Andy Rooney_ 60 Years Of Wisdom And Wit Part 18

-Wherever you go for whatever reason, it will turn out you should have been there last week.

-When you buy something, it's always a seller's market. When you sell something, it's always a buyer's market.

-The same things keep happening to the same people. -Enthusiasm on the job gets you further than education or brains. -Money is not the root of all evil.

-Every so often you ought to do something dangerous. It doesn't have to be physical.

-Patience is a virtue. Impatience is a virtue, too.

-All men are not created equal but should be treated as though they were under the law.

-The people who write poetry are no smarter than the rest of us, and don't let them make you think they are.

-Patriotism is only an admirable trait when the person who has a lot of it lives in the same country you do.

-Apologizing for doing something wrong is nowhere near as good as doing it right in the first place.

-If you want something you can't have, it is usually best to change what you want.

-The only way to live is as though there were an answer to every problem-although there isn't.

-New developments in science and new inventions in industry don't usually improve our lives much; the most we can hope is that they'll help us stay even.

-You may be wrong.

-You should be careful about when to go to all the trouble it takes to be different.

-It is impossible to feel sorry for everyone who deserves being felt sorry for.

-One of the best things about life is that we are happy more than we are unhappy.

-Not many of us are able to change our lives on purpose; we are all permanent victims of the way we are, but we should proceed as though this were not true.

The Following Things are True A great number of people are unsure of what's true and what isn't. From time to time, in an effort to help those who are confused, I present lists of things that are true. Herewith: -More movies are too long than too short.

-In spite of any recession, prices always go up. They may not be going up as fast in hard times, but they still go up.

-If Beethoven was played as loud as rock music, I wouldn't like that, either.

-People don't think they really look like pictures of themselves.

-You don't see as many parakeets or canaries in cages as you used to.

-Chinese food isn't as popular as it was twenty years ago. Here, I mean. It's just as popular as ever in China.

-Self-service hasn't made gas any cheaper.

-A gas station attendant always screws the cap back on the tank tighter than I do.

-If there was no crime, local television news broadcasts would have to go out of business.

-Considering how poor they say they are in Russia these days, it's surprising how many of them wear those mink hats.

-Imelda Marcos' popularity in the Philippines is enough to shake your faith in democracy.

-Cough drops aren't much help when you want to stop coughing.

-We're all a little prejudiced about something.

-We make more friends than we have time to keep, but we make more enemies than we have time to fight, so it evens out.

-Believing there are differences in races doesn't make anyone a racist.

-It's surprising how convincingly someone who's guilty can say he didn't do it.

-There's a delicate balance between the pleasure of being with people and the pleasure of being alone.

-Things are at their worst when you can't sleep in the middle of the night.

-A lot of people spend too much time being careful.

-People who say that breakfast is their favorite meal don't enjoy food much.

-Getting up and down off the floor is easier when you're young.

-It doesn't snow as much as it used to and, furthermore, it never did.

-If you have a vague feeling you may have forgotten something, it's absolutely certain that you've forgotten something.

-The handicapped don't use many of the parking s.p.a.ces set aside for them.

-We all a.s.sume we're smarter than when we were younger-but probably not.

-Licking a stamp or an envelope is a disgusting thing to do.

-No matter where you stood, the war in Vietnam was one of the worst episodes in American history.

-You get so used to what everyone looks like in their clothes that you don't think about what anyone looks like naked-and it's a good thing.

-When checking a cookbook, look for the noun, not the adjective. For mola.s.ses cookies, don't look for "mola.s.ses." Look under "Cookies, mola.s.ses."

-We're lucky the j.a.panese don't speak English.

-Generally speaking, shoes don't fit very well. We just get used to where they hurt.

-Cheerleaders with short skirts and megaphones are out-of-date and have no effect whatsoever on the performance of the team they are exhorting.

-People use coffee tables a lot more to put junk and magazines on than they use them to put coffee on, but the name sticks anyway.

-A dining room table twenty-nine inches high is too tall to eat from comfortably, but that's what most tables are. In some restaurants, the table is too high and the chair is too low.

-All television programs should be broadcast simultaneously on radio.

-Three-quarters of the homeowners in America never use their front door.

-Men's unders.h.i.+rts aren't long enough when you're working around the house Sat.u.r.day because they pull out at the waist when you bend over.

-I don't drink beer from a bottle and I don't see why anyone ever drinks it from a can. I don't drink a beer very often and cannot imagine drinking two. When I drink a beer, it tastes best if I wet the gla.s.s and chill it in the freezer for a few minutes first. Two make me bilious.

-No one in prison for murder is guilty when they tell their story on television. I've never seen a guilty murderer.

-Two-door cars are a pain in the neck and I'm never buying another.

-They ought to play the second half of the Monday Night Football game first so we'd all know how it came out without staying up past midnight.

