Most believe that I’m the illegitimate bastard child of Benjamin Franklin, but some swear that I was conceived overseas in England, and carried to the United States in the early 1700s. Blame my tumultuous upbringing. Blame me, for all I care, but I never learned to love. Not until I met the sweet gaze of the video camera.

I was still young, a risk-taker when I hitchhiked my way to Hollywood. My talent was instantly recognized. I was a phrase that hadn’t been heard before on the television screen and people were growing tired of the old has-beens that’d been dominating the waves before me. I told “Been there, done that” to move over, told him that people wanted a proverb that they could hold on to; a roll-right-off-the-tongue saying that would give them sound advice with a side of hope. I starred in one “liquidation sale” commercial after another. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” they called me. I was the biggest catchphrase to hit advertising since “Bringing home the bacon.” With fame came fortune. With fortune came open doors. I soon found my way into modeling. They’d splatter me across billboards from one side of the country to another. “A penny saved is a penny earned.” I was new. I was fresh. And then I got typecast.

I will forever rue the day that I agreed to make an appearance in a LensCrafters “buy one pair of eyeglasses, get a second pair free” commercial. Guess what you save if you buy that pair of glasses? A penny, bitch. Guess what you earn? The reputation of being a washed-up grade B actor whose only target audience is the visually challenged. Teens want fun. They want “Get it while it’s hot.” What does Lenscrafters do? They add insult to injury. They get some douchebag to dress like Benjamin Franklin and co-star in the commercial with me. Not only did they steal my thunder, but they stole my dignity. I turned to heavy drinking. My work became sloppy—slurred. I wasn’t roll-off-the-tongue anymore; I was a piece of drunken drool. They threatened to fire me. I attempted to drown my sorrows in more Jack and Coke. That’s when I met “C’est la vie.”

Ooh, she was like no other saying that I had ever heard before. A foreign little number with a chain-smoking habit. She sounded raspy. And French. We hit it off instantly. She out-drank me, she out-smoked me, but finally she outdid me with a lead role in an ironic French short which was a favorite at all of the hoity-toity international festivals. She was the charming concluding line. I was jealous of her; angry with myself. I was too trite even for Lenscrafters. They let me go and I let myself go. “A penny saved is a penny . . . shut your damned ass face!” My career was in shambles. My romantic life? Forget about it. “C’est la vie” told me that I’d become too cheap; that I was worse than her good-for-nothing ex, “Why buy new when slightly used will do?” She told me that if I wanted it to work out between us then I’d have to spend a little more quality time with her and a little more quantity money on her. She was sick of getting two pairs of glasses for Valentine’s Day, she told me. Then she told me the biggest surprise of my life. “I’m pregnant with your child.”

“C’est la vie” gave birth to “A best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” last February, and I got a little lesson in responsibility. I work part time as a garage sale advertiser, and occasionally free-lance for investment companies and select banks in the area. Our child, eccentric and a little old-fashioned, has been the greatest joy in my otherwise shallow and miserly life. “C’est la vie,” my better, more pragmatic half, still craves the nightlife, but is enjoying parenthood. And so am I. So much so that we have decided to adopt “Patience is a tree whose root is bitter, but its fruit is very sweet” from a Canadian orphanage next fall. We’re told she’s quite popular with our neighbors to the north.