Snap

I’m not really known for my polished decision-making skills.  Everything sounds good.

I think I’ll get my bangs cut again.  Well, I like eggs, and I like cake, so I'll have both.  I’m so tired of this table – out to the curb it goes.  We’ll eat dinner in the living room for a while.  Yes!  Let’s pave a large portion of our backyard for a basketball court!

Do you remember Forrest Gump?  Remember when Jenny was a hippie and she’s singing on the street for change with some other hippies and this dude rolls up in a VW bus and asks if any of them would like to go to San Francisco and she says “I’ll go”?  That’s me.  That sounds good.  San Francisco sounds like fun.

A month after my husband and I met, I asked him to come with me to Europe for an academic conference I would be attending in six months.  When he said “sure,” just like Jenny would, I knew I had met my soul mate.  When we arrived at the hotel, we were shocked to see that the bathroom in our room was in our room - a toilet, sink, and shower stall not more than ten feet from everything else.  No separate bathroom.  THE TOILET WAS IN THE BEDROOM.

We were not at that stage of our relationship then, but whatevs.   Everybody poops.  #yolo

It worked out.  We had a lot of laughs on that trip. 

My snap decision making has gotten me into trouble, especially when I was younger.  Did you know that all four hubcaps of a Chevrolet Caprice Classic will pop off at one time when you land after catching some air?  And if you are attending a rodeo during an Arizona spring, you really should carry more in the pockets of your cute white cut-offs than a bunch of Skoal Bandits.  Namely, sunscreen.  But everybody does this stuff when they're young.  Well, maybe not the Skoal Bandits.

I majored in psychology because it sounded good, moved from one state to another and then back again and again and again because it sounded good, got married because it sounded good, had babies because it sounded good, bought a house in this neighborhood because it sounded good, bought a Groupon for a Barre class because it sounded good. None of these decisions took a long time to make, and so far, so good.  Except for the Barre class.  I haven't actually done it yet.

"Hey!  Let's let the kids play the goldfish game at a carnival.  

It's rigged - they won't win."

I just don’t take a long time to make decisions.  When I’m asked to do something, if my immediate reaction isn’t “No,” I ask for some time to think before I respond.   That’s so cute.  Full disclosure: I don’t think about it.  I remember the question days later and either respond yes or no depending on how I feel about it at that time.  Maybe this is how everybody thinks about things.  Or maybe you’re thinking that I’m kind of a jerk.  I hope it’s not that.  It’s just that thinking too hard on a subject, mulling over all the possible outcomes and pros and cons - that confuses me.  If I stopped to think about all the ins and outs of every decision, I’d sit in my house and do nothing, ever.

And that’s not living.

I will probably continue to make snap decisions.  It's how I do the decision-making.  When it really counts, I can force myself to stop and think, or I confer with close friends or my husband, who has grown a little in this area and who now has sharper decision-making skills that we both rely on for important things.

But not all things are important, and we can both live with a snap decision that may seem weird to the rest of the world.

Like having a basketball court in our backyard.

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