Oooh, catchy post title! What lameness are we being drawn into this time? Go forth fearless reader.
It is 2AM. Lying in bed I'm caught between by the gentle, sucking chest wound sound of Bridget's snore who conveniently, is never awake to enjoy these moments, and our dog Heidi, who currently sleeps with her nose-breathing head jammed under my side of the bed doing her doggie best to out-do my better half. As the sole audience member of a bad sitcom recorded with "Dolby-Tard" surround soundtrack, I lie listening to "my girls" try to out-snort each other for a few minutes more. Resigned to the thought that sleep would not come again this night, I slinked quietly from the bed. The not so quiet twin rifle shot sound which erupted from less than youthful knees joints betrayed my otherwise stealthy departure and I became suddenly dismayed that my days as an alter ego Ninja were numbered.
I switched on the stairway light, glanced back and marveled at how Heidi ghosted silently from the bedroom carried on her fur-tufted canine Ninja slippers. She had apparently conceded victory to my wife in the "snore war" and felt being let out for a morning pee was an acceptable consolation prize. More than likely, she couldn't sleep through gunfire and felt duty-bound to begin her day as guardian of the household, and by guardian, I mean one that sleeps a lot. On cue, a celebratory Bridget-snort punctuated the silence, prompted us into the action of descending the granite steps to the living room.
"Pretend for a minute that you don't suck." This Kobayashi Maru (look it up non-Trekkie) of insults signified end-game in the verbal jousting among young Sailors which I witnessed (and once was) many years ago in the Navy. Why this quote popped into my head at this hour is a mystery, but I giggled quietly to myself just the same. I came to adopt this phrase as a twist on the traditional go-fight-win pep talk we usually use to motivate people to excel at whatever mundane task you're asking them to complete. My logic was, and still is, that you don't have to be the absolute best at something, just be better than your competition. If your competition sucks, well just suck a little bit less for the win.
Consider the struggles of the Rick and his group of survivors in the TV series The Walking Dead. If you view survival as winning, then all you have to do is keep one step ahead of the zombies to avoid becoming one. Survival of the fittest simply involves pushing the weakest members to the edge of the herd so they not you become a zombie happy meal. Move a little faster, think a little quicker, suck a little bit less, which is the idea behind the title of this story, as well as a personal philosophy. Because I believe that the edge of humanity's herd is already thick with lumbering stupid people, I sometimes wish for a real zombie apocalypse to occur. However the thought of foraging for food, water, and shelter is daunting, which makes me wonder how far I am from the edge-thinning part of the herd. Cheers for now, zombie fodder!
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