I can't believe it's not butter.

I have deep thoughts on a pretty regular basis. Today is no exception. While I was on my hands and knees in the bathroom with a butter knife trying to install a new toilet seat, I had one.

A deep thought, that is.

Several even.

The first was, "I wonder if rich people change toilet seats or if they hire professional toilet seat installers?" After mulling it over I came to the conclusion that rich people don't go to the bathroom, so my spending time in deep thought over it was kind of a waste. (That was punny.)

Then I wondered if anywhere in all the world at the very same moment there was another person using a butter knife as a tool in, on, or near their toilet.

Then I starting thinking about why I'd used a butter knife to install a toilet seat in the first place when there are perfectly good tools in the garage.

Which is about the time I began to realize that I'd used an eating utensil to touch a thing that no eating utensil should ever go near while at the same time remembering that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

And then I decided to boil myself.

But I starting thinking about the time I burned my tongue after I got the bright idea to microwave my coffee that had gone cold and how I talked like a four-year-old who couldn't say anything with an "S" in it for like a week because it hurt so much. So I didn't.

Boil myself, that is.

Besides, at this point I figured I was too far into the game to quit. If I stopped now not only would the toilet be seat-less, but I would have lost a perfectly lovely butter knife for absolutely no good reason.

Which got me to thinking about waste again, only not the kind of waste you would guess I was thinking about as I hovered over a toilet with a butter knife.

The kind of waste we all have. Which I guess could also be the other kind of waste but I'm a Southern woman and we almost never talk about the kind of waste you keep trying to get me to talk about because we are far too genteel to even whisper such things.

I'm talking about the stuff in our houses. The stuff in our closets and garages and cars and cabinets and drawers and everywhere. The stuff we bought because we could or because we wanted it or because we were feeling sad and needed something to fill up the hole. The stuff we were given that we loved at the time or never loved but didn't know how to say we didn't love it so we kept it thinking someday we'd have some kind of use for it.

But we never did because it's an ugly piece of crap.

Now times are hard. Harder than most of us have ever known in our lifetimes. Doesn't matter much who you are or where you are, chances are you're feeling it to at least some degree. It's just the size of your thermometer that makes the difference. Some can't buy food. Some have to sell their big houses. Some are learning for the first time that want and need are very different. Some lose sleep, cry in the shower, and live in fear of what else may be around the corner.

Maybe most do. Most of the people I know do anyway - and that makes me sad.

So I asked myself, "Sher," because that's what I call myself, "if you have stuff that other people might need, what the hell is it doing in your house?"

I couldn't answer myself. I think it was because by this time I was straddling the toilet seat backwards trying to get that screw thingie in straight.

You know, quite frankly I'm sort of sick of the way the world's been working anyway. I'm hopeful that we're approaching a time of giving - and not the kind of giving that's all about writing a check once in awhile. The kind of giving that's about "I have something" - a skill, a thing, a whatever - "and now you can have it because I don't need it and oh yeah by the way, because no man is an island."

That's my deep thought for today. I have to go find a gas station that looks clean because trying to sit on my toilet seat is like trying to pee on a Disney ride. Apparently the butter knife was not the way to go.
















Copyright © Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.

Tell me you love me at: HumorWriter@gmail.com

Tell me you hate me at: Yeah. I'm so sure I'm going to make that easy for you.