Altitude Thickness

As at least a couple of people know, Janet and I recently moved to Colorado Springs. It’s a beautiful city known for snow, NORAD, and a toxic substance called altitude.

When I was a young man, naive and impressionable, I would hear the occasional story, platitude, and cliché about altitude that made it seem completely benign – even healthy… like smoking in the ’50s…

My favorite was the phrase: “Put some altitude in your attitude!”

I remember thinking, “Hey, that’s a somewhat clever slogan that’s only slightly condescending in its oversimplification of the multitude of issues endured by the victims of clinical depression. Its complete lack of grounding in reality surely qualifies it to join the ranks of such timeless bumper stickers as Don’t blame me – I voted for Perot, or the ever-popular Stop Continental Drift!!”

But then, I learned more about this menace, this hideous blight that has so insidiously insinuated itself into our attitude-embellishing phrase industry. And the more I learned, the more I realized that I had to do something – I couldn’t just sit by and let our other wonderfully useless, trite, prosaic platitudes (like go with the flow or a bird in the hand will shoot your eye out) be edged out by this evil plague.

As it turns out, altitude is dangerous! It causes excruciating pathologies that have been compared to “flu, carbon monoxide poisoning, and a hangover, all rolled into one.”

Here’s just a partial list of the symptoms associated with this mephistophelogical malady:

1. Lack of appetite, nausea, or vomiting
2. Fatigue, weakness, light-headedness, or dizziness
3. Insomnia
4. Shortness of breath
5. Nosebleed
6. Diarrhea
7. Pulmonary or cerebral edema
8. Retinal hemorrhage
9. Receding hairline
10. Parvo
11. Foreshadowing
12. Involuntary Narnian adventures
13. Sugar high
14. Artificial stigmata
15. Tusks
16. Glowing eyelids
17. Blurred peripheral vision
18. Uncontrolled rhyming
19. Kettle corns
20. Dry mouth

Yeah, right, I want to put some of THAT in my attitude – I don’t think so!

Now I realize, of course, why the whole altitude in your attitude thing is so tempting. It feels good! It rolls trippingly off the tongue, like up your nose with a rubber hose or they can take my gun when they bring lots of bigger guns, and other fun phrases. Our psyches respond to the assonance, the rhyme, and the thoughtlessness. I get that! And I don’t want to be a total ogre (although, I wouldn’t mind occasionally being able to transmogrify into a troll, when the situation calls for it), so I thought I’d remind us all of some tried-and-true substitutes. These have withstood the test of time – and as we all know, old things are old.

So next time you want to throw out a morsel of meaningless malarkey about attitude, try one of these:

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

“One day you’re doing fine, the next day an animal comes along and bites off your head. Go Figure!”

You’re welcome.