Say YOLO to the Jacket

Apparently I am sufficiently philosophical (or, more likely, self serving) to have abided by some degree of "YOLO" for years, but I am way too un-hip to have ever heard the term before last week. YOLO. You only live once. It's not the first painfully obvious phrase to be memorialized in an acronym, but, along with its new status, the admonition to "go for it" because you only live once has become a battle cry for death defying recklessness.

Case in point. An elementary school teacher fills out the following detention note: 

Now I know there's a teacher shortage, and as far as I can tell if you show up most of the time and don't molest your students tenure is virtually guaranteed, but why recklessly expose your tendency to misspell and to misplace modifiers just to show off your firm disciplinary hand? I'm all for YOLO, but sometimes the rewards just cannot be worth it. Not to mention unfair. This was probably the first of many rude awakenings for Collin, a little boy who not only took the rap for an entire class screaming YOLO but who also will never know how to spell "sandwich."

Sometimes, YOLO is the way to go. It's the way we scratch our itches and scratch items off our bucket lists. It's the way some folks justify sky diving, although I fail to see how expediting death satisfies ones need to live that one life we're given to the fullest. Sure, I like to live dangerously, but my idea of a YOLO adventure is to go out west and ski on really big mountains. As long as there's a bunny hill. With no trees. And not a lot of people. And lots of hot chocolate waiting for me in the lodge.

To be painfully honest, YOLO usually comes up for me when I am shopping. Not grocery shopping -- that comes under the purview of a different acronym: CDIJ. (Cold day in July.) Clothing shopping, when I am faced with an earth shattering decision about whether I should buy something useless and overpriced. One of those WWJD moments, assuming Jesus had been brought up by someone like my mother who only shops retail.

YOLO or NO NO? Sure, you only live once, but it's hard to live very long when there's no money left in your bank account, so the decision to go hog wild on a beautiful blue suede jacket the other day was not one to be taken lightly. But the nice small town saleslady (small town bumpkin my ass; the savvy little bitch had me at "hello") threw in the great pair of sandals I had come in for and knocked more than a few shekels off the price of the jacket which, I am told, will never show water spots, even if I wear it in the rain. How could I say no? YES! I said yes to the jacket. YOLO, and I'm gonna look sharp (and dry) while I'm at it. It's called perspective.


Like Elvis said, (and I'm paraphrasing a little here), you can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor from an old fruit jar. Or spell sandwich wrong. But YOLO honey, lay off my blue suede, er, jacket.