A Good Reason

One of the main differences between being an adult and being a kid, besides the influx of nose hair and lower back problems, is that as an adult you need a good reason for everything.

This came to mind one day when I saw a kid pedal past my house on his bike twice in a relatively short time frame, at which point I determined that he was going around in circles, which he continued to do for well over an hour.

 

Now, if you were to ask him why he was doing it, he’d probably just shrug his shoulders and say something like, “I dunno,” at which point you’d send him on his way, figuring it was better than him setting off firecrackers in the front seat of somebody’s car.

 

However, if I were to jump on a bike and ride circles around my neighborhood and say “I dunno” when asked why I was doing it, the response would probably be, “That’s weird. I’m calling the cops.”

 

You see? Adults need a good reason for everything, and even worse, they have to plan and schedule it all out in advance: “I’m working until five, then I’ll have road-rage until six, followed by a terribly unhealthy dinner and complaining about work and my commute, after which I’ll try to fix the washing machine that keeps trying to eat me whenever I walk by. Boy, I sure wish I could squeeze in some time to drive my bike around in circles, but I’d better not, because I haven’t yet filed the proper paperwork with the county. I guess I’ll just go to bed instead.”

 

Even worse, our fun must also be pre-planned and jammed into our schedules well in advance: “I can fit you in for racquetball in three weeks, from 7:30 to 8:30, assuming nothing else comes up. After that, it doesn’t look like I have any room for fun until November. Of 2017. Beyond that, my plan is to keel over from a massive stress-induced coronary, so you’ll have to look me up in the afterlife. Check with my secretary, first, though. I might be busy.”

 

However, if you’re a kid and you decide you want to spend a Saturday poking at a dead raccoon with a stick for eight hours straight, it’s completely acceptable, and even possibly encouraged: “I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t fill up everybody’s mailboxes with pudding again.”

 

So what’s my point? That every adult should shirk their responsibilities and just do whatever they want, regardless of the possibilities? That we should live in a chaotic world of pudding-filled mailboxes and dead-raccoon-poking?

 

Heck no. Nobody wants that, even if it is chocolate pudding. All I’m saying is that we slightly relax our obsession with making people have a good reason for everything. For example, I believe that the following should be considered perfectly acceptable explanations for an adult to have done something:

 

“It was either this or finish my taxes.”

“I got sick of cleaning the fireplace.”

“I wanted to see how big of an explosion it would make.”

“I saw it once in a movie and I wanted to see if it’d work in real life.”

“Don’t worry. It’s chocolate pudding.”

 

And now, even though I don’t have a good reason, I’m going to finish with a poem that has nothing to do with anything else:

 

Roses are red

Oranges are orange

Dang, I just remembered

That nothing rhymes with "orange"

Self-Checkout

I guess this gets filed under the “live and learn” category of life.

You see, I used to be adamantly against self-checkout at the grocery store. The reasons for my stubbornness were threefold:

1.) Doing the work of the store’s employees sets a dangerous precedent.

Sure, checking yourself out is convenient and fast, but how long until that concept is stretched even further? At what point will we customers be forced to stock the shelves, unload the trucks, and perform the dreaded “cleanup in aisle five,” all while the employees lounge around in hammocks and eat grapes that we’ve peeled and brought to them on silver platters? The whole thing is a slippery slope, and I, for one, am looking at the "big picture," by which I mean I don’t eventually want to be made to pick the apples from the fields before buying them. I mean, what do I look like, a pioneer?

2.) Doing the work of somebody else robs them of important life lessons.

If everybody were to check themselves out, how would the store employees ever learn that most people are complete jerks, or at least unbelievably inconsiderate? They’d never have to put up with the individual trying to use coupons that expired in 1982 for a product that hasn’t existed in decades, or the creepy guy batting his eyebrows and using creepy pick-up lines (“Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner!”), or the businessman with a stick concealed somewhere in their anatomy who believes they are so vital to their line of work that they have to talk – and by this I mean bellow - on their phone via bluetooth the entire time? (“Let’s close the Johnson account now! I know there’s no Johnson account! I just wanted to say that, because it makes me sound important!”)

