I said I’d be surprised by pleasant surprises; the other kind doesn’t really count.
Try again.
(Busy today due to several surprisingly expected crises all popping up at once.)
(. . .)
(Wait. “Surprisingly expected.” I get it now!)
(Funny.)
Come to think of it though, since I expect the vast majority of surprises to be of the unpleasant variety, what would really be a surprise would be a series of pleasant surprises, now wouldn’t it?
When I needed a title for yesterday’s entry, “I Hate Surprises” was exactly what I was going for in a title, but I thought it could do with some follow-up clarification.
I don’t just hate surprises, I really hate surprises.
Seriously.
Yes, I’ve experienced some pleasant surprises in my time, but not enough of them to outweigh all the unpleasant surprises which have come my way. So much so, in fact, that I react to the phrase “I have a surprises for you,” with the same lack of enthusiasm I do to “We need to talk,” and pretty much for the same reason. While a horrible experience isn’t guaranteed to follow those words, I’ve learned what the odds are, and react accordingly.
But truth be told, my dislike of surprises runs even deeper than that.
Not only was I the kid who mastered the art of unwrapping and re-wrapping Christmas presents just so I could know what I was getting in advance, I was the kid who if someone left a computer game destined to be a Christmas present in the closet they thought I’d never look in, I’d substitute it with a different game of the same weight, play the game for two months before Christmas, then put everything back the way it was just in time for Christmas Eve.
(I have told you about that by now, haven’t I, Mom? Sure hope so . . .)
No matter how well you think you know yourself, you may still find that you can surprise yourself now and again.
Y’know, as I look at the daily barrage of horrible news stories and even worse public reaction to them, I keep thinking day after day, ninety percent of these things could be avoided if everyone just had more empathy. Can’t put that in the tap water, though.
– Matthew Phillion, self-described bitter (secular) Humanist
This is one of those days where I realized what I thought I wanted to write about needed to percolate longer, leaving me sans a topic, so I found myself browsing the portfolio of a photographer friend of mine, and that got me thinking again about just how much the camera loves me.
It loves me to be on the side of it that it can’t see so much that there are times it practically begs me to pick it up.
It doesn’t happen every day, of course, but every once in a while, I see something that reminds just how interesting I find these current times.
Yesterday, for instance, I was stopped at a stop light near an elementary school right after school had let out. Naturally, this meant hordes of children and their parents crossing the street in front of me, all under the protective gaze of a dedicated crossing guard. While the clothing has varied over the years, the essential scene remains unchanged, that of a parent holding their young child’s hand as they cross the street, all the while the parent is patiently listening as their child prattles on about their day and/or how glad they are school is over.
Nothing brought this home to me more than watching one mother and son in particular. She was clearly an active and busy young mother, as pleased to see her son as he was to see her, and relishing this small happy time they were getting to spend together. You could have dressed them up in any number of costumes and the scene would have been the same, and for the purposes of the scene, it would have looked just as normal to see her dressed up as June Cleaver as what she was wearing, which were comfortable shoes and sweat pants, and a functional gray tank top. Sometimes only the costumes change.
Mind you, I don’t think June had a tattoo on her upper arm with a skull and dagger motif like this mother did, but you know what? It didn’t change the scene for me in the slightest, and who knows?
Maybe you just couldn’t see June’s tattoo for the dress she was wearing.
At the risk of sounding like The Sphinx, those who try to be everything so as to disappoint no one, only succeed in being nothing to everyone.
How is it that I can know how much printer ink is going to cost me, and still think, “The next time I spend that kind of money on ink, there’d better be a tattoo involved!”
Candles & Curses 