Not Such a Smartass Anymore...

Throughout life, I've been tagged a smartass. Eventually I just adopted and embraced it. It has sort of become "my thing". There are better pursuits than achieving a higher state of smartass-ness, but this, at least so far, seems to be my calling.

It's a good position to be in, the lofty heights of smartass-ness. It's arrogance without pretense. But there are detractors. Below is a conversation I've hundreds of times following any one of my veritable cornucopia of witicisms that sometimes twist the proverbial nipples of those on the receiving end:

THEM: {Fill in any innocuous statement}
ME: {Fill in acerbic response}
THEM: "Smartass."
ME: "It's better to be a smartass than a dumbass."
THEM: "Well you're still an ass."
ME: "Granted."

And so it would go. Until recently. I've finally been beaten. Oh, I knew it would happen, but I figured it would happen 60 or so years from now, in a retirement home located no place in particular, with a window with a view to a brick wall or a dumpster, with no family around me. With my last breath I'd be a smartass no more, and in that moment realize I'd finally been beaten by time. Well, I got my smartass kicked through the goal posts of life and it had nothing to do with me, or the sterile room I had pictured. There's nothing that takes the breath out of you, takes away your desire to do anything but grasp for you next breath than to have the love of your life, the person for whom you'd trade your situation for whenever they are in pain, tell you that they have cancer. There's not a fucking thing you can do about it. "Where's your remark there, champ? Come on, give it to us, we're waiting..."

I'm quite sure there are other ailments and situations that cause the same feeling, and I'm sure my wife felt orders of magnitude "more everything" than I did, but I've never felt so badly in my entire life.

So began the deconstruction and re-building of me. April 4, 2006. In an airport terminal at LAX, en route to Austin. Life stopped. An unexpected, unwanted defibrillation that sent my literal and formerly orderly heart into chaos. And no one bothered to yell "clear". And then life re-started as I held my weeping wife in my arms later that night--a new life, a different life and one I was ill prepared for--there were no jokes, no comments, no amount of smartass-ness that could make this go away or provide any relief.