Essay on Life Part 1

I have decided to keep track of my observations and opinions on life. Here is the first part of an essay I've decided to write about them. More to come as it progresses.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I think I try pretty hard to figure things out. Through the course of my lengthy eighteen year life, I have come to several conclusions about life which I think should be paid special attention to.
Number one: If you don’t have something useful to say, don’t say it. Listen up all you Captain Obviouses out there. This one’s for you. The basic criterion for this rule are: Will what you say contribute significantly by adding knowledge or by furthering the conversation? Do people already know what you are about to say by using things known as “senses?” Has someone already made the point that you are about to make, but with different phrasing? Because if so, you should be accused of plagiarism of the mouth. Now, rule #1 was established because of my family and the fact that they hate to follow this rule. Not only have they achieved the Captain Obvious status, they have actually been promoted and are now General Obiviouses. A typical occurance would be something like this. A family gathering. The older cousins sit around jealously watching the younger cousins open mountains of presents. Finally! The presents for us! I open my package to find a nice purple shirt laid amongst the tissue paper. Mom comes over. “Oh my gosh! Honey, it’s purple! Do you see that? Wow purple is my favorite color. That is such a nice shade of purple. Who gave you this? Oh do you see that purple?” At this point, I turn to her and say, “Why yes mother. God has blessed me with this wonderful gift called vision. And since you’ve been on every doctor visit with me since I was born, you should know that I often use it and that I, in fact, am not color blind.” She then responds with a terrible look that would be a slap were we not in public. As you can see, saying that the shirt was purple did not contribute to the conversation whatsoever. Were I not even a little sarcastic in my response, it would have probably been an abrupt, “Why yes. It is purple,” leading the conversation on a bridge to nowhere. Maybe if the conversation was “Oh this is from Gap! I heard they enslave African children to harvest their cotton!” Then maybe we could have gone somewhere with that. Maybe. As you can see, sometimes it is best to say nothing at all. Some people call me quiet. I call myself selective.