-It's apparent to me how old I am when I read in the paper that they're handing out condoms to kids in the New York City schools. I didn't know what one was in high school and wouldn't mention the word in mixed company to this day.

-The shades are always down in my office. If it's a beautiful day outside, I don't want to know.

-People who don't remember when you had to choke a car to get it started are lucky.

-When you come up to the checkout counter in the supermarket with a shopping cart full of groceries, the cas.h.i.+er always says, "Will that be all?" or "Is that it?" Does she think you're just leaving the stuff with her while you go get more?

-There is a definite difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola and one is clearly better than the other. I can't even drink the other.

-They say squid and octopus are catching on in American kitchens but not in ours.

-Most kids in school like their teachers.

-Not many Americans could fill in a blank map with names of the United States even if it had the outline of the states on it.

-Stores with the cheapest merchandise use cheap bags that often break through at the bottom before you get to the car.

-If it wasn't so annoying, it would be amusing to hear politicians speak less than the truth most of the time.

-I'm fed up with stories every year about whether this is going to be a good or a bad Christmas for stores. There's just so much economic news I want at Christmas. What I want to know is, is it going to be a good year for us us?

-It's hard to get used to your age no matter what age you are. The trouble is, you're that age for such a short time. Just when you begin to get used to it, you get older.

-When I hear a promotional ad on television for news shows and they tell me about a story they're going to have on tomorrow, I don't watch it. If they knew what the story was yesterday, it's not news, it's history.

-It's easy to start hating someone on a television news broadcast. If the newscaster's mannerisms annoy you, man or woman, you start paying more attention to them than to the news and it ruins the show for you. It accounts for why you hear people say, "I can't stand Peter Jennings. I hate Dan Rather. Tom Brokaw is terrible." Not to mention Andy Rooney, of course.

-Less than half the fresh fruit you buy is any good, but you keep buying it anyway. You're always hoping for that perfect tangerine, that perfect melon, that perfect peach or pear. Most fruit-store fruit rots before it ripens. Melons are the most expensive disappointment. Only one out of ten is any good. Unfortunately, that can be great.

-On vacation I sleep less. I hate to waste it.

-When you pump your own gas at a self-service place, it's hard not to end up with a little gas on your hands. There might be a market for a machine that dispenses little packets containing a piece of wet cloth or paper that you could clean your hands with. I'd pay a nickel but not a quarter. Maybe that's the business we'll go into.

-It's difficult to stop the gas pump on an even amount of money.

-You still see someone paddling a canoe on a lake or river once in a while, but I haven't seen anyone rowing a boat in years. The basic flaw in a rowboat has always been that you can't see where you're getting to.

-There's too much gla.s.s in a car on a hot, sunny day. We don't need all that winds.h.i.+eld to see out.

-There are a lot of things around the house that aren't any good that I don't throw out.

-I've pa.s.sed a lot of Christian Science reading rooms in cities around the country, but I've never seen anyone reading in one. I'm not sure whether they're for Christian Scientists or whether they're to attract people from other religions to Christian Science.

-People don't know much about any religion but their own-and a lot of times, they don't know much about that one, either.

-It's hard not to drop at least one sock or a piece of underwear when you're emptying the clothes dryer.

-The weather is almost always something other than normal.

-Hollywood movies are the best art America produces.

-I can't help wondering where all the Russians are today who bugged the hotel rooms of American visitors and spied on everyone who came there just a few years ago.

-The pencil that comes with an expensive pen and pencil set is never satisfactory. You have to be able to sharpen a pencil.

-If the mailman knew what I was going to throw out without opening, he could save both of us a lot of trouble by throwing it away before he delivered it. I'd like to give our mailman power of attorney over the mail.

-The best thing that's bad for you is b.u.t.ter.

-I can name everyone who lived on our block on Partridge Street fifty years ago. Most people don't know the names of all their neighbors today.

-Tying a shoelace is a small but satisfying thing to do.

-The lives of people who plan carefully don't go according to plan any more often than the lives of people who don't plan them at all.

-There are a lot of magazines with one or two articles in them that I want to read but the magazines are too expensive to buy for one or two articles. The time should come when we can each make up our own magazine from a computer index in our home and have every article we want to read from a lot of different magazines.

-Automobile tires are better than they used to be. Paper handkerchiefs like Kleenex are not.

-If a bottle of wine is really good, you can't afford it.

-There aren't nearly as many shoe repair shops as there used to be because people don't wear out the soles and heels of shoes by walking on them much anymore.

-Learning how to type should be mandatory in grade school.

-When I was in high school, the final score of a basketball game was 38 to 29 or, at the very most, 47 to 36.

-There are some good things on television except when you want to watch. If there are two good things on the same night, they're opposite each other. There are usually some good things on the night you have to go out, too.

-It is comforting for people with illegible handwriting to know that a lot of brilliant people have terrible handwriting.

On the other hand, of course, a lot of dumb people don't write so you can read it, either.