“I don’t want to go to that restaurant,” I had to tell my son Art. He was planning on where we could go to eat, and we had narrowed it down, but I had to explain that I didn’t want to go back to a particular place for a while, since the last time there had been an “incident.”
The last time we went, Richard had just taken our elderly pug dog Moses to the vet, and Moses had gotten medicine along with his doggy smells all over the seat of my car. I didn’t know it, so I sat in the car for a while and wondered about the smell. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the restaurant the scent was all over me. I strolled up and down the street in front of the restaurant for a while trying to “air out” but it was to no avail.
Of course, Richard tried to minimize it, and for a while I believed him when he said it wasn’t so bad. We went into the restaurant, met our friends Linda and Ron and soon, Linda said, “that’s odd, I’ve never seen them do that.” When I looked to see what she meant, I could see the wait staff burning incense – I put two and two together and looked at Richard in a way that was supposed to communicate my feelings about him letting me sit in dog medicine that smelled funny.
When I told my son the story, he just laughed, and said, “Oh, our family has done nuttier things than that when we get together.” I guess he was right – it’s always something! It isn’t that I ever plan to have things go wrong – it just seems to happen in the course of everything going on in our lives. My son suggested that I just had to get over it.
Some things are like that. We may be aware of a problem or mistake but who is to say that anyone else even notices – or really cares so much because everyone makes mistakes. I was embarrassed, but as you can see, I’m able to laugh about it all now. Our beloved Moses passed on recently, and some of the things I miss about him are his bad smells, because we loved him no matter what. It’s okay to stink.
Ultimately life is about as good as we make it by accepting the problems and mistakes but focusing on the humor and blessings. As a person of faith, I know I should be reminded to see the joy in every day, even the days that “stink” so to speak. I’m going to recommit to having fun and never hiding the wacky things that happen, and they do continue to happen!
I hope you can share some of the fun.
