Being Pretty

If my wife and I had known each other as children

  My wife is  very pretty. I mean, we had 4 kids in  6 years, that's how pretty she is.  When she recently revealed that she had never changed a flat tire, I was amazed. I wondered how this was even possible since she has been driving for over two decades now.  She  told me that , when the flat occurred, there was always some guy that  would come along and be willing to do it for her.  Man, that must be nice.
  By comparison while my wife was not changing her own tires, I  have spent an inordinate amount of time on my back in the dark , looking up at mystifying engine parts in the pouring rain while an indifferent  cavalcade of humanity whizzed by mere inches from my feet in their  perfectly  functioning vehicles.  Perhaps one of them did occasionally cast an eye in my direction out of morbid curiosity as to what sort of trouble the poor chucklehead has gotten himself into this time.  Ah well, they  probably think , better him than me.  Not that I'm bitter.
  It's bad enough that attractive people  already  enjoy the advantage of being well..attractive.  Isn't it enough that people  naturally like you , and  naturally  want to date you, and if you're a woman, naturally want to  buy you stuff?  Isn't that enough of a leg up on the rest of us?  Apparently not.  If one is (as a man) tall, and  well-built and handsome, study after study has proven that doors open for you. The taller guy makes more money, and  usually is elected President over the shorter guy.   Attractive people tend to live longer and if you're an attractive woman , the world is unarguably your oyster. 
  We all know this  is true, but the  pretty people, amazingly, will argue with you over this.  As ridiculous as their arguments are, and  no matter how  unhinged from reality the discussion becomes, it's hard to stay mad at them because they are  just so pretty.
  The rest of us  do enjoy a couple of pretty substantial advantages over the 'pretties'.  One is that, because there are so many of us and so few of them,  occasionally one of them has to marry us.  It's just  statistically impossible to avoid it.  Sometimes the  gap between the  'pretties' and the  'not-so-muches' is so vast that everybody that sees them wonders "How in the world did he pull that off?' And yes, Danny, I'm thinking of you.  So we get the  advantage of having a  pretty mate, and the subsequent advantage of being left alone while everybody talks to our pretty mate.  For the misanthropic among us, that's quite a hefty win.
  Time also is the  great equalizer among the haves and have-nots.  It has been said that being born beautiful is like being born rich and getting poorer every day. The musclebound jock loses his hair, the homecoming queen  gains   weight.  Teeth fall out, eyes grow dim, and eventually they  have to live where the rest of us have been our entire lives.  That is an advantage.
  The real advantage however is in toughness.  Those of us whose lives have been defined by discomfort are better prepared for the ups and downs of life, especially the downs.  You can hit me as hard as you can , literally or metaphorically, and I will (eventually) get back up because life has been knocking me down since I could stand up.  Being a non-pretty has made me that way.  Being short  makes you learn to fight, and being  slightly homely makes you able to blend in the crowd. Nobody notices you because nobody really wants to look at you.  By extension, if the advantages of prettiness were ever stripped away by the circumstances of life ( maybe if the entire world went blind or something),  my money is on the have-nots.  If you're a pretty woman and you want a guy who wont crack and crumble and  cry like a sissy girl  when something goes wrong, marry an ugly guy. He's been dealing with hardship his entire life, and he'll make you look prettier by comparison.
  Don't just root for the underdog.  Go a step further, and root for the ugly, short, misanthropic, nearsighted underdog with a bad haircut.   We  have a surprising amount  going for us. We have pretty wives, the advantage of time, strength in numbers and a  hide thick enough to crack cinder blocks.  That's quite a combination.