WIR: “It Is Perfectly True, As Philosophers Say, That Life Must Be Understood Backwards. But They Forget The Other Proposition, That It Must Be Lived Forwards.”

I was eight years old when I first saw dad roll a joint.

Welcome to ‘What I Read (WIR)’, a series of commentaries about phrases, quotes, or aphorisms that I find particularly gripping at the time.

Enjoy.

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Dad told me to “keep my eyes up” when I was a kid. When I didn’t, he punched me in the stomach.

“See,” he’d say. “If you weren’t stuck staring at the ground, you would’ve seen that coming.”

To be fair, dad got hit a lot. And when you’re a nail, you’re always looking for hammers. And the older he got, the more hammers he noticed. Or rather, created.

I was eight years old when I first saw dad roll a joint.

I learned what drunk looked, smelled, and acted like a few years later. You’d be amazed at how quickly the levels of drunk begin to feel like achievements in a video game.

There was easy-going drunk, philosopher drunk, regretful drunk, belligerent drunk, and passed out drunk.