Hash Browns or Tots?
You know how life is just a series of never-ending forks in the road. You’re constantly forced to make choices. Some are mundane, some are profound. It could be something major like whether to quit your job and try something new or something as simple as whether to have the hash browns or the tater tots with your Grand Slam breakfast. When making the choices, we can expect, from history and story-telling, that the big important choices are likely to come with consequences. What if Dorothy had not decided to run away from home? She would have been with her family down in the storm celler safe and sound when the cyclone hit, and not had to face off with witches, flying monkeys, and singing and dancing straw. But with the little choices, we don’t really think about it much. Sure, we may waffle a little (”Hmmmm…hash browns or tots? Hash browns…no, I always get the hash browns. I’ll go for the tots.”) but we really don’t focus on the potential out come. I mean, what if Mama Cass had chosen to have ice cream instead of a ham sandwich. What if the Menedez parents had gone OUT for ice cream instead of having a bowl in the seeming safety of their home?
You see. No matter which choice you make, you’re likely to never be safe. (Am I sounding like Dick Cheney right now?)
I bring all this up because a few days ago I was given mundane choice to make. A friend wanted to go hang out and my gut feeling was to just stay at home as I had all weekend. But then I thought, “Tony, you always stay at home,” so I went for the tots.
I won’t go into the details, but by hanging out with my buddy it put me in the wrong place at just the right moment and I suffered an injury by someone else’s actions. In hind site I keep telling myself I should have stayed at home. But I could never have predicted what occurred, so how could I have protected myself from the tots. Who knew they were tainted?
That’s the problem with having to make choices, particularly the mundane ones. You never know if you made the right one until after the fact. But what if it really wasn’t MY choice that created the problem? What if it was the choice of my buddy who decided where we’d go that made my choice a bad one? What if it was the choice of the other party as to what to do for fun that creat my ultimately bad choice?
How can you make the right choice when you don;t know what choices everyone else is making? I guess you can’t. Even so, I keep asking myself, “Why did you go for the tots?”
November 8th, 2004 at 3:42 pm
can’t help but read this entry in light of election results. are you trying to tell us you voted for bush and now regret it? it’s probably more interesting to ask why you make the choices that you did.