the art of having good mornings

you wake up in the morning. bright and early, for a change. the sun is shining. the birds are chirping. and your head doesn’t feel like chandani chowk on a monday morning (chalk up some brownie points for yourself, for that). you think to yourself, “it’s going to be a wonderful day”.

now, if you were watching yourself from the outside, you’d give yourself till the count of ten, just about the time you’d be standing in front of the bathroom mirror. by now the warm fuzzy feeling is madly whooshing out of your body, only to be replaced by the sheer adrenalin thumping horror of what you did last night.

it could be going home with mr totally-completely-absolutely-irrevocably wrong. well, not just going home with him, but somehow spending the night looking at him with the love light blazing in your eyes.

it could be going out to celebrate your friend’s 5 hour old mercedes slr, and on the way back pulling out the ashtray and throwing up in it. (a f -up where horror, amusement, disgust, concern all come together magnificently, don’t you think?)

it could be collecting all the files in your office at the conference table and setting fire to it. only, and this is important, only after having worked for five days and five nights straight.

it could be deciding NEVER to have a relationship again, after having dealt with commitment-phobic men for 32 years. and then going to a bar to celebrate that by picking up a man, who turns out to be the only one in the universe who is looking for a relationship.

i have been witness to, as well a participant of a great many f-ups, and i have to admit this - not everyone can be a f-uper because not everyone has that special talent of orchestrating a truly imaginative f-up.

like all jobs, you require a skill set for it.

you need perfect timing. every f-up requires one or all of the below - wrong place. wrong person. wrong time. (appropriate wrong words). in f-ups, as long as you are wrong, you’re right.

you need to understand that, they are lying when they say, ‘you learn from your f-ups. no, you don’t. you can’t. for the simple reason that no f-up is quite like another one.

you need a short memory span. you can’t make the same f-ups again and again. this just won’t do for a professional. you need to forget them once they’ve occurred and find fresh avenues in which to f-up in.

you need to move on. you need to be able to hold on to your embarrassment/ horror/ incredulity for a certain period of time and then let go at just the right moment to move on to bigger, brighter things. like the next f-up.

those of who were not born with this special talent, need not fret. for you can learn to be a good f-uper. all you need to do is start small, (a school suspension, for example) and then progress, slowly, one tiny f-up at a time, till you’re orchestrating f-ups worthy of several entertainment awards. something that involves a bigger audience, a lingering sense of embarrassment and moving up the rating scale from ass to supersize jackass.

and maybe, then, the sheer adrenalin thumping horror you feel while standing in front of your bathroom mirror will slowly change back into a warm fuzzy feeling. of accomplishment.