“What, Me Worry?” – MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman 

by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com

Worry. It seems like the whole world is worried about something. What’s going to happen next?!

I realized that a couple of my favorite songs are all about not worrying. One is Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds in which he sings, “Don’t worry about a thing, ‘cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” Another is The Beach Boys’ Don’t Worry Baby. I’ve been playing that since I was 15 years old.

People are worried about everything…maybe today more than ever. But, in my experience, most of the time the worry is about the things that never end up happening anyway.

So, my advice is to stop worrying, especially since it’s probably not going to help anyway. Instead, go talk with your friends and family about what’s on your mind. I think you may feel better if you do.

Years ago in my RePlay column, I talked about Mrs. Phelps, my friend’s grandmother, who said, “If everyone hung their problems on a clothesline, you would always take your own back.” Smart woman.

A friend once told me, “Cheer up, it could be worse!” Well, I cheered up and it got worse!

Smile and “don’t worry about a thing…”

Jack Guarnieri started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].