Keeping Mama Happy

No. 15 of 31 -- Thermometer series

I don't care which cog you think needs grease, if you don't keep Mama happy your labor's in vain. Is it Persistence? I will be persistent, Keep Mama Happy. Constancy? I will constantly rebut, Keep Mama Happy. Is it Stick-to-it-tiveness? Here's something to stick to, Keep Mama happy. (Staying At It is nearly synonymous with Stick-to-it-tiveness, but you'll agree, nothing functions without Staying At It, because it's connected to Keeping Mama happy.) Keeping Mama happy is our priority.

Sit back, settle in, and let me expound at some length on the wisdom of life. This will pay practical dividends over and over in many ways. Look how things are going for the blog and our great thermometer drive. They're popping off and spewing everywhere, 'cause Mama's one happy chick!

The first application is for children. The second for adults. The third for adult men. Uh, there may not be a third, but we’ll see.

Children, 1st. You children have a long ways to go till you're an adult. Life seems long and hard to endure. But you have to slog it out day by day and year by year. Enjoy! Don't get ahead of yourself. I used to keep track of the slow-moving time before I could leave home and be on my own. Those years just crawled. I was impatient. I still had to learn important lessons, a lot of it by trial and error. Persistence, Constancy, Stick-to-it-tiveness, and Staying at it were the minor lessons.

Every one of those things is utterly important, although I concede, Stick-to-it-tiveness and Staying at It are similar if not identical things. Be all that as it may, the absolute most important thing in the mix is Keeping Mama Happy. (If you don’t have a Mama, you most likely did have one at some point around the time of your birth. You can have lots of Mama-figures in the ladies in your life. Or even in aspects of yourself, the kind of Mama person or aspect who's loving, always wanting your best.)

Anyway, Keep Mama Happy and everyone’s happy. If you merely feel the need to Keep Mama Happy, that's happiness. If you see the priority of Keeping Mama Happy, it means you're putting first things first and other things will follow. If you ever fail, go back to Mama and say, "O Mama!" and let her caress you till you feel you can go on.

I’m an old man now. But not pathetic in any way, able to breathe, walk, sit up and take nourishment, avoiding trouble, etc. I could be pathetic. Picture this pathetic scenario:

Me: “What’s the f—'n use of even being alive?” People I know try to bolster my spirits. “Who would even f—'n miss me if I was dead?” And they’re bolstering my spirits again, “We’d miss you.” Then I have my constant doubts, “F— life and you and you!” I throw up on the dining room table and march out of the room, never to be seen again. Until months later I run into the old gang at the grocery store getting ready for the weekly meeting that very night, a meeting I’ve never been invited back to, and they all pretend not to know me. I’m begging for another chance, “I was just f—'n with your heads that night. I didn’t mean anything really, it was a joke. Yes, I threw up on the table, that was meant as a joke, but I immediately regretted it. The humor was too subtle.” Then they let me come back to the meeting that night, I suddenly feel sick at the table, but I have the Mama spirit/moxie in my spirit: I get up and march to the bathroom like a good boy.

Have you got the moxie on the ball? Mama's that moxie, what you need. 'Nough said.

I come back to the table and share with them the wisdom, the key to life I meant to share that other night but was unable to because I was prematurely evicted: “Keep Mama happy.” They’re at the table looking around at each other in kind of a mock disbelief: “Keeping Mama happy is the key to life?” “Yes,” I say, comfortable in my own skin because I know it’s true.

We dismiss, we go away, then the next week come back, and around the table the verdict is the same, “You are absolutely right! This is the secret of life and success! Persistence, Constancy, Stick-to-it-tiveness, and its near synonym Staying at it, are all vital, critical, needed. But setting aside that, the number one rule in existence — and to a man we realize this — is “Keep Mama Happy.”