Editor’s Note–The following first appeared at Travellinbaen.com back in 2007. It’s been updated a bit and I added some new things as part of the new TBT series (Travellinbaen Thursday). One paragraph I left in is sadly dated now–the one about naming a song and artist from memory. This was obviously written pre-Iphone.
Quote of the Day:
“ “That,” I said to Yasmin as I polished off the last succulent lobster claw–and by the way, don’t you love it when you are able to draw the flesh of the claw out of the shell whole and pinky-red in one piece? There is some kind of tiny personal triumph in that. I may be childish, but I experience a similar triumph when I succeed in getting a walnut out of its shell without breaking it in two. As a matter of fact, I never approach a walnut without this particular ambition in mind. Life is more fun if you play games. But back to Yasmin–” – Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald
The passage above came to mind this evening as TB struck a particularly pleasing vein of marshmallow in my Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food. It is the little things that can really make your day. Well, the big things can make your day too, but how often do the big things come around? If we don’t delight in those little things that give us a charge we will spend our days waiting frustratedly around on the big ones. I thought I’d catalog a few particularly tasty morsels of life on top of a good marshmallow vein in your ice cream and Dahl’s perfectly written digression.
I love it when someone else suggests pizza. It’s doubly good when they say something like, “you don’t mind if it doesn’t have veggies, do you?”
A shooting star, or maybe a low hanging oversized orange full moon just around nightfall always surprises me and gives joy. I always feel I must find someone else to go outside and look so I can share the moment.
Seeing a deer, a rabbit or some other wild animal when I’m driving through the woods, especially if I spot it before my passenger, feels like a small triumph; but even if I see it second, so long as I don’t miss out, I share the feeling. To miss out on such a sighting is to suffer inglorious defeat, if only for a moment. Another way to get a shared electrical charge in the car is to answer a companion’s query on the name of a band or a song; it is almost as good to get the answer from someone else when the information is so close to the output area of your brain that it almost causes physical pain, only to be released in a rush of endorphins when the brain lock is untangled. This is doubly good if you answer the question via unexpected phone call, and triple points if they are in a bar with friends.
Just a few more things–hitting nothing but net, even if your not playing a game; walking in to the movie just as the lights begin to dim; zooming through that light you always seem to catch; the sound of a pop tab on an icy cold beer–it sounds different than one coming off a soda, I swear; and waking up and seeing your clock shows only two bells, when you were certain it would be four.
Updated for 2014……How about dropping your ice cream spoon but then catching it in jedi fashion before it hits the ground? Never mind that your inner jedi was out to dinner (last night) when it dropped in the first place. Even better than this–and yes this happens to me–is when my gum pops out of my mouth but I manage to snatch it mid-air as if “I meant to do that.”
There’s lots of Dad things, of course. Minus-0 on last week’s spelling or math test. God I live for those smiley faces nowadays. When Scamp nails a tennis shot right back at my gonads–as long as I catch it in time–that gives me a charge. And now in her seventh year, I’m learning to truly appreciate those times when she crawls in my chair and orders me to “put down the computer and give me your arm, Daddy.”
Modern technology and social media have their pros and cons but all in all, they’ve increased the opportunities for finding those little things that make life swell. Such as: a Facebook “friend request” from an old crush; A flurry of “likes” of an instagram post. Receiving a midnight text from an ARB on some spread-altering blocked field goal in California at the end of a long day of college football; A retweet from a stranger is inordinately gratifying; And a positive blog comment from a high school teacher, especially when they unfailingly deign to refrain from commenting on my complete disdain for the rules of grammar in polite society.
Yeah, that’s the stuff.
