Life Just Got Very Difficult for Someone

This just in ... Life just got very difficult for someone. But we have not been able to find out who that someone is. Nor are we able to ascertain the exact nature of the difficulty or how difficult the difficulty may be. It is entirely possible that the difficulty is horrendous. Or it might just be a note on a windshield saying: "Don't park here any more or we will put a bumper sticker on your car labelling you personally as a not nice person." This bumper sticker reads: "This driver is not a nice person. Honk if you want this driver to go to hell." That may be too many words for a bumper sticker but what it loses in readability it clearly makes up for in the general nastiness of its tone. So if no other driver can read it, so what? Do you understand how difficult it is a write a good bumper sticker? The last great bumper sticker was penned in 1961. It read: "I miss Ike. Hell, I even miss Harry." It was expressing dissatisfaction with Camelot before Camelot even got off the ground. Some people are never happy even if they have the original cast album, which is what people had in 1961. How many people saw the Broadway musical or even the movie and then counted the hairs on Lyndon Johnson's head. Not many because there is no record -- historical record not record album -- of anyone doing it. That's because it would have been difficult. You could see the Broadway show, you could easily do that. But how could you count the number of hairs on Lyndon Johnson's head? You could rip his full-color photo out of Life magazine at the public library and then try. But photo reproduction in that era was not what it is today when it is basically non-existent in terms of what you could photograph with a Speed Graphic, the camera newspaper photographers still used in 1961. The ideal way to do it would have been to find Lyndon Johnson in person sound asleep and then get real close to him and start counting. But the chances of doing that were next to zero. You'd have to be his wife or mistress to get passed the Secret Service. And how many mistresses did Lyndon Johnson have? You start with Helen Gahagan Douglas and then you count forward but it is no easy job. It is a difficulty. Perhaps the someone finding life getting very difficult is facing a similar dilemma. That would make sense as much as anything makes sense anymore. It is very difficult to make sense out of anything. That's what youth leaders are for but where have the youth leaders of tomorrow gone today? No telling until tomorrow when they start making sense. Youth leaders are not here today because they are waiting in the wings at the Youth Leaders of Tomorrow Conference and Expo in Modesto, California. Right now they are mowing lawns because there isn't a lot to do in Modesto. Go there some day and try to have a good time and you will find out just how difficult it can be once you mow a few lawns and rake up all the leaves. Then what are you going to do? Offer to clean the gutters? That is a strategy that worked in the past but may not be viable today and is certainly not as much fun as going to a Broadway show in New York City. Modesto simply cannot match New York, New York in arts and entertainment. So here you are with nowhere to go on Saturday night after you mowed some lawns and raked some leaves and cleaned out some gutters. Sure you've got money in your pocket but it's difficult to make a good choice. There might be a museum where you can guess the hairs on a California Golden Bear. But that's got to be very difficult because bears, let's face it, are very hairy. And bears will not usually stand still while you count all the hairs on their body. One strategy might be to drive down to Disneyland and count the hairs of the Bear Country bears. That's because they are made out of some plastic or cloth deal that the Disney Imagineers dreamed up and there's no real hair there. So you write zero down on your score card. Then you've won but what have you won? You don't know. Who made up this contest anyway and was there ever even going to be a prize or money or anything? So now you're in Disneyland with zero on your scorecard and you realize that you are the someone for whom life just got very difficult.