POD311 Lyrics

My friend Lucas gave me Dorian Gray. I'm talking about the Oscar Wilde book, not the Swedish pop band, and if you don't already know it, it's this freaky story about this pretty boy, who's got a painting of himself up in his attic and year after year he stays, you know like young and beautiful but the painting itself changes to reflect just- the horrible, like the ugly person he's become on the inside. I don't know, stay young and beautiful forever? Maybe I'd take that deal. Anyway, it's the whole idea that art reflects the soul and sometimes it takes on a life of its own. I think it's true, you know, I look at the work I've done, you know, the art that's up on my walls and it means different things to me on different days. Sometimes I recognize the person behind it, sometimes I don't. Anyway, it's probably a good book, if you're into the Twilight Zone stuff but I couldn't get all the way through it. But the cool thing about Lucas and his books is that they comes with the all good parts underlined, you know, and in this case, he even dog-earred this page for me. Hold on, I have it here, let me find it. Okay, this part says, "Children begin by loving their parents. As they grow older, they judge them. Sometimes they forgive them." Lucas... I love the guy, I do, but he's not exactly subtle. You guys know about the whole mom issue I've been dealing with lately, right? Anyway, well it got me thinking about all the choices we get to make in life, you know, what we wear, what we eat, what kind of people we're gonna hang out with. Maybe you say you have to go to school today, but you don't, you know, you're sixteen you could drop out, but you go because eventually you know that you'll be on your own and you (wanna hang on jobs) ?? so you can eat so you choose to go to school. Really, you're choosing not to starve. Okay. Maybe that's a little simplistic, but my point is, in life, you're pretty much the captain of your own ship. You can choose anything you want. Except one of the things you can't choose is who your parents are. Honestly, think about it, you know, it's complete luck of the draw when you enter the world, there is no reset b___on, no trial period, no 30 day return policy and we can't choose a lot of the baggage our parents hand down to us. I mean, most of them want what's best for us even if what they think is what's best is different from what we think it is, but they leave their legacy of good things and bad things. I don't know anyone who fights harder against his father's legacy than my friend Nathan. And no father fights harder to leave the right kind of legacy for his daughter than my friend Jake. Both ex-boyfriends of mine, by the way. Not that, you know I've got a lot of them, it's just... yeah it's pretty much just those two. Anyway, ultimately, I think it's us kids who make that choice, you know, we're the ones who have to decide to ditch the bad stuff and to take the good stuff our parents have given to us and hopefully pass them on to our own children someday. Ellie, who if you guys have been listening to these podcasts in any kind of order, you know that she's my birth mother and she was telling me about what is was like when she was pregnant, you know, with me and it was - God, I don't know it was so weird. Maybe it sounds obvious but our relationship didn't just begin last spring. I lived inside the woman for nine months. And then I started thinking about what it was like for her to be so young and be pregnant, you know, what kind of choices I would make if that were me. To be that young, and to be standing at the edge of parenthood, I really don't know what I would have done, but I'm glad she made the choice to have me in the first place. It was - it was really brave... and I kinda like being alive. When I first found out that my parents never told me the truth, you know, about me being adopted, God, I was so, so angry, you know, I felt lied to, but now I think of my parents in that situation and what it must have been like and they probably had the best hopes and dreams for me but they didn't even know me yet, you know, I didn't have their genes. How'd they know that I wouldn't end up on an episode of Cops with my pants falling down, you know. Still a possibility of that by the way. Seriously though, the thought must have crossed their minds. Especially once they met Ellie, but they took a chance anyway. They made that choice. It's funny... I just remembered something - I haven't thought about this in a long time - but when I was little, my mom used to tuck into bed every night and she'd always say the same thing: 'If I could line up all the little girls in the world, I'd choose you.' I still even remember thinking it was silly at the time, but every night, "I'd choose you" and I wonder now maybe, maybe she was telling me. I guess Oscar Wilde was right about our parents, you know. We love them, we judge them and hopefully, we forgive them. I find myself doing all of those things or all three of them and if I'm lucky,maybe they'll do the same for me. Goodnight.