It's Complicated

You suck because you do (I'd say I'm sorry, but it's not my fault).

You don't suck because you are so kind. Just last week you showed up out of the blue and clipped the librarians in-grown toenail.

You suck because you insist on being the funniest person at your Friday night poker games. When others are funnier (you usually take informal polls) you ask them politely to leave or start insulting their grandmothers. This got really awkward when George coincidentally brought along his grandmother one night and she took offense and berated you until you gave in and made nachos.

You don't suck because you recycle. This is mostly a good thing, except when you recycle with too much attitude. That ruffles the feathers of your neighbours - especially the one who collects rare bird feathers from around the world and specifically when you tried to recycle those feathers.

You suck because when you volunteered to teach under-privileged youths basketball you took it way too seriously and conducted practices more like a drill sergeant. Yes, the kids learned a lot of basketball and life skills, but were all of the 5am practices in the pouring rain and meetings with Freudian-trained sports psychologists who tried to analyze their dreams in order to help them sink more free throws while undergoing extreme heckling really necessary for these 6 and 7 year old kids especially considering there were no games against other opponents and most would rather have been playing hopscotch.

You don't suck because you often stand on the street corner and give random hugs to passersby who seem down in the dumps. True most people are scared of you and there have been a number of taser-incidents and multiple restraining orders, but once one of your hugs saved a life - yours.

You suck because you borrowed a cup of sugar from your next door neighbour every Saturday for a year under the guise of making sugar cookies for your nieces only as part of a sugar-focused pyramid scheme that was used as a front to make yourself rich and keep others like your gullible and too-loose-with-sugar neighbour down.

You don't suck because you "rescued" a monkey from the zoo (some less enlightened people want to call it stealing) by dressing up as a bunch of bananas. You repainted and redecorated your entire house to look like a jungle so the monkey would feel at home. There was an adjustment period - feces were hurled, lamps were broken, but in time the monkey fit in so well, too well, that when your landlord had to take sides in a tenant disagreement, he sided with the monkey and gave you one month's notice. 

You suck because when you wanted to break up with your hyper-controlling girlfriend (when you agreed to her exact plans for the long weekend, she still got angry because she wanted to agree for you) you were slightly too elaborate. In the winter you got rid of your hot tub and your backyard vegetable patch. In the spring you wanted to plant tree saplings in your backyard to spell the words "I'm sorry, I don't love you anymore. Now, before you get angry - you are still amazing - don't hurt me, I just need to move on. I hope you understand." but the store ran out of saplings, so you just said "No mas!". The next few months were a blur - you took helicopter lessons, helped her overcome vertigo, and surprised her for her birthday with a personal helicopter ride that included a romantic picnic lunch in a vineyard overlooking the lake and finally circled over your property and lent her your binoculars so she could see that it was over.

You don't suck because you made an incredible meal for a best friend's birthday party entirely from scratch. You started by growing the tomatoes, onions, garlic and basil for the sauce. You went out to buy some actual durum wheat and spent time milling it into semolina to make the pasta. This also involved buying a hen and caring for it like your own child, until it produced some eggs (a few broke because you decided to juggle them). You cold-pressed your own olive oil and bought a goat, that you learned to milk and made your own feta cheese. The salad was easy, except the process of making your own vinegar (thankfully, you had coincidentally started this a few years ago on a dare from your father, who had a very negative view of your vinegar-making abilities). The meal was incredible and was a true example of your love for your friend, but it was served 6 months late and only sort of made up for the frustration and boredom due to the wait. All were glad they didn't decide to draw straws and start eating each other.

You suck because you are always flaunting your intelligence. You always know all the answers, the right place to go, the correct thing to do - you never make mistakes and you let everyone know this all the time. These traits, annoying as they may be, could be overlooked if you didn't also have impeccably straight and white teeth.

You don't suck because you took the lead in rebuilding your uncle's house after the big storm. The only problem being that you decided not to use any doors in the new design. This interesting avant-garde choice was made worse when we all decided to follow your decision to build the house from the inside. After the final nail was hammered, we all looked around and noticed there were no doors. The house was beautiful and it was so amazing of you to help your uncle, but we stayed trapped inside that house for 3 weeks forced to live off crackers and dried cherries.

You suck because you wrapped Jim's entire house with his stock of toilet paper everyday for a month only stopping when his gastroenterologist pleaded with you to put an end to the madness.

You don't suck because you saved an injured chicken who was laying by the side of the road. You spent months rehabilitating its broken wing, nursing it back to health, trying to give it flying lessons as you don't believe in giving in to disabilities. This only ended when he read your journal and surmised, correctly, that you were only in it for the eggs.

You suck because you drove around town and bought all of the spoons.

You don't suck because after watching a particularly moving documentary about a hill tribe in Cambodia you flew halfway across the world and helped them build a school and comprehensively taught the children English. You broke into tears when the thank you letter arrived in the mail a few weeks later. It was beautifully written and so rewarding an end to the whole experience. The tears were mostly due to the fact that they not only spelled 'paradoxical' incorrectly but also mixed up the present continuous and present perfect verb tenses throughout. You fought the urge to call the whole thing a waste of time.

You suck because the one time people wanted you to suck you didn't. Your mom got stung by a jellyfish while swimming off the coast of Thailand. All you had to do was suck out the poison or urinate on the sting. You were too busy doing your sudoku.

You don't suck because you bought a trampoline and allowed the kids of the neighbourhood to come over and use it no charge. After a full afternoon of bouncing and laughing, the kids would sit around the old oak tree while you amused them with stories from your youth. Day would turn to night and many a marshmallow was roasted and cup of lemonade was drank. These days were ones to be enjoyed and remembered. Until one kid forgot to say thanks a third time and you proceeded to break the trampoline in front of all of those crying kids. 

You suck because once you decided to climb a mountain and would only come down if your bagel was perfectly toasted.

You don't suck because you are a lover of fine wine, a cuddler of cute animals, a singer of superior arias and a wearer of fine silk. But, your refusal to raise your hand before speaking earned you garbage duty for a week.

You suck because you laugh when you should cry, yell when you should whisper, do the hustle when you should disco, run when you should walk and roll over when you should sit.

You don't suck because you are me, and I rock!