Your Life's Ideas

My grandfather and his family moved to America from Italy just after the first world war and settled in Youngstown, Ohio. One of my family's friends at the time--we'll call him Salvatore because I am fairly certain that that was his name--was establishing a successful life for himself in the States and wanted to share some of secrets of his transition with his fellow immigrants so that they might adjust and enjoy happy lives in their new country. So he wrote and self-published an advice book, organized into little confuscian snippets of wisdom.

The advice, I must say, is spectacular and profound. Allow me to offer a (I'm confident) closely-paraphrased example:

When you go to the grocer and buy a can of beans, take note of the brand on the label. If you and your family like the taste of these beans, you will ask the grocer for the same brand when you return.

That wasn't the end of the gem, though. He had a corrollary:

This idea also works in reverse. If you do not like the taste of the beans, you should not purchase that brand again and you should choose another.

Salvatore then guided his audience to the infinite horizon beyond beans:

This idea can also be used for other canned foods such as corn, spinach, tomatoes, and sardines.

Well, perhaps four additional items makes for a somewhat less-than-infinite horizon, but the value of the advice remains. In fact, the advice was so personal, so direct, and so irrefutable that the author assigned his little manual the only appropriate title: Your Life's Ideas.

Now, it's not necessarily my way to mock deceased immigrants, nor is it my intention with this blog (or whatever we end up labelling this web publishing venture), but the spirit of Salvatore's publication is so charming, so memorable, and so hilarious in its innocent and earnest effort to help that I think it's the best label for what will clearly be the marquee qualities of my writing and that of the merry band of infrequent contributors I hope to assemble here: comically innocent and charmingly earnest. Got it, a**holes?

So remember: these are your life's ideas. Pay attention.

NB: There is a copy of Your Life's Ideas somewhere in my grandparents' house, though it has been conspicuously difficult to find since my uncle first introduced my sisters and I to its subtle genius and, it appears, offended my grandfather in the process. It is my hope, though, to someday get ahold of the little manual and republish it in one way or another, since it really would be an illuminating insight into early 20th century immigrant culture in the U.S. And because it's hilarious. Leaves-you-gasping-for-breath funny. I mean, hysterical.