Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The world according to an Oreo…

Life isn’t fair. We take this statement and accept the words, but we never truly accept the meaning. We know that life isn’t fair, but we seem to be absolutely sure that at least for ourselves, life should be fair. And in some cases, we feel that the abundance of “bad luck” that has befallen us requires some divine intervention of good luck like winning the lottery to make up for all of the crap we have been put through. This is our idea of fair.

I like to think of myself as a pretty even keel kind of guy. I take the good with the bad, I roll with the punches. Sometimes everything goes my way, and other times, nothing goes my way. That’s life. It’s not fair, but we were never promised that.

But still, even with my current attitude, there are certain things that happen in life that just seem like too much. No one deserves to have something that horrific happen to him or her. You’d have a hard time trying to convince even the most optimistic person that a curse of some sort was not in play.

Recently, I’ve been struggling with the path my life has taken. I’ve slipped out of the groove and fallen directly into the rut. Everything came together in a moment of clarity today when I was trying desperately to salvage some joy in the day by putting all my faith in a package of Oreo cookies. Perhaps that was my first mistake. When I pulled out the first cookie and saw the following, that’s when I knew that the groove was long gone and I was deep inside the rut.
The true pain of this cookie can be seen in the amount of “white stuff” I was given. No, I was not completely denied, but in this instance, I really feel like no white stuff would have been preferable. If you were a waiter or waitress, and you spent 3 and a half hours serving a family of 15, and after handing them a bill for $450.73 and they wrote you a check for $451.00, wouldn’t you rather receive nothing at all instead of $0.27? I think I would…

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

happy belated birthday! sorry I missed it but *shock and horror* I didn't know. I'll do better next year.

cadiz12 said...

man, i sure feel like life has handed me a lot of oreos like that, lately. you are not alone, jon.

Bill C said...

Doesn't take much imagining to see that cookie is sticking-out its little white tongue at you, mocking your pain.

Clearly it's taunting you. Probably saying something pithy like "Bite me!"

Hmm. I've never understood that one. How is that an insult, anyway?

jazz said...

jon, halloween is over. if you were just pretending to be a blogger for the holiday, you can stop now.

unless you really are back toposting on a regular basis...

Jon said...

Syar: oh Syar… my star pupil… this is a sad day… please check the comments on my October 31st, 2005 post…

I’m going to need a minute…

Cadiz: Life sure is being tricky lately… I’m not sure what it’s driving at…

Jam: The whole “bite me” thing has always eluded me too… I feel like there are so many better ways to tell a person that you dislike them and have little regard for their opinions.

Bill C said...

Coming from a cookie, though - that almost makes sense, at least from an existential perspective. But the disrespect part still eludes me.

"Bite me. Ow! Whaa--?!"

Jon said...

Jam: True, the cookie does seem to have a bit more legitimacy behind that statement…

Syar: I also wanted to say don’t feel too bad. Two of my best friends, people I see on a daily basis, people I’ve lived with at times and that I’ve been good friends with for over 15 years now, still have not acknowledged my birthday. Truth be told, it stings quite a bit…