Art Gallery Openings can be pretty neat. I like to go to them…. the haughty kind… where people get all dressed up. You can hear the jingle of ice in cocktail glasses. There are lots of little trays on the arms of penguin-like waiters….trays with cubed cheeses, and puffy pastries. I like the cocktail weenie kinds. It is precisely at these moments… when the cocktail weenies are served… that I pull out my Sock Monkey Hat and place it snugly on my head. I walk around the room with a handful of those little treats… and offer folks… “Piggy in a Blankey?” Or I will edge up next to them…. and say… “I think they hung this one upside down.” Or…. “He used WAY too much blue when he painted that lake.”
I do these things because I am impulsive. Yes. Impulsive. Acting without forethought. Impetuous. Spontaneous. Foolhardy.
Sometimes this is fun and good. Other times… not so much. I call those “lacking” times…”The Salt Water Taffy Syndrome.”
It happened when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Our family took a day trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park. It had been a long, long, adventure… and we were exiting the park at dusk. I saw a white-wooden-ramshackle-stand which was peddling Salt Water Taffy. At once, I was overcome with the absolute desire, craving, and desperation for this thing called Salt Water Taffy.
My parents so no. My innermost core, all of my being, my whole persona was saying YES, YES, YES. They still said no. But didn’t they understand? This was no longer a “want”… this had now transformed into a requirement… a NEED.
No. Again.
No. So I cried. I wailed. I sobbed. I threw a tantrum like I had never thrown before… and have never thrown since. The Salt Water Taffy had now become a matter of life and death. Still…. NO.
The outburst and the frenzy continued. I would not have it. My four year old body could not exist with out a box of Salt Water Taffy. For the love of God…. please. I was pounding on the pavement. Rigid. Screaming in tears.
Shame on my parents. They bought me the taffy.
As I sat in the back seat of our station wagon, I unwrapped my first piece. It smelled divine. I plopped the taffy in my mouth and began to chew.
What the crap? It said “Salt”…. I love salt. This was as sweet as sweet could be. I can remember spitting the candy back out.. and into to the wrapper.
Hence. “The Salt Water Taffy Syndrome”
Sometimes we think we know what we need… or what we want… or what is best for us. We have it in our heads that “this is how it is supposed to be” OR…. “I really need this or that.”
Then, as time goes by… and we get past that parcel in our lives… we find out that we didn’t need it at all. Or it wasn’t quite as important as we had once thought it was. Perhaps it simply wasn’t the right time.
This is called hindsight. And hindsight is 20/20 vision.
Sometimes impulse is good… like running down the middle of the street clucking like a chicken. It makes the tourists crazy.
Yet at other times… impulse can get us in to real trouble. And if not trouble, it can cause us to close our eyes and ears… ….. to the way the universe might really be speaking to us.
For whatever reason, that incident at Cedar Point has stuck with me… like taffy to a filling in one’s molar. I think it is the first time that I was embarrassed by myself. And the first time I realized that I may not always know what is best for me.
At those times in our lives… it may be most fortunate that we seek advice. From people with hindsight. To help us see clearly now.
And for the record… I really do like little cocktail weenies wrapped in pastry. With mustard. A whole lot more…… than I like Salt Water Taffy.
“There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.” – Unknown
“A word to the wise ain’t necessary, it’s the stupid ones who need the advice.” – Bill Cosby