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2002-11-15 - 5:47 a.m.

Experience is the best teacher.

If that's true, I've had some first-rate teaching in my lifetime. Too damned bad I didn't learn from my mistakes in those episodes! Though not the dimmest bulb in the chandelier, I'm not the brightest, either. I知 the interminable bonehead, blindly bumbling into some sticky situation, and instead of getting wisdom from it, I turn around and do the same damn thing again.

Well, that's not exactly true. There is one experience I haven't repeated. Many, many years ago I was playing in the unfinished back room of the basement and decided the room needed to be divided in two sections. I don't know what I was playing, or why I needed the room severed in half, but with all the infinite wisdom of a seven-year-old I went about inventing a way to split the room. String seemed the best way--definitely better than sneaking some of Dad's boards through the house and down the stairs to build a partition. The interior wall was wood and offered several anchors for my string, but after a thorough examination of the cement outer wall I only found one receptacle to hold my string. An electrical outlet. I rummaged through my stockpile of vital kid stuff and found a pair of needle-nosed scissors, tied my string to the finger holes in the scissors, then to a protruding nail head in the wooden wall, unwound the string across the room and jammed the points of the scissors into the outlet. An explosion of sparks, the house was plunged into darkness, and I yelped and landed on my butt in the middle of the room! I never plugged scissors into an electrical outlet again. I do, at least, possess the infinite wisdom of a seven-year-old.

For most other encounters I'm a repeat offender.

When I was 21 I was introduced to--and eventually addicted to--cigarettes. In the subsequent years I've quit numerous times. Sometimes only for a few weeks, and, although never for the lengthy period of a year, sometimes for several months. Then the urge strikes, I feel deprived and I surrender to the desire to have smoke and carcinogens fill my lungs again. I know when I start feeling like a victim of deprivation--instead of a smoke-free survivor--I'll lose the battle and smoke again. But knowing I知 headed down the road to defeatist thinking doesn't motivate me to be stronger in my effort to quit. No, I end returning to the habit and sounding like a cappuccino maker every morning when I wake up. I tell myself I'll quit again. Maybe next week. Or next month. The first of the new year would be good. Then I remember the anxiety and discomfort and irritability involved in quitting and I quickly abandon the idea. I just don't learn.

Did I learn when asked by the airport security guard last year to "take it all off" he was referring only to accessories like belts, socks, shoes and fanny packs? Hell no, on my second boarding when instructed to do it again I tried to do a striptease in front of hundreds of boarding passengers. And then again on my third boarding.

Have I learned beer or wine or vodka in excess leaves me tired and hung over? Au contraire! I have learned no such thing. On Saturday mornings following too much enthusiasm with spirits--the liquid variety, not the ghostly demons--I yell (but not too loud) at myself for once again taking too much from the ruddy cup. The little timpani player beating out a solo in my head drums to a crescendo as I gingerly drag myself out of bed and tell myself "Never again." Yet, the next time I知 asked to sample the brew I値l tag along, my tail wagging and my tongue hanging out. The perfect little party animal.

I知 just as Norman Juster said: I can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry.

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