I hate to shop. The competing variations of the same thing cramming grocery isle shelves gives me a headache. The endless array of cute clothes that don't fit, or, if they do, look nothing like what they should in a natural world - sends me home in tears. Even really fun stuff, like choosing which tantalizing dish to add to my chow mein at Panda Express - creates an embarrassing, inward paroxysm of indecision. It doesn't make any difference that I know I will like any of the choices, it's that moment of identifying which one while the plastic-gloved worker named Yolanda waits expectantly that turns an otherwise productive "U.S. American" into a helpless, quivering panic.
It seems someone else (much more mature and accomplished than myself) is experiencing a similar dilemma! I should feel comforted that I am not alone, you know, people have a need to relate with others in a shared experience - but eww, I don't think so!
The last time I was in forbidden territory was for approximately 15 seconds at Lorne Street School when I was 10 years old. Some of the big girls dared me to go into the boys bathroom (it was unoccupied of course) and so I did. It wasn't amazing, it wasn't really worth the agony of the dare actually, but I proved I could do it and the doing of it elevated my 5th grade status just a little bit.
Now, as for the senior senator from Idaho - he can't decide what to do. I guess since Specter dared him to prove his unfortunate potty encounter was a very understandable misunderstanding, he has reconsidered his guilty plea AND his still smelling-sweet and fresh statement of intention to step down from his seat. Huh! How about that?
This is a whole new area of indecision I am quite safely removed from. I don't feel sorry for the cartoon of a man or the limpidly loyal showing from his family that he has to drag around with him for his sad little press statements. What is he trying to prove, anyway? (It almost feels like 5th grade again, doesn't it? I can see Howard Bernstein in his polished penny-loafers covered in heavy swatches of yellow chalk, a fairy dusting of the same making a gentle circle around his feet crying tears of indignation when the teacher won't believe him that he didn't bang the chalk board erasers together...)
His undoing is obvious: none of us would ever in a million years pick up anything off the floor of a public restroom. That's a decision you don't even have to think about.
2 comments:
none of us would ever in a million years pick up anything off the floor of a public restroom. That's a decision you don't even have to think about
I love that! That's what I thought too!
I think I picked up Malaria one time in a public restroom. You will remember that he was the senator from the Panama Canal Zone at the time and had to resign as well.
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