A permanent mark

I’m afraid to leave a permanent mark, scar or tear on anything. Something traceable. Something that I am responsible for. Something that is serious, like a piece of work or a child. I believe many  feel the same way, which is why we all loved our twenties. Until we became sour grapes in our thirties and now look back and say ridiculous things like, “I was such a child,” “I didn’t know who I was,” “The only thing I got out of my twenties were six tattoos, a college degree and herpes.”

Well, guess what? That was pretty awesome. You know what else? Nothing we did in our twenties was permanent. Except for the tattoos, but you can get those removed nowadays. And there are treatments for herpes, so you only get an outbreak… ok, but the degree…that’s permanent too.

Wait a minute. It is all coming back to me.

This is exactly why we are all afraid of making a mark – we have Twenties Trauma! We took out loans and credit cards and changed majors and started working and bought cars and co-signed and did everything that could have possibly at some point or another ruin our lives.

I should use this most excellent discovery to my benefit. Perhaps I can open a business and help twenty year olds live their lives less permanently – like hickies.

A hickey. That’s right. Hickeyes are so temporary and insignificant that there is no correct way to spell the word – but everyone knows what it is and everyone can spot one when they see one.

If I could only apply this concept to some sort of money making scheme or product.

Hickys are perfect for our disposable world. They are like a fad or a desktop computer. Oh, they are like the perfect houseguest. You’re happy when they first arrive and they don’t stay too long. And, when they do bid adieu to your neck, back or other body part, they leave it exactly the same way they found it.

So, if I could somehow apply this same theory of temporary permanence to my everyday life, I think that quite possibly, I can package it as a self-help empire, “The secret of the hickey universe.”

A sample exercise is giving someone a hicky and monitoring its color over the course of a couple of days. As the intensity of the color diminishes, so will your inner hatred decrease and as the skin regenerates, so will your self-esteem. Another is the ever so important act of forgiveness where the person wronged is invited to make a hickey on your face as hard as they can and you in turn must wear this hideous and embarrassing hematoma like a scarlet letter. You ease your guilt with a newfound feeling of superiority and the wronged person feels badly for doing this to you and getting upset at you in the first place.

Can you even remember the last time you gave/had a “chupon” (hickeey in Spanish or a hiecky given to you by a Spanish speaker, not necessarily a Hispanic and/or Latino)? No, right? Because they live in that chest of memories, those we keep in the back of our minds of things that are only important for the first minute of their existence, like sticker collections or eating sand.

Well, I’m just saying that hockey pucks are like that. What? Wait, what was I saying?