Dan's Papers - January 11, 2008 - Twentysomething...By David Lion Rattiner

I think that I gauge my happiness on two levels. One is how comparable my life is to a movie. My happiness goes up when I think that the life I am leading would make an interesting movie script and my happiness goes down when my life resembles a boring movie. For example, my happiness was pretty low during my freshman year of college when the most exciting part of the day was a mid-afternoon nap. But when I joined the crew team, I was suddenly the star in a sports/comedy movie, and my happiness level soared.

The second scale of happiness is, of course, my weight. The more pounds I pack on, the less happy I am.

I spent last weekend in New Jersey visiting my girlfriend's brother who invited us to attend the Cadbury-Schweppes company party, which was held on a large yacht that cruised up and down the Hudson River, stopping at the Statue of Liberty. It was an amazing party and I even sat down briefly with the head of Cadbury, who, by the way, exactly fit the profile of what I imagined the head of a British chocolate company would be like. He was a heavy-set guy with a British accent, maybe forty years old, with a big smile that revealed coffee and chocolate stained teeth. He was wearing a tuxedo, shaking hands with everybody and couldn't have been happier. I would be happy too if I had unlimited access to Cadbury Cream Eggs and 7-Up. Suddenly my life's movie was about the chocolate and soda industry.

In New Jersey, the chocolate and soda industry is doing quite well. Sitting at our table was a man named Herb, a factory manager who spoke about the soda and fruit juice industry. "The market is flooded with so many different products these days, but our products are selling great."

"Interesting," I said, as I ate more food than I could handle, topping it all off with a scotch on the rocks, which was, of course, what Herb was drinking.

Herb was definitely a Herb, having met his wife in the third grade and spending the last decade and a half in the soda industry. He was a real character and I was happy to have met him. The party itself was very diverse, consisting of Hispanic factory workers as well as Koreans, old-fashioned westerner types, Brits, Jews and African Americans. If you could taste what the American melting pot is, it was this party living the high life as the DJ switched between Latin, eighties and hip-hop music.

The party went on late into the night and I realized how much I don't like going to parties on boats because you only have two options - either wait until the boat gets back to the pier or jump into the freezing water and swim to shore. Next time, I plan on bringing a portable blow-up raft in a backpack. That would make a good movie.

When the party was over we drove by endless industrial areas along the highways in New Jersey. I started to think about the lives of all the people who go to work wearing hard hats to monitor pressure systems and open valves and check inventories. As we passed by a huge Hess oil refinery, I also started to think about how I would handle working in one of the plants. There was a giant ball of fire burning at the top of a metal tower, huge tanks filled with oil and an endless parade of Hess trucks. For some reason I saw romance in working at one of these factories. It felt real blue-collar, red-blooded American and I felt pride. Then, we got home and went to bed.

Some of the most interesting people who became characters in my movie of life are the missionaries who walk door-to-door spreading the word of God. Last weekend, I met two twenty year olds from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose job it was to do just that. I didn't meet them in East Hampton or Montauk (although that would be pretty funny). Instead, I met them in New Jersey. I awoke to the sound of a buzzer. It was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wanting to talk.

They were interesting to me, so I talked for about three minutes or so and began to think about how these guys live their lives. They just appeared so sure of themselves. As a believer in the Jewish faith but born half Catholic and half Jewish, I politely told them I was Jewish and then they were on their way, literally within seconds, knocking on the door of the neighbors. I started to think that it would be funny to start a Jewish service that preaches Judaism and see how that would go. I also wanted to hear them admit for just one second, just one mini-second, that they agreed, even just a little, that evolution makes a hell of a lot sense. Regardless, they were pretty nice guys and you've got to respect anybody who seeks out one uncomfortable conversation after another.