At the conclusion of one of the earlier strips in its run, the whimsical, wonderful and often brilliant Bloom County gave the world the following piece of wisdom:
Life’s greatest joys are its minor triumphs.
With this in mind, I pose a simple question to you — what small, relatively unimportant skill do you have that nevertheless makes you just a little bit proud? What minor triumphs give you a measure of joy, no matter how meaningless in the grand scheme of things?
Me? I know how to fold fitted sheets.
I can do accurate impressions of Gollum and Yoda.
I can always identify a song playing in a store, no matter how softly it is playing.
I can remember arrangements of songs I’ve only heard only once, and separate out, say, the bass line, or the underlying cello counter melody, years later. (But I still have a hard time remembering the names of people I met this morning.)
I can watch late night talk show monologues or sitcoms and often know the punch lines before they’re delivered.
I can read blogs at work, listen to MST3K in the background and still be productive at pushing pixels.
I have a little plaque celebrating a state title in poetry reading from my Senior year of high school.
Hey, can’t post that without spilling what poem you read…
Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo”.
I had to come up with a very different cadence for it to counter the whole ‘Dead Poets Society’ version.
I can write complete sentences that can also double as haiku.
But can you write a sentence (maybe two) that might be best described as “stealth blank verse”?
I once wrote a sentence quite clever with potential to move like a lever but to get where to stand there wasn’t no land so I shrugged and said “no loss, whatever”.
Bravo!
I do a really excellent dog bark and cat meow — I’ve fooled both humans and animals.
Can you do an elephant?
I know how to do an elephant, but that skill remains fairly unpolished, since I seldom come across any to talk to.
It’s exhausting. I almost pass out each time!
Mine comes out halfway in between elephant and shofar, so I only do it when I’m at the zoo on Yom Kippur.
I stand witness that Dr Russell Sauders has indeed, this week, folded fitted sheets before a rapt audience. (Although he did have a little help, though not perhaps necessary).
I have an exceptional sense of smell. My wife has the ability to feel any and all mosquitos that land on her. We talked about this today actually.
I can cook bacon. The Internet’s infatuation with it aside, not very many people can cook bacon.
You’re going to have to explain. I’m pretty sure I get cooked bacon everywhere.
People put bacon in a pan and take it out when it’s “done”. That’s not the same thing as cooking bacon.
It should not look like this or this. Most restaurant bacon is pretty bad.
I can make a pretty good salad.