This I Know

For tonight's offering, I submit a little list of things I have learned in life, usually the hard way:

1)  Don't accidentally brush up against a wire while working on your cantankerous air conditioning unit.

2)  Along those same lines, don't touch any metal part of an umbrella handle if you find yourself out and about during a lightning storm.

3)  A constantly-running toilet can make your water bill skyrocket.

4)  Never use black enamel-based oil paint on anything you feel ambivalent about painting black.

5)  All deer are vaguely suicidal. 

6)  When doing the splits, don't let any observers rush you.  The damage could be permanent.

7)  Don't stick your whole face into a peony and sniff.  They stink terribly.

8)  Mow across the hills, not up and down.

9)  Check your wallet BEFORE you order the meal.

10)  Never try to burn a tick off your brother.

11)  Never attempt to stop a slamming wood door with a big window in it.

12)  Self-rising flour, cake flour, and all-purpose flour are not the same.

13)  Don't put a cat in a wading pool.

14)  Cheap rum is much worse than no rum at all.

15)  Don't blow a bubble with your bubble gum while riding your motorcycle through a field at sundown.  It gets crunchy.

16)  A kid that you have written off can still turn things around.

17)  There's only ever been one perfect person, and you're not it.

18)  Tease a dog, appease a cat.  Dogs forgive all, cats nothing.

19)  Don't jerk the gears on a hay truck carrying nine big round bales up a steep hill.

20)  It doesn't hurt a baby to eat things that have touched the floor.

21)  Drive like everyone else on the road failed road-rage intervention class.

22)  Use a coaster.

23)  Call home when you say you will.

24)  Give and accept gifts graciously, but simply; do not try to get a reading from the giving or receiving.

25)  If you have to think about it for more than a few moments, it is probably wrong---the wrong thing to do, the wrong thing to say, the wrong thing to buy, whatever.

26)  Don't make out with men with stubble.

27)  Screening calls can save time and temper.

28)  Dreams just clean out all the closet trash in your head and don't necessarily mean anything at all.

29)  Certain animals (pigs, chickens, cows) are for dinner, not for pets, and certainly not for decoration!

30)  Friends might love you more, but family loves you longer.

31)  Be willing to change any list of things learned along the way, for life will surely show you that everything, anything, can change at any time.