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30 September 2010
A decision needed to be made and fast. Deep in concentration, I studied my options: “Deer Valley Spice?” No, sounds like a cologne for hunters. “Chocolate Kisses?” The name sounds sweet but the nail polish hue would probably make my nails look like “Little Turds.”
Selecting a nail lacquer is not one of the more daunting tasks I face as a woman. Yet there I stood, as if the racks of little bottles on display contained life-altering potions: Hmm, should I splurge on ”Eternal Youth” or “The Ability to Fly?”
If only they really had “Fast, No-Regrets Decision Making” on sale at CVS.
The soundtrack of my life right now is The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” and this indecision’s bugging me.
Unable to decide how to begin writing an article for work, I recently took a break by feeding the fish in my son’s aquarium. As the small colored flakes floated around the tank, I found myself coaching the fish out loud.
“The flake is right there, look left!” The fish turned instead to gaze at me and mouthed: “What? What? What? What?”
Great, the last fish died of some yummy disease called “ick” and now this one’s going to suffer a slow, lethal case of Stupid. “Stop looking at me and turn around! That other guy already ate one. He’s gonna steal your food, too!”
Son walked in and raised an eyebrow as well as an 8-year-old can. “Mom, they can’t hear you. They’re fish.”
“If Fred is going to survive in this tank, he’s got to learn to grab the flakes when he can!”
“Mom, that’s George.”
“Whoever. My advice applies to him, to all fish, and all people, too.”
Son and I exchanged looks that said, “What? What? What?” and then left the room with no further discussion.
I am confident that it was best to leave our fish tank talk in silence. However, I keep second-guessing a conversation I had later on in the day with our preschool daughter. I was watering plants on the porch when I felt a mist on my arm. Daughter had begun squirting my car with the hose.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m making the car grow,” she said.
Rather than correct her and explain that our Toyota isn’t a tomato, I nodded and let her continue. Who am I to stomp on a child’s imagination? And if a new vehicle cropped out of our driveway, I don’t think Husband would complain. If she, however, gets the idea of watering the television in hopes that it sprouts into a movie screen, I may regret that decision.
After replaying her response in my head a few times, it dawned on me that if I had asked an adult that question, they could have given me the same reply and added just like comedian Bill Engvall, “Here’s your sign!”
There are days when it takes me way too long to decide what to wear. Last Saturday, I couldn’t choose which t-shirt to wear, so I ended up going for the layered look and wore both of them. Clearly, not everyone puts that much thought into what to put on for a youth football game. Case in point: The father who wore a t-shirt to his kid’s game that said, “This isn’t a beer belly, it’s a fuel tank for a sex machine.”
I think he should have added another t-shirt layer, too.
