Chance of a Lifetime

Almost all the contestants on American Idol say that it’s the chance of a lifetime and I guess, for someone who’s 18 years old and has never been outside of some small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere middle America, it must seem like that, but there’s something sorta sad about people believing—even correctly—that they’ve only got one shot to make something of their lives and if it doesn’t work out this one time, then that’s all there is to it.

I’d like to think that we get lots and lots of attempts to turn our lives around and that we can fail innumerable times before we reach the end of the road. I want to be able to blow my one big chance again and again and still have one more opportunity to make a fool of myself or be made sport of or simply be forgotten as time passes me by.

I’m trying to think of what might count as my chance of a lifetime: perhaps it was losing that spelling bee in second grade; or maybe it was finishing last in the high jump when I was 10; or it could have missing out being a National Merit scholar in 11th grade; but then again, maybe it was when I didn’t qualify for the San Francisco International Comedy Competition in my 20s; or conceivably it was I wasn’t cast in that John Guare play back in college; or some might say that the chance of my lifetime was when I didn’t get hired by the New York Times or when NASA turned me down for that astronaut position or when I didn’t secure a sufficient number of votes in the California primary to be elected governor, but it could have been when Axl Rose got picked instead of me to be the lead singer of Guns n’ Roses, or maybe it’s this very posting that's the missed opportunity I've be waiting for all along.