An Exercise in Gratitude

Many thanks to the elastic waistband on my underpants that prevents me from dropping trou when I least mean to, for example, when it's really cold outside.

Muchas gracias for paper toilet seat covers that make public restrooms comfortable enough for me to patronize with my leftovers. And thanks for being septic-tank-safe so that they go down easy when flushed and a volcanic eruption of my own excrement is avoided.

Danke for the plastic casing that wraps the ends of my shoe laces so that they don't resemble untangled candle wicks. How embarrassing 'twould be were someone to mistake them as such and light them on fire.

Domo arigato to real-life robots that seem to always make everything eleven times better whether it's robot soccer or robot culinary arts or robots dancing the human.

Merci to the little pieces of dirt that find their way underneath my fingernails and provide endless amounts of satisfaction when I scrape them out from under there.

Salamat to human eyeballs' inability to process images viewed in the dark and saving me from experiencing too much sight when walking in on my parents...

A Hallmark greeting card with a big "Thank You" emblazoned in a pink heart goes out to that spot on my back that I can't scratch, without which we would never have long wooden sticks with a replica hand fixed on its end. Those things are creepy AND practical.

Thank ye to British accents which are easy to imitate, hardly offend anyone, and used to make every inane thought of mine sound deeply sophisticated. "If H2O is composed of oxygen, does that mean I can breathe underwater??" never came off smarter.

Good lookin' out to pinky toes so that when your bookie comes calling, you have something to sacrifice without really losing much at all.

Much appreciation to the interweb for allowing me to broadcast my essential musings to the world, but mostly to my friends. Otherwise I would still be handwriting these things crayons and toilet paper and hand-delivering them to everyone's doorstep via my 2-speed Huffy.

Sincerest thanks to my 2-speed Huffy for giving drunkards something to pee on at 3 in the morning.

My deepest gratitude to you chin hairs for being there to stroke. My boss really loves stroking my goatee when she has a great idea.

And finally thank you to you, self-help podcast guy who, while I was benching 12 pounds at the gym, told me to thank every possible thing in the world from the gum on my shoe to the glint of a piece of plastic covering a half-eaten pie on the kitchen counter-top of the UNIVERSE. I'm truly grateful you had me busy thanking the pimple in my butt crevasse so I could avoid thinking about the harsh pain the 6th rep of my first set was bringing on. Thank you.