Three Times Repeat Method

Three Times Repeat Method ©

By Michael Casey

Well we just watched Groundhog Day again on tv, it’s such a great film, it’s always better on the BBC because then there are no adverts to ruin it, just the film on its own. As you know the reporter’s life is repeated until he redeems himself. So it made me wonder about my own life, and maybe you all think about your own lives when you see the film.

When you are learning something for school you may have used the 3 times repeat method, it worked for me for my French and Spanish, maybe it could work for you too. Or the little bit often method, my brother told me that 45 years or so ago when I was starting on my exams, no doubt your kids have just done their mocks. So you will have given them advice on how to study.

You can apply this methodology to lots of things, such as kissing girls, boys, teddy bears or just your old cat. I’ll just leave that to you imagination, as I say this Lionel Richie sings, make it last forever. See I can’t even talk to you without somebody injecting their opinion into the mix. But what I wanted to talk about is how Life is not a straight line, and it cannot be rewound so you have try and get it right the first time.

Yes you can practice and its great when you improve, whatever you are doing, baking cakes or hitting a ball with a bat, but I know now you are all now thinking everything I say is a metaphor for something else, all I’ll say is that your Priest is always available to hear confessions.

So what would you practice most, me I’d love to go bowling often, I am rubbish at it but its the only thing I enjoy even though I am terrible at it. Because every throw of the ball brings a different result, I suppose some love Roulette for the very same reason. You can have a beer and a snack as you hurl the bowling balls down the lane.

Its years since I’ve been but the romanticised memory lingers on, just like the memory of that first kiss. The reality may be that she bit your lip accidentally and you had to go to hospital for 2 stitches in your lip. Rather like the Royal Princess accidentally cutting Ed Sheeran’s face last week. One thing was planned but another actually happened.

I’ve sidetracked myself so let’s get back on track, what is so important to you that as you lie on your death bed wishing you had done something better. Would it be that house you wished you’d bought in the first place, or would you just smack that boring bastard of a boss in the mouth.

I’ve had a couple of really bad bosses in my life, so I can understand if any of you out there in Czech or Poland or around the corner from my house in Birmingham think you should have smacked him in the mouth. Though speaking as your virtual priest, I have to advise you to love your enemy and turn the other cheek, and fart in his face.

Hopefully if you had good parents as I did then you are on the right track from the start of your life, as you grow older you realise just how right they were. Apart from the things you disagreed on, but you should be wise enough not to dump on your own parents, give them the illusion of being demi gods, Long Life to he who honours his parents was in the Bible after all.

Then when you are their age you will realise they were right all alone, age brings wisdom, or rather the convergence of thought. Thought is a circle in families, you’ll discover this for yourselves. I’m sure as my dead family members are looking down at me, the angels and the saints are saying, he is exactly like your dad. Which in a way is the greatest compliment a dad can receive, though he may have to be dead and buried before he hears it.

At the end of Groundhog Day the reporter has finally achieved humility and wisdom and he wakes up in bed fully clothed with the girl of his dreams and they live happily ever after, that’s if they didn’t freeze to death in the snow. He has learnt how to be a nice person and how to play piano and ice sculpt, not forgetting French poetry.

So I hope we can all become more like a fictional reporter in a film and then we’ll have a happy life. I do have a book of poetry on my book shelves, and I do know a little French, so perhaps I have a head start. There is a piano behind me too, and its freezing outside, so if you read this piece and and again it’ll mean that one of us or all of us is having their own Groundhog Day. But if you get stuck repeating yourself then just remember the three times repeat method, and a little bit often, then you’ll really enjoy yourself whether this is a metaphor or not.