Comparison

            My husband Mike read yesterday’s piece about me giving a ride to a quasi-homeless guy named Sam.  He praised my kind impulse and then said I was right to assume he would be horrified and appalled. 

            He said the issue is that we have no ability to tell the difference between a harmless person and a sociopathic killer.  Ted Bundy, he said, and I googled to confirm, would wear his arm in a cast or sling to get women to help him carry things to his car, before shoving them inside and taking them off to be tortured and killed.  “OK, I get it, I get it,” I said, “no more giving rides.”  And he said, “That would be good.  Call the guy a cab or an Uber.”

            So that’s the postscript to yesterday. 

*  *  *

            Now, today.  All my friends have private jets and are supermodel fit and thin.  Well, not all of them, but some of them.  And others may not be that level but they do have more appealing finances and physiques than mine.  And I see other people around, other grown up kids of my mom’s friends who have things like Oscars and bestsellers and museum exhibits.

            My mom was commenting on the accomplishments of one of her friends’ kids recently and mused that perhaps I needed to move back to New York to be in the right mileu for achievement.  I told her that I had been in that mileu and had chosen to leave it.  I told her that I did not begrudge anyone any of their accomplishments and successes, that I was having a nice life, my life, here, and enjoying it. 

            I don’t think she believes me.  But I believe me.  Yes of course a jet would be nice and an extra few inches of height would mean I could buy the regular leggings and not only ankle length, which might be cool.  And who doesn’t want external signs of approval for their creative endeavors?  I totally do! 

            So I met up with my friend Melli who is an international Pilates superstar and she was looking at a picture on her phone of her sister the elite trainer’s 6-pack of abs and feeling somewhat shitty because Melli does not have a 6-pack of abs, even though she has many more well-developed muscles than a normal human being and I can’t imagine looking like her and ever feeling anything less than Very Superior Physically.  And yet.  Here she was, telling me that she simply refused to count grams of carbs or something like that which her sister does to get those abs and being defensive about wanting to eat sautéed rather than steamed items.

            I was like, “Holy sheet, are you kidding me?”  And she was like, “I know, I know, comparison is the thief of joy.”  And I loved her even more for quoting Teddy Roosevelt standing there rocking her mostly-mesh full-length lulu’s, contoured jawline, and eyelashes as long as my fingers.  It’s okay.  I thought.  We are all okay as we are, we are beautiful as we are.  If I can admire her even though she feels less than sometimes then I can admire myself even when I feel less than, and just keep going.