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An Open Letter to Life
Dear Life,
I want to talk to you about scheduling. Quite frankly, you are horrible at it, and I am rather tired of having to work around your whims and last-minute life-altering snap decisions. A little fore-warning here, a bit more flexibility there, and a whole lot less monomaniacal insistence on your own self-importance would go a long way to restoring a more balanced relationship between you and me. This is not, and moreover should not be all about you all the dang time. My own needs and wants matter here too, and true compromise means that we need to share in the tradeoffs – compromise should not ever and always mean that I have to keep losing and giving things up.
Let’s take this past Monday as an example in unfair “compromises” that you made me take. It was irritating enough that you should send my youngest home with strep throat, but that you should do so when her older sister had to go to an entirely different doctor on the other side of town for physical therapy was just sloppy on your part. The PT had been on the calendar for several weeks, in plain sight, written in red ink, and circled with a highlighter. And of course you had reschedule the plumber to replace the defunct hot water tank on the same damn day, after you had already wasted my entire Saturday waiting for that selfsame plumber to entirely miss his appointment between 9 and 11 (clever of you to string me along by having him call ever 1.5 hours to tell me he was running late, but definitely on his way). I cannot be everywhere at once, as you well know, and I should not be made to choose between one daughter’s tonsils, another daughter’s knee, and having hot water. Thankfully my work and my wife were accommodating enough that we got all 3 taken care of.
You are a cheat with your time, and it’s no good telling me to always look on the bright side of you – your bright side is fleeting and furtive compared to your more (and I’m putting this as delicately as I can) mercurial or (harsh as this may sound) psychotically crazy sides. I know your bright side is beautiful beyond compare, but you are often sparing of its glances. In fact, most of the time when I glimpse it, it is only when you come at me fast, and pass me right by.
You keep telling me I need to stop and smell the roses, but the roses keep wilting because you never give me a chance to water them, and I strongly suspect the nearest they ever get to water is when the cat whizzes on them while I’m not looking (the last batch certainly did take on a certain pungency). And speaking of roses, I should like to have a nice dinner out with my wife on Valentine’s day and would very much appreciate it if you did not attempt a repeat of last year by requiring my wife to chaperone yet another after-school activity.
The point to all of this pleading is this: There is only 1 of me to go around, and despite my spreading waistline you are otherwise spreading me rather thin these days, when you should be spreading your own whimsies out. You see my calendar, I’ve got all of my commitments nicely written in, and all I’m doing is asking that you show a little respect. I’m free next Tuesday evening, for instance, between the hours of 6 and 9, but that doesn’t mean you need to fill up those precious 3 hours with 6 hours worth of stuff. In fact, maybe you should consider just leaving those 3 hours alone, otherwise we’re going to have more letters like this, written in the wee hours of the morning when I’d rather be sleeping, but now occupied with writing because it seems to be the only time of day anymore where you leave me the hell alone.
Regards, etc.
Skip
This is part of the January, 2018, Group Writing Series: Open Letters
It is also a plea for help. The author was not remunerated in any way for this letter, but will accept any donations of whatever spare time you can, well, spare. PM me for TimePal payment details. Do not PM me to waste my time. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking to waste my time, I can tell you I don’t have time. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop wasting my time, go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will hire telephone solicitors to bug the heck out of you and break your train of thought.
Published in Humor
In the spirit of your post, this year, St. Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and a day of fasting and abstinence for Catholics.
Yet another one of those things…
Go Orthodox! We’re a week later than you this year!
Of course, in preparation for that, February 11 is Meatfare Sunday, the last day we can eat meat, so that does put some restrictions on dinners out. Great Lent doesn’t start until 2/19, with Cheesefare (the last day for dairy) on 2/18.
Thanks, I was curious.
(I’m sure some of us would be interested in hearing more about how it works. I go meatless all Lent and cannot imagine Lent without cheese.)
I’ll put up a quick explanation over in the Divine Help group.
Also, this was very very funny. I appreciate your time, Skippy.
Well, I put up an explanation, but I’m afraid it wasn’t quick. Rather longer than I aimed at initially.
Sorry!
No need to apologize! It was a good exercise.
Good. I don’t want to get any open letters…
Asian food. Curries, pad Thai, and stir fries with tofu and shrimp make it a sacrifice instead of out and out masochism.
You probably know that line that Leo McKern roars so throatily in Ladyhawke when Matthew Broderick shows up with the injured bird that can’t be eaten: Dear God, is it Lent already?
Ha, and Easter is on April 1st. In the church bulletin they had to write “no fooling” regarding the date.
Okay then, I’ll make this quick. This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series. Next month’s theme is “We Need a Little Summer.” Go here to sign up. Please.
Yeah, I did find it bizarre when I discovered that coincident.
Celebrate St. Valentine’s early. Mrs. Tabby and I dislike the crowds (and often limited menus and poor service), so we choose another night for our celebration. Maybe you’ll catch “Life” by surprise and avoid the special treat “Life” has in store for that special day (the car breaks down, one of the kids gets violently ill, the cat shreds the dress your wife was planning to wear, etc.)
Skip,
How fiendish! Anything but the curse of the telemarketer, such cruelty.
You really need some serious downtime. I knew a guy from Chicago, he danced with his wife. Don’t make a date with her make an appointment to see her. Bring stuff.
Regards,
Jim
Oh man. You whipsaw us from sympathetic sadness to coffee spewing humor in one whiney sentence.
Love it :)