Monday Mission 2.19:
1. Have you ever given someone a present you just KNEW would be “da bomb” and when they opened it you could tell they just hated it? What’s the story there?
It took me awhile to figure out what did and didn’t work with my wife. She loves dolphins, for example, but by the same token, is incredibly choosy about what is and isn’t a ‘good’ dolphin figurine. Same goes for clothes, music, ad nauseum.
2. What do you do that you would prefer that Mother never finds out about?
I don’t know about do, but I’m sure there’s a few things in the have done column that should never see the light of day — thing is, I’m not going to mention them here, because they’re things it’d be better if my friends can at least pretend they don’t know about.
3. Ever get in any arguments with your mother? What was one of the worst?
Well, of course I’ve had arguments. I suppose there was a bad one somewhere a few years before I moved out to Denver. Let’s just say I wasn’t always the considerate son I am today (not that I’m any great shakes in that department as it stands).
4. When was the last time someone special hurt your feelings? Did you tell them or keep it to yourself?
Well, I’m pretty sure I told them, because that sort of thing doesn’t sit particularly well with me. I really am one of those people who will vent and then forget the whole incident, though, so I can’t think of anything worth mentioning right now. (The forgetting part doesn’t always happen quickly, though — sometimes it’s taken a few years.)
I did mention to Jackie a few weeks ago, while she was looking for something to read, that she was perfectly welcome to read her Christmas Present copy of Strange Weapons, since, you know, everyone else had. She was appropriately contrite.
5. Has your mother ever laid any guilt trips on you or made you feel like you can’t do something good enough?
Mom doesn’t like my hair to be (very) short, and she used to bring up my hair length a few weeks before coming to visit. This visit, though, I forgot and got shorn a few days before, and she didn’t say a thing. Yay for progress.
Other than that, I can’t think of any of that sort of behavior (probably because I would have reacted to a guilt trip with the exact opposite behavior out of sheer cussedness.)
6. Looking back on your life, was there ever a point you see as the “crossroads” where you made a decisions that changed the course of your life? A path you did not take? What was that path, and do you ever daydream about what your life would have been like on the “road not taken?” Tell me about that.
Moving to Denver has to be the biggest, ballsiest career/life change that I’ve made, and I’m lucky that my lady decided to make it with me. One of our visiting relatives commented at Jackie’s reception on Saturday that we had a remarkably fine group of friends for only having been out here 7 years.
Since he was right, and since that group didn’t even contain all of our closest friends, I certainly wasn’t going to argue with him. We are lucky, lucky people.
