New Year's Restitution
It's said that resentment of other people is like you drinking poison in hopes that they'll die. So in the interests of starting fresh with this brand spanking new year I would like to ease the petty resentments built up over the past twelve months:
Driver in the white Subaru two months ago on Western Ave. -- please forgive me for whatever it was I did that caused you to pull up beside me and the boys on the way to school then scream through the window while you flipped us off. I in turn will stop searching for you and fantasizing how I'll punish you. We're good now.
I forgive all of you who have written me with your cancer and car crash stories to get my autograph or a book which you put on eBay two weeks later for seventy-nine cents. It's embarrassing for both of us and I know you'll forgive me for trying to bid up the price.
To the coyote who ate our cat -- we forgive you. Everybody has to eat. And just so you know; our new cat is nothing but gristle. And she carries a gun.
To all the mice in the basement -- this isn't over yet. Be afraid. Be very afraid. (the author apologizes for this ungracious remark, but it needed saying.)
To the inventor of the blister pack -- I'm sure you are insanely rich and living somewhere surrounded by personal assistants who open your products for you. I therefore forgive you for not understanding the carnage you have spread through the world as we try to break into your clever achievement with teeth, knives and screwdrivers - dislodging dental work and self-administering deep puncture wounds and jagged lacerations.
Santa Claus, I forgive you for bringing our 8yr old a full drumset. He's actually pretty good and it's more fun than you'd think to play old Credence songs with a third grader.
And the weather. I'm so done with being annoyed about you. The rain all summer; hurricane Irene; that other storm-with-no-name right after; the balmy fall and snowless Christmas; and today -- the first glimpse of a new year shrouded in fog and still as an action toy trapped inside a blister pack. I'll break into it somehow. And start anew. And mess some things up. And apologize about a year from now. Forgive me.
posted by Tom Bodett at 9:23 AM
3 Comments:
Several years ago I came across this bit of sage advice: "Anger is not my Friend." I was so impressed by its simplicity and straight-forwardness, that I posted it at my desk. Sometime later I made the addition: "Neither is Bitterness."
It has been helpful to be reminded of these bits of wisdom any number of times over the years. December 30th was my last day of work (voluntary retirement). I made sure to pack that piece of paper, so that I would not forget this advice in the days ahead.
Having worked a bit in packaging, I've got a clarification to make about blister packs. Blister packs are pieces of plastic which bulge out, kind of like a blister, and are glued to cardboard backings by their flat edges. I have a certain affection for them because they give you lots of cardboard which can be printed on and designed for, and they open pretty easily.
Then there are clamshells.
These are unibody spawn of satan. They start life looking a lot like a blister pack with two mirror image halves, sometimes hinged in the middle. They are then joined to tightly encase whatever product you have mistakenly believed you can retrieve from their clutches, and welded together around the rest of their perimeter, permitting nothing in or out of the package for perpetuity. They are a pain to design for because any printable surface must be inserted between their ravenous jaws (I believe "clamshell" to be a misnomer. These are the saber tooth tigers of the packaging world.) and fit the unpredictable contours of whatever tiny spaces have been left around the product.
Clamshells are specifically designed to be impermeable without the use of heavy artillery or the Jaws of Life. Ostensibly this is to prevent shoplifting, but I think it's just because packaging designers love to hear us scream. About the only thing you can do is fire up the air compressor before Christmas morning and have your power shears ready to go. If the product in question is a nine-inch doll with long blonde hair, you're on your own.
Kahil Gibran said 'If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?'
There are more white Subaru's in Brattleboro than there are therapists... probably was a therapist blowing off steam.
Just a local gal enjoying your wit, despite the scanty posts :)
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