So Right and Yet So Wrong

Have you ever done something that you know won’t turn out well but you just can’t resist? Dated the wrong guy? Lied in an interview? Trusted a hair stylist with a blue faux-hawk? Tried to run over the little slut who stole your boyfriend?

I thrive on bad decisions. Some might say that I’ve lived an entire life based on poor Outcome Selection Skills. That’s what it was called in my eighth grade “Decision Making” class. I don’t have my old report cards here but I bet that my grade in that class was similar to the one I received for Latin II. And I can guaran-dam-tee both of those grades were changed well before my parents saw my report card. Ahhh, the olden days when a minus became a plus with just a flourish of the right color pen!

Spicy tomato sauce is one of my more recent (albeit persistent) bad decisions. It gives away my age to tell you that when I think of spicy tomato sauce, I imagine a sixth Spice Girl -- a robusty Italian caricature who prances around in a tiny tomato-red dress with matching platform go-go boots warbling inane tunes and snorting coke to stay thin, but looking great. And isn’t that what really matters?

So spicy tomato sauce (the kind on spaghetti, not the “Tomato Spice” girl) gives me heartburn or indigestion or acid reflux or some non-specific ailment remedied by Tums-type products. I know this fact and have known it for a long time. So why do I not refrain from eating the delicious foods that make me feel unwell? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s related to poor Outcome Selection Skills?

Those of us who imbibe the occasional 12 or 18 beers after a stressful day of web browsing recognize that the forthcoming morning will be a tad less enjoyable than a sunrise sans spirits. Still we soldier on, continuing to embrace our Inner Inebriant and swallow the Spirits of Hangovers-Yet-to-Come.

If Tomato Spice is a mini-skirted, pill-popping pop tart, then who are the Spirits of Hangovers-Yet-to-Come? Might she be a classic Dickensian ghost who looks a bit trailer-trash trudging past the whiskey locker in her old robe and a single bunny slipper, swearing she’ll never drink again? Is he the quintessential gin-blossomed, hoary bum hiding his bloodshot eyes behind broken sunglasses, expelling his putrid morning-after breath while cackling his cigarette-hardened laugh into your throbbing, gin-marinated brains?

I’m guessing that, like us, Tomato and the Specters made choices that felt right before it all turned wrong. I mean we all make bad decisions knowing that there will be hell to pay but are still unable to resist that last slice of pepperoni-onion-anchovy pizza or just one more Rumrunner for the road. All we can do is to live our lives. Laugh and cry; love and suffer.

So here’s the choice: Live a safe little life resisting anything with a potential down side, or with your dying breath seize that last double-chocolate cupcake and embrace your inner bad girl. Would I be willing to trade the misadventures I’ve survived thanks to my perpetually poor Outcome Selection Skills for always being right?

Hellz to the no.