Here’s To All You Fuck Ups

shitto8 years ago

We are garbage people.

We’re the inveterate disappointments and the lifetime underachievers. We are the could-have-beens, the what-happened-tos, and the if-they-had-actually-trieds of the world. Our holidays are spent drinking malt liquor to numb the feeling of having a conversation with any of our relatives. Out of your entire group of friends, we are the only one who has managed to vomit in your mom and dad’s hot tub twice. If for some reason you needed to know the drug laws in a given state, you’d come to us first.

Our elementary school teachers used to tell our parents that we’d be astronauts, doctors, or lawyers. I’m sure your sweet third grader teacher, who genuinely believed you’d be President one day, would love to hear that you piss the bed drunk twice a month. Whatever aspirations we once held were eventually derailed by our questionable decision making, which in turn led to this never-ending train wreck of an existence we find ourselves in currently.

It’s not all bad, though. We have some famous names among us. That decrepit motherfucker Thomas Edison fucked up the lightbulb a thousand times before he got it right. Ever heard of Lance Armstrong? Tiger Woods? World class fuck ups. Being a terrible person doesn’t make you a world class fuck up. Getting caught being a terrible person makes you a world class fuck up. Even then, some of the by-products of our fuck ups are now elemental pieces of our daily lives. Post-it notes, the microwave, and penicillin were all invented by mistake. I don’t know about you, but if I wasn’t able to cook a Hot Pocket in three minutes or less, I’d drive my car into a fucking river.

Despite being weighed down by our colossal flaws of character, many of us possess qualities that tip the scale back in our favor. Our propensity to make decisions based on impulse and without regard for consequence means we know how to have a good time. A “good time” just depends on your interpretation of the law. We’re brilliant liars (especially to ourselves), and a degree in bullshit is probably the only degree many of us could earn without a substantial volume of amphetamines. Some of us are even exceptionally bright, yet when given every resource necessary to succeed, we choose to ignore our fortuitous circumstances and forge our own path to wherever the fuck we want. We’re good like that.

It goes without saying that our achievements (or lack thereof) are always going to make you look better by comparison. We spend an inordinate amount of time un-fucking our own problems, which has given us a breadth of unusual but often useful knowledge. I maintain that completing a homework assignment on time possesses far less longterm utility than understanding how long most major street drugs stay in your bloodstream. Perhaps most importantly, we find ourselves incredibly loyal to our closest friends because they bear witness to our garbage fire of a life and still choose to be our friends. Those poor fucks.

So gather ’round, you sorry looking twats.

This one’s for us..