When Life Hands You Licorice, FIGHT BACK.
I have recently decided to commit suicide. Don’t start in on me. It’s not due to personal pain or tragedy or heartbreak or financial woes. I sure as hell don’t expect to find a ‘better life on the other side’ and I’m not particularly fed up with this one, yet. It’s just that I have this giant bag of black licorice candy and I’m going to eat it all. Now.

This all came about because of an ex-coworker, a woman by the name of Laura Cleveland who discovered, through a trick of fate, that I am one of ten people in the northern hemisphere who can tolerate the flavor of black licorice. Since that time, she has brought me monthly offerings of the stuff, even after her employment at my place of business ended. Her story is that her somewhat out of touch grandmother purchases the licorice for her father under the delusion that he enjoys it. I suspect that someone is paying her, paying her to kill me with licorice. You see, the amounts keep increasing.
Let’s talk about Good Will Hunting, for a minute, alright? I mean, it had its good points and its bad points, but one of the good points was when Will, when asked to explain why he took the hard road when it came to his nightly beatings, responded with the simple, yet astoundingly acute and profound, ‘Coz fuck him, right?’ (or something to that effect, god forgive me if I don’t accurately quote a line from Good Will Hunting.)

I mean, seriously, that line said it all. In the end every person has a point where they get sick of responding to universal stimulus in the ‘appropriate way’. Most of us, sooner or later, start to feel like life (or the universe or the current community or your friends or coworkers or whoever) is trying to force your hand. Sometimes it seems that, for all your supposed choices, you’re only ever being offered one ‘right’ choice and a bunch of crap that’s gonna kill you in the end. So you spend years of your life with the blinders of self interest guiding you down a single narrow corridor until you’re sick to death of the whole ordeal and start slamming yourself repeatedly into the nearest wall merely for the sake of not walking forever forward.

In all of my experience my sister Jenny, I think, most embodies this ideal, a person who I am convinced would happily be run down by a large, speeding bus rather than move aside if the moving aside bit pertained to someone else’s vision of which direction her life should be going rather than her own. Her life’s choices can be most easily summed up to ‘any path someone else hasn’t told me to take’ and that includes everything from career moves to whether or not to obey basic traffic law. Why? Coz fuck ‘em, right? Sometimes it seems really stupid. It IS really stupid. After all, the ‘smart’ thing is to do what’s best for yourself and everyone else, right? But see, that’s the blinder. That’s the bit that forces your hand. That self interest, pragmatism, even philanthropy we’re taught to express, it becomes a bitter task master, especially when you suddenly find yourself having to struggle just to come out even.

So sooner or later, life throws you a few bean balls, often dipped right before the pitch into a bucket filled with thick, rancid irony, and you’re compelled to respond to it in the most logical way, the most reasonable way, in a manner that will most quickly bring about your return to normal, happy existence. Right? No, wait, people do just the opposite. Instead we’ll toss down our bat, stand right there on the fucking plate, bear our chest, lean forward, take off the helmet, point right at our foreheads and shout, "That all you got? C’mon, you pussy, throw like you MEAN IT!", and our friends and loved ones will stand by in sad understanding and watch us struggle back to our feet time and time again and yet never do the sensible thing and just take our base. Even so, they know they’d probably be doing the same thing in the same situation, and yet we all wonder why. Why, when we get fired from work, do we spend the next month on the couch and never even try and get a new job? Why does it take everyone months instead of days to get over heartbreak sufficiently to enjoy normal social interaction again? Why in god’s name do we spend more money on alcohol when we’re suddenly dirt poor? You know why. Will Hunting told us why. Coz FUCK ‘EM! Right? No one can force my hand.

So I’m sitting on these bags of black licorice. Some people win cash prizes from radio contests at work. Others get flowers from romantic interests. Still others have their crates of fine wine and fresh salmon delivered to work. What do I get? My own dragon’s hoard of black licorice. And the licorice just starts to embody the injustice of it, and the cruel mockery of fate, every instance where I want to go one way and life thinks its funny to try and make me go another. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? Sure, I guess, if you’re some goody goody optimist or something. But then I imagine my sister, picking up one of the lemons, looking life square in the eye and just taking a huge bite out of it, rind and all, chewing deliberately, never breaking that dire stare. Life sort of blinks, taken aback for a second, and coughs. Jenny finishes the first lemon and, even though eating them is obviously agony, grabs a second and calmly, with determination, begins to devour it in the same manner. Life’s obviously not sure what to do, here. All caution, all self interest is suddenly thrown to the wind. The ability to compel has just been lost. There’s nothing the fates can do but sit and wring their hands and hope that sooner or later Jenny’ll see reason. But no, someone comes up and asks for a lemon, even offers to pay for one, and she just turns on them, snarling, "No, they’re MY lemons! Life gave them to ME!" and life throws up its hands in despair and leaves. Because sometimes that’s how it feels. Sometimes you think, "by god I can win this game of life if I just refuse to let it control me."

So the last supply came in about a month ago. It was easily twice the size of the previous one, with four fun sized packages and three 16 oz bags (17.6 oz, actually, life thought it was funny to give me a whole 10% extra at the 16 oz price) and in that month period I have finished off all of it except one of the 17.6 oz bags which, until a few minutes ago, lay unopened in my desk drawer. Well, I’m going to eat the whole damned thing. Today. Before work is over. Coz fuck ‘em.