3.) Only having a twofold excuse would be pretty lame.

Threefold just sounds so much better.

**********

Pretty solid reasoning, right? However, a recent experience has changed my tune. In fact, you could even call me a self-checkout convert.

It happened one day when each and every manned checkout line was absolutely stacked, to the point where it looked like I was in the DMV, except there was bread. Weighing my principles against my urge to wait in line for eight hours, I decided to go the self-checkout route. I bumbled around a bit, but I still managed to get it done in a fairly timely fashion, at which point the light bulb went on: That wasn’t half-bad! In fact, there were some advantages to it that I’d never previously considered:

1.) No cashier to make awkward conversation with.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t want to talk to the cashier, no matter how nice they are. That’s just my nature, right or wrong. (Probably wrong.) It just seems like every time they force conversation upon me, it ends up awkward:

Cashier: Five packages of Oreos? Are you having a party?
Me: No.

or…

Cashier: Did you find everything you were looking for?
Me: Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner.

2.) You get to make the machine beep

I’ll admit it: scanning stuff is kinda fun.

3.) Nobody will bruise your apples

This is what finally did it for me. As I gently placed my apples down on the scanner, I swear I heard a heavenly chorus break out from above.

On The Other Hand

Life is full of tough decisions, and I’m currently in the midst of making one that would probably cause all of my hair to fall out if it hadn’t already happened because of the Great Do-You-Want-Fries-With-That? decision of ’03.

On one hand, I’m sort of a mature responsible adult, and so it would make sense to upgrade. On the other hand (cue Randy Travis), loyalty is one of my strongest characteristics, and if I abandoned that now, I wouldn’t even know who I was anymore. Talk about pressure!

What I'm referring to, by the way, is my watch.

It’s a Timex Ironman, and over the decade or so that I’ve owned it – and there’s no way I can resist using the phrase – it’s taken a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.

You see, these watches are made for males in their late teens and early twenties, where the entire point of their existence is to constantly do stupid stuff, which results in their bodies, and thus their watches, absorbing a terrific amount of punishment. (“Bet you can’t run through that wall!” “Oh yeah? You’re on!”)

Now, I was no different during that stage of my life, and my watch has the scars to prove it: The Indiglo light has long since stopped working, one of the buttons has fallen off, along with a screw that helps hold on the plastic facing, and the display is scratched to the point where it’s sometimes hard to actually make out the time. (“It’s scratch o’clock. Apparently.”)

But despite its cosmetic degradation, it still runs great, and I don’t see it giving up the ghost anytime soon.

So on one hand, it feels like I should keep it as a tribute to the fact that it’s still running after all these years. Why punish something for doing its job?

But on the other hand, it’s a Timex Ironman! Does anybody even wear those things anymore? I mean, it has a digital readout! How tacky is that? I just feel that I’m at the stage of my life where I should have a nice analog watch that will help me perpetuate the notion that I’m somehow a productive member of society.

However, if I haven’t yet given up on my clock radio, why would I give up on my watch? I mean, what would it say about me if I got rid of it just to upgrade to something a little nicer and more sophisticated? Would it say, “Hey, that guy knew when it was time to move on,” or would it say, “That jerk! He'd probably upgrade his mother if it were at all possible!” (It’s not, Mom! Promise! Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day! Hopefully I remember to call!)

So, as you can see, the decision is going to be a tough one. However, I've racked my brain on the matter for several long hours, and I've come up with several possible compromises:

·        I get the new watch, and I put the old one on my mantel in the place of honor that’s currently being taken by the trinket banjo I got in Nashville.

·        I get the new watch, but I continue to wear the old one until it or me dies. (So I’d either be wearing one on each arm or doubling up. What are the chances that's currently in style?)

·        Out of respect for my old watch, I don’t get the new one, but I draw a nice analog watch on my wrist in permanent marker.

Are there any other good compromises I haven't yet thought of?

Anyway, I'm going to have to end it here. It is, after all, scratch-thirty, and everybody knows that means it's time for bed.