08.09.2002 - What Did I Do To Deserve This?

If I'm such a terrible person, why do I so often find myself on the receiving end of other peoples' generosity?

I'm not complaining, mind you. I simply don't understand it. I spend all but approximately one percent of my life either unleashing my bitterness on some poor sap or working towards my ultimate goal of being the most incredibly selfish bastard on my planet. What I'm really doing, apparently, is making an unbeatable case against the idea of karma.

In the past seven days, I've been handed gifts left and right. Some of these have been small thing and others have been unfathomably huge.

The most substantial and important gift I've received in the past week completely solved my housing problems. Things were looking so bleak that we stood on the verge of either splitting everyone up or trying to find a place in Woodland. Then, miraculously, Jackson's mom comes up to visit on Saturday, and about eight hours and a few phone calls later, Jackson's parents are the proud owners of a beautiful home in which I will be living next year.

LOOK AT THIS:

So not only do I not have to worry about where I'm going to live anymore thanks to the generosity of others, I'll have a room in what's easily the nicest house in which I've ever lived. What's more, I don't have to feel so guilty about being lazy and not solving my housing concerns earlier.

As we work on down the scale of relative importance, we arrive at Monday, when I got to see one of my favorite bands with maybe five dozen other people for free. While Ozomatli would have held the free concert whether I had been there or not, I still shouldn't deserve to be a part of something so special. Considering all the people who got shut out of the show, I can only imagine there were at least a handful of kids who are either bigger fans or better people. While I'm inside the show shaking my ass (and perhaps watching myself at the request of Mystikal), there's probably someone out reading to blind kids or healing lepers wishing they could take a two hour break from their philanthropy to see a truly amazing band.

With all this guilt, you'd think I was Catholic or something. What happened?

After I got home from the show on Monday night, I had an e-mail in my inbox from The Moms saying she was enjoying herself in Oklahoma and that she would be leaving from Oklahoma to Las Vegas on Friday. She then offered to buy me a plane ticket to meet her there. Even though the one thing I wanted to do this Summer was to go to Vegas, my initial reaction was a sharp "no." She doesn't have the money to buy me a ticket and I don't have any money to spend while I'm there.

Eventually, however, my selfishness and irresponsibilty won out and I scheduled myself a flight.

I'm writing this one off as a birthday gift so I don't feel quite so guilty.

(If you want to join the crowd and keep giving me things I don't deserve, my birthday is in two weeks.)

Stuff like this happens to me all the time. I mean, someone GAVE ME A WHOLE AUTOMOBILE once and I didn't even have to put anyone's penis in my mouth! You'd think I'd take this as a signal that I should be doing something to better humanity so that the ratio of tallies in the "Jeffy Does Good" column isn't quite so inferior to the number of "Jeffy Gets Good Done To Him" marks. Instead, I'm sure I'll just sit on the couch bemoaning my lack of something or other until it magically appears before me.

Hey, it's worked so far.

-- Jeffy