Possibly one of my biggest regrets about my life as it is right now is that I don’t read.
It’s fucking tragic when I think about how back at varsity when I was reading English Honours I was motoring through about a book a week, some of the best literature ever written, and now I read about a book a year.
And it shows too. I used to be all clever and stuff and could write good, but now all I can do is shoot a buncha shit on my cell phone and work computers to make dorky internet videos and stuff.
Anyway, I digest.
For my birthday, J-Rab got me “Scar Tissueâ€, Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography and I’ve eaten that book alive, devouring entire chapters whole as the words rushed into my mind to fill the empty space that literature used to occupy.
It also helps that it’s a pretty amazing account of the life of one of the world’s craziest motherfuckers still alive.
I mean we’re talking about a guy who lost his virginity to his dad’s 18 year-old girlfriend when he was 11. And what’s even crazier is that not only did his dad know about it, but he brokered the deal after Kiedis asked him to!
It’s a wild read, but while I’ve loved every page of that book, it’s also made me think long and hard about my own life and how tame and boring it is in comparison.
The funny thing about life is that all those naughty kids back in school that everyone thought would amount to nothing seem to come out of the system with an edge that ends up getting them really far in life.
I think it’s because they get used to being confronted and put on the spot and being the centre of attention and those experiences actually equip them really well later on in life.
The people that break all the rules are the ones who end up making them one day.
If only I’d known that back when I was a kid maybe I wouldn’t have wasted my childhood and a good portion of my adult life so far colouring in the lines instead of drawing my own.
-ST
