In which Brother shamelessly recycles the philosophical insights of people he's never even met...

We've all heard someone say "I've always wanted to do that!" Whether it's scuba-diving, playing the guitar, or nearly anything else you can name, there's always somebody who, upon seeing it done or hearing about someone else doing it, will utter this phrase.

With this in mind, I'd like to share with you a little story I got from 'Road & Track' magazine back in the mid-1980's... I'm pretty sure the writer was a guy named Peter Egan (this is not verbatim, but it's close enough):

Egan and his friend had been running their race cars around on the local track, which they had to themselves at the time, and had stopped for lunch. As they sat there on the audience bleachers, a guy walked up to the fence and said he had noticed them as he drove by the track. He asked them about their cars and about racing in general, and after a while, he commented "I've always wanted to drive a race car!" Egan's friend replied, "No, you haven't."

The spectator was a bit disconcerted by this, and asked Egan's friend what the hell he thought he was talking about. The friend replied, "You HAVEN'T always wanted to drive a race car. If you HAD, your car would be parked over there next to ours, and you wouldn't be standing out there on the wrong side of the fence."

The spectator started to make excuses, but Egan's friend cut him off: "Don't give me that crap about other responsibilities! Egan here has a wife and a job, I have a wife and a job and a kid, and we're still here! Is that your car over there?" The spectator confirmed that the tricked-out Nissan 300ZX was his.

"For what all those flashy bits on your car cost," Egan's friend continued, "you COULD have gotten all the modifications you need to race it -- it's a good car for Showroom Stock class. Or you COULD have bought a less-expensive car to drive to work, and gotten a lower-end race car with what you had left over. Your first few insurance payments on that thing would have covered your driving school." The spectator looked confused, then asked how he could have been expected to know about that.

"The same way Egan and I did," the friend responded. "We were interested in racing, so we kept up with it -- we read the magazines, we went to races, we ended up meeting people who raced -- same way anybody finds out about anything they're interested in! The fact that you DON'T know any of this stuff is just more proof that you DON'T really want to race all that badly! You just think it's cool to TALK about wanting to race!"

After the spectator left, Egan commented that his friend had been a little harsh with the guy. The friend explained that it really annoyed him when people claimed to have "always wanted to do" something, but were really just running their mouths.

"People say 'I always wanted to skydive'!", he went on, "but they never pick up the phone book and look for 'Skydiving Instruction'. What they really want is for someone to land a plane in front of their houses, toss 'em a parachute, and say 'Get in the plane! We don't have all day!' They've always wanted to do something... provided it doesn't take any time, money, or effort of any kind whatsoever!"

I thought this little story made a lot of sense. Ever since reading it, I've thought of things I did and didn't want to do in that context -- is it something I actually could do? Yes? Why haven't I done it yet? Hmm... I guess it's not really that important to me, is it? And if I DO actually want to do it, when am I going to get off my lazy ass and start?