People always say to me, they say, “Rob, you have it all figured out.” One time I told this to one of my friends, I told this friend how people always say this to me. And this friend said, “Rob, I think they’re saying it sarcastically, like you say something, and then they say that, that you have it all figured out, but they’re not serious.” My friend has a terrible way with words, that’s why that sentence was so long and repetitive, because it was a quote. My friend obviously has nothing figured out, including sentences, including sarcasm, including conversations that I’ve had with other people about which he obviously doesn’t know anything, except for what I just told him, and especially including me having everything figured out.

Because I do. I have it all figured out. All of it. It’s one of the main reasons why I never play crossword puzzles, or Sudoku, or those books of riddles and brainteasers. Because I already know that I’ll just look at everything for a second and I’ll already have had it figured out way before my eyes even have a chance to transmit and translate what I’m seeing into whatever language my brain-cells speak that allows them to turn the light from the visible spectrum into something I can then see. See even that I have figured out, how light works and how eyes and brain-cells work. I have everything figured out.

But yeah, no crossword puzzles. I can never play poker or blackjack because nobody wants to play cards with somebody who has it all figured out. They kick people like me out of places like that. I’m talking about casinos. Maybe you knew that already, maybe I didn’t have to spell it out for you that I was talking about casinos. It’s just that it’s hard for me, a guy who has so much figured out already, everything really, it’s difficult sometimes to relay information to other people, who probably don’t have anything figured out. And so I find myself always dumbing it down maybe way too much. Because if I were writing a blog post for myself to read, it would only be like two or three words, and from those two or three words, I’d be able to extrapolate everything that a regular reader needs a whole page of text to understand.

So I was telling all of this to my friend, about me having it figured out, about no crossword puzzles or dice games, and he interrupted me, he said, “Ha! You can’t do crosswords? What do you do on long plane rides to keep yourself occupied? Looks like you don’t have everything figured out after all!” But my friend doesn’t know anything. I had that problem figured out even before I ever took my first plane ride. I just buy a whole book of word finds. You know, those squares of letters? And you have to find words, like sideways, or vertically, or diagonally, or backwards?

I told this to my friend, about the word finds. And he interrupted me again, “Ha! So it looks like you don’t have it all figured out, because you have to find the words!” I really wish that this guy wasn’t constantly interrupting me. If he’d let me finish I’d explain, and the explanation would be a lot shorter, because it wouldn’t be peppered by all of his annoying “Ha!” this and “Ha!” that. Everybody knows word finds aren’t something to be figured out. They already come pre-figured out. All you’re doing is looking for stuff. There’s no figuring out involved. Any idiot could do them; you could just point your pencil at every single letter until you find every single word.

Having said that, I never do word finds that way. I just look at the page, take all of the letters in as a whole, and I can see every single word on the list. I even see words that aren’t on the list. I even see words in different languages. When I was a little kid I used to love it when the teacher didn’t feel like teaching that day and she’d pass out photocopies of word finds. And my friends and I would find all of these non-listed words, like sex, or butt, and we’d sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Eventually the teacher would come over and be like, “All right, what’s all this noise about? Am I going to have to separate you?” and she’d snatch the word finds out of our hands and look at the words we’d found, like ass, or poo. They were always usually three letter words, very rarely four letters, because, like our teacher used to explain while she was trying not to laugh, trying to act all serious, that these words were mistakes, that whenever you put random letters together, you’re going to get some accidental words.

But I had this figured out too. No way could these be mistakes. The guy who’d been hired to make these word finds probably thought it was the stupidest job in the world, and he probably spiced his day up a little by throwing in some fun words, like pee, or vag. And he’d hand them in to his boss and be like, also trying really hard not to laugh, “Here you go boss, all done with my word finds.”

It’s not that difficult to imagine the guy’s boss only giving it a very brief once-over, even though he calls himself a boss, even though his title is technically editor, even though he has to officially give the go ahead on every word find, before it’s published, he’s not looking for tiny funny words. He’d probably notice if it said penis. In all of the word finds I’ve done, I’ve only seen penis once. And it wasn’t one of those adult word finds. Those take all of the fun out of it.

I had it all figured out, I could see it in my head, this guy, fed up with his job, he wants to get fired so bad, and so he puts penis in this little kid word find, and of course the boss doesn’t find it when he’s checking it, but it comes back to him, all of these teachers, my teacher, calling up the publishing company, complaining about indecency and how she can’t get her students to stop laughing. Not only did that writer get fired, but his boss probably got fired also, for being one of the world’s worst editors. That’s what I would do if I had to make word finds all day, the perfect way to stick it to your boss. Because, and I know I’ve said it like eight times already, but it’s true, and it’s always worth repeating, that I have it all figured out, and my friend actually said that to me, finally, he admitted it, and he wasn’t being sarcastic, he was dead serious.