Ralphie´s Portal

from Orchids from Vietnam

Can anybody tell me what being an adult is all about? I am a child and I speak and think as a child. Maybe because I somehow always managed to hang on to my innocence. I am a perpetual dreamer and I shall remain thus. I see no earthly reason to change this aspect of my personality.

I like to believe that some day utopia will come to pass and everybody shall love their neighbours as they love themselves. I would like to be able to go out into the street and hug a perfect stranger, without getting slapped or punched in the face for it, because everybody would know that it was done from the kindness of my heart and with no ulterior motive whatsoever.

My grandfather lied to me! He told me that when I grew up, I would understand how the world worked. Being gullible, I believed him. When I turned twenty, I expected my adulthood to arrive with a big bang, but it never showed. I passed me by, for no particular reason, I presume. As decades recede into the foggy depths of time, this mysterious knowledge still continues to elude me.

I shall turn fifty this year and I am in effect a grey-haired kid, who still doesn’t have a clue. My obtuseness seems to know no bounds! If my long-expected package ever arrives, the bang will be so big as to start the universe all over again. When this happens, I am determined not to let mankind make the same mistakes over and over again. Hey, I will have been my Big Bang, so I should have some say over it, don’t you think?

Come to think of it, there are worse things that could happen than to never give up the hope for the world to become a better place. And frankly, I have yet to lose sleep over the fact that I don’t know the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

I have but one great aspiration in life: I hope to one day become a Master of Cuddling. Well, practice does make perfect, folks! Anyone for a cuddle?