Trust me on this, I’ve been a good boy. Zero arrests. Zero loan defaults or bankruptcies. I have had zero speeding tickets! Got sent to the office once in 8th grade, but that is pretty much it.

And here I sit, with pretty few regrets. Sidling up to retirement. Fine family who love me. I mean, we don’t have much money. And we live in a very modest, but immaculately clean house. I never worry about someone from my past coming to exact some revenge. (I don’t think!) But, did I mention that we don’t have much money? And we are piecing together this patchwork quilt of a retirement plan. So . . . getting by.

But I now wonder if mine was such a good choice. I mean, when I was in high school being “a good boy” had some benefits for my close friends and me. But we didn’t have the same, shall we say, breadth of experience as the other guys who weren’t so, um, rule-bound. Or were bolder. Or . . . what am I trying to say . . . weren’t such weenies!

But now, as an adult, I question my life-long rule-based behavior. Consider these recent news items:

  • Michael Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about conversations he had had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, and the Department of Justice recently dropped the case against him.
  • Convicted felon and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen is being released from prison to instead serve time under house arrest amid coronavirus fears. This follows a similar release of felon and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.
  • Norma McCorvey “AKA Jane Roe,” offers a “deathbed confession” saying that though she had been a rallying point for anti-abortionists, actually she was pro-choice all along. In her confession, she says she had become a pro-life activist for the money. “It was a mutual thing, I took their money, and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say.” McCorvey apparently received at least $450,000 from pro-life groups. Then on her deathbed, she said, “If a young woman wants to have an abortion that’s no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it choice.” Wow. OK, I’m ready. Who needs a whore? Gimme a call. For half a mil I’ll claim whatever you say. Hell, I’m 68 – I can probably craft the lie and the deathbed confession at the same time and let y’all decide when to air which parts.
  • A Navy seal was convicted of war crimes — of posing with the dead body of a teenage Islamic State captive he had just killed with a hunting knife – and he gets a presidential pardon. And I’m worried about going eight miles over the speed limit?
  • Nieman-Marcus declares bankruptcy. Nieman-phucking-here-buy-your-honey-a-helicopter-for-Christmas-Marcus.
  • Vice President Pence suggests that states can file for bankruptcy. Here’s a headline from May 22, 2020: “Hertz files for bankruptcy.” Hertz hasn’t managed their money well enough to sustain two months of this shit, and they get to . . . what shall be the term?, . . . restructure? Well, I would like to phucking restructure. I’ve been scraping by my whole life and in two months Hertz gets a do-over?

You know who cannot file for bankruptcy? Individuals whose college loans exceed their net worth.

If I lied to the FBI I’d be so embarrassed I’d have to move to another continent. (Hell, if I got interviewed by the FBI I’d probably die of fear right there on the spot.)

My mom once told me, when I was about eight, “You know, no one who ever committed a crime has gotten away with it.” I guess I was as gullible as she was manipulative. A rough combo. Turns out she was wrong. I wish I had figured that out sooner.

So, I wonder how I might cheat to make these stultifying college loans disappear? How might I get us into some big house (no – not THE Big House – but it seems like no one who looks like me ever goes there, at least not for long)? Maybe sell a made-up tale about global cooling? How about for half a mil I write a convincing treatise on how eating ground-up bits of plastic water bottles simultaneously protects you from the coronavirus and reduces belly fat? Maybe fake my own death?

Hey, if you hear that I drowned while swimming off of Pensacola Beach, and my body was never recovered, please don’t mourn my loss. Don’t say “good-bye,” just “see ya later.”