built his own licking machine and recorded that it required 411 licks.

    And a group of junior high school students ditched machines in favor of human lickers, and reported an average of 144 licks.

    Apparently, the world really may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.

    I remember the first time I took my kids to Wrigley Field. It was the year after the Cubs won the World Series, and the kids were excited to see their favorite players in person. It was a beautiful day, the Cubbies won, and we relished singing “Go, Cubs, Go” with 40,000 fellow Cub fans.

    We looked forward to that game for months. As we do for many of the firsts in our lives. Your first baseball game. Your first kiss. The first time you get to drive by yourself. The first place of your own. Your first child.

    We anticipate the first times and do our best to savor them.

    But the last times are different. They have a habit of sneaking up on us. Undoubtedly, there was a last time that I held my youngest daughter in the middle of the night, in a grouchy sleep-deprived state, comforting her – begging her — back to sleep. But I don’t remember it, because I didn’t realize it was the last time when it happened.

    The first times come with a lot of fanfare. But the last times come and go without a whisper.

    How many dinners do you have left with your parents?

    How many anniversaries do you have left with your spouse?

    How many bedtime stories do you have left to read to your kids?

    How many fishing trips do you have left with your grandchildren?

    How many licks?

    There is no machine we can build that will tell us. Not exactly.

    We can guess, we can estimate, we can hope for the best.

    But I bet that number is a lot smaller than we think it is.

    Live accordingly.

  • Life’s a Wave

    “Life’s A Wave” by Jason Kotecki. 30 x 24. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    The familiar pit formed at the bottom of my stomach like a butterfly battle royal on pay-per-view. It developed after my mom answered the phone and told me it was for me.

    When I was younger, I was afraid of just about everything. New situations always brought an enormous level of anxiety, and phone calls delivered a special level of dread.

    It was a classmate on the other end, asking if I wanted to come over to play.

    For most people, this would be great news, not a situation worth getting nauseous over. But I was not most people. I’ve never been keen on having my plans changed at the last minute. I had a whole day planned of doing nothing ahead of me. Not to mention, I’d never been to Chris’s house before. Talk about a new situation! It was clearly a sensory overload too treacherous for a lazy Saturday.

    I quickly mumbled some excuse about how my mom wouldn’t let me today and hung up. “Whew! That was close,” I thought to myself, eager to return to my regularly scheduled day of surprise-free comfort.

    Only one problem: my mom heard.

    She ordered me to call my friend back up to tell him I could go. Gulp. That wasn’t at all embarrassing! “Hey Chris…hehe…good news…”

    The thing is, I ended up having a great time. There were many similar situations in my childhood in which my mom shoved me out of the nest, and I almost always enjoyed it. Eventually, I started to make little leaps on my own. At some point, I decided I didn’t want to be an 80-year-old guy looking back on my life, wondering, “What if?”

    The fear of regret became worse than the fear of the unknown.

    Life can be a spectator sport if you want it to be. You can watch the action standing safely on the shore. It’s the best way to minimize risk, avoid failure, and stay comfortable.

    The only problem is that it’s not much of a life.

    The real action happens out in the surf. To ride the wave of an amazing life, you have to be willing to leave the shore.

    Sometimes you have to take the plunge into parenthood even though you don’t think you’re ready.

    Sometimes you have to cash in your rainy day fund for a venture that might not work.

    Sometimes you have to book that trip today, because you never know how many tomorrows you have left.

    I cannot guarantee that you won’t wipe out now and again. But the bumps and bruises that accompany a wipeout are more tolerable than the deep ache of wondering “what if?”

    What wave is it time for you to catch?