Biff! Bang! Pow! -- "Tough As Nails -- Nail Tough"

EVENING:

~Biff! Bang! Pow! Happening right now, Biff, Bang, Pow!~

This is definitely something real, being psychologically "Tough As Nails -- Nail Tough."

There are certain conceptual self-help principles anyone could follow.

You can just make them up. No one has to tell you. Like I told my dentist today, mysteriously, you already know it all.

On being "Tough As Nails -- Nail Tough," I could take a few surgical strikes right now if I needed to.

Except today is more a day to think about it than to do it.

I was in the dentist's chair today and she asked me what I've been doing. Projects. What kind of projects? Self-help projects.

I didn't want to get too specific, you know, the whole scene: Local Man Writes Own Blog, Local Man Teaches Universal Self-Help Truths.

Pretty soon the local newspapers are on the scene. Eyewitness News is looking for a good, oddball feature story...

It can be too much. Next thing I know my waiting room stuffed to overflowing with visitors.

And I might handle it foolishly, let it go to my head. "I will tear down these waiting rooms and build bigger ones!"

Pretty soon I'm inside sobbing from the stress, the impatient people in the waiting room are rocking the building back and forth.

Or maybe they're happy. And people are wanting to be married there. It's like Woodstock, someone gives birth, names the kid after me.

So I didn't say much to the dentist. I bit my tongue. And at one point she was holding it. I came across too mysterious, too secretive.

She asked a theoretical question about God and the afterlife. I'm thinking over a range of answers, any of which would've sounded pompous.

Wisely, I demurred and acceded to one of the options she gave me, something popular but likely untrue. I'm in a chair with a bib on!

Being "Tough As Nails -- Nail Tough" sometimes means keeping your mouth shut, except when the dentist says to open it.

I don't say everything on my mind, believe it or not.

I'm still not "Tough As Nails -- Nail Tough." It doesn't happen over night, except in those cases when it does.

But conceptually it's a worthy goal for anyone. I just don't really NEED to be right this minute.