Woody Allen once said "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." I say, if you want to make me laugh, yell at me for hating to make plans.
I hate plans. Plans are optimists ways of hoping they can do something at a given time. Plans are a pessimists way of setting up for an imminent failure. I'm a realist and plans mean only one thing to me. Plans allow others to let you down. Sure, I can hear the rumblings. I'm just a pessimist calling myself a realist. I disagree. Look at what we plan for. When we are younger we plan on play dates. Sickness comes along and we're stuck looking out a window at what could have been. When I was younger I spent all day in school planning on a sport being played on my block. Then the afternoon shower would come along and while it didn't bother me, so many times I'd receive that distant yell telling me to come inside. As I got older I planned my weekends with friends. Friday morning, my mother would tell me how we were all going to some museum or to visit some distant relative who I'd never see or care about again. Sometimes they weren't that distant either. We start to mature and we are told to plan for our future. Well let's see how well that works.
You're parents have a mortgage or rent and car payments, but they are planning your college education. You are making minimum wage and trying to figure out if you can afford a six pack and a bag of weed for the weekend, not trying to figure out a better way to go into debt for $100,000 in four years. You start dating that special girl and you plan on marrying her. You then find out she's been fucking her ex-boyfriend who just got out of jail or just needed someone to talk to one night. Maybe it's not that severe. Maybe you just realize after a long courting that if this is the best it can get, it's not worth it. Maybe you aren't worth it. Who knows? Seriously, if you are in a relationship and you aren't married and you ever utter the words "I couldn't be happier" you should run for the hills. Hopefully if you marry someone, you will be happier. Chances are you won't be. Sad, but true.
So what's my big problem with plans? It's quite simple. The more time there is between the moment you make the plan and the actual event, the more chance there is it will not come to fruition. Think about it. You make plans to go away with a group of friends. Let's say ten people are going to split a house for a long weekend. Well you plan this in December and it's for July. Everything is perfect until someone loses their job, gets herpes, or dies. NOw it's gonna cost you more money and you hadn't planned on that. You're angry! You don't mind the wake, but did they have to die during the NCAA tournament? Honestly, I plan on watching that stuff every year and I make sure that only work and death comes between me and Billy Packer. Seriously, if you're going to die or get married, could you have the decency to do it either in February or August. Probably the two worst months for sports. I'd prefer February, because wearing black in August makes me sweat and nobody wants to drip sweat on a corpse or dance the night away and look like a sweaty Richard Simmons sans the big top styled shorts. Where was I? Oh yeah, plans.
Let's take the most simple thing. A romantic dinner. You have the food in the oven, you've popped the wine, the candles are lit. You have everything timed perfectly. Then you get the call. "I'll be home in a few, I just had to pick something up at the store." You try and calm down, because you don't want to give away the secret, so you play it cool for as long as you can. It's about two minutes away and then you make the call. You find out she's five minutes away, so you turn the heat off. Five minutes in girl speak is actually 10-15. So now you start thinking about what the hell she could have gotten that is taking so long. You call again and now you give it up. You say dinner is waiting to be served and that's when she tells you she actually stopped somewhere else that will take a few more minutes than she said. Dinner is basically ruined. She comes in and you know it's cold and she knows it's cold. She politely tells you how great it is and how much she appreciates it and the whole time you wish she'd choke on something and you could taunt her as she takes her last breaths. During dinner you don't want to talk, but you have to. So you do the small talk move and ask her what she had to pick up. She prefaces her tale with a little comment about how if you would have told her you were making dinner, she would have stopped earlier. So now it's your fault she ruined dinner and you have to wait to hear her mindless story about her shopping spree. You get up mid sentence and start to get the dessert out. You've gotten her favorite and as you prepare it, you try and tune her out. You hear something about pompoms and poke your head out from the kitchen and give a quizzical look. Then she repeats it. "Tampons." Great! The fancy dinner, the wine and special dessert just got washed away by the Red River. You don't know whether to grab the coffee and dessert or the remote control. The night ends with you in a big argument, when you are deemed insensitive for making a Shakes the Clown reference when Michael J. Fox appears on the television. Meanwhile you'd rather yourself be stricken with Parkinson and be molested by the creepy scientist in Back to the Future than spend another minute with the entree-ruining love of your life. All this could have been avoided if you hadn't made a plan. Next time, forget the surprise, make your attempt well known beforehand and then try and execute the same delightful meal without the element of romance. Just remember, this time she'll be telling you the flame is too high or you've added too much salt, and either way, by the end of the meal you'd wish you'd stayed home and the closest you came to cooking was looking at photo shopped porn pictures of Rachel Ray.
The next time you want to make a plan. Think about the repercussions. Do what I do. Wing it. Chances are someone will ruin your day that way too.
I hate plans. Plans are optimists ways of hoping they can do something at a given time. Plans are a pessimists way of setting up for an imminent failure. I'm a realist and plans mean only one thing to me. Plans allow others to let you down. Sure, I can hear the rumblings. I'm just a pessimist calling myself a realist. I disagree. Look at what we plan for. When we are younger we plan on play dates. Sickness comes along and we're stuck looking out a window at what could have been. When I was younger I spent all day in school planning on a sport being played on my block. Then the afternoon shower would come along and while it didn't bother me, so many times I'd receive that distant yell telling me to come inside. As I got older I planned my weekends with friends. Friday morning, my mother would tell me how we were all going to some museum or to visit some distant relative who I'd never see or care about again. Sometimes they weren't that distant either. We start to mature and we are told to plan for our future. Well let's see how well that works.
You're parents have a mortgage or rent and car payments, but they are planning your college education. You are making minimum wage and trying to figure out if you can afford a six pack and a bag of weed for the weekend, not trying to figure out a better way to go into debt for $100,000 in four years. You start dating that special girl and you plan on marrying her. You then find out she's been fucking her ex-boyfriend who just got out of jail or just needed someone to talk to one night. Maybe it's not that severe. Maybe you just realize after a long courting that if this is the best it can get, it's not worth it. Maybe you aren't worth it. Who knows? Seriously, if you are in a relationship and you aren't married and you ever utter the words "I couldn't be happier" you should run for the hills. Hopefully if you marry someone, you will be happier. Chances are you won't be. Sad, but true.
So what's my big problem with plans? It's quite simple. The more time there is between the moment you make the plan and the actual event, the more chance there is it will not come to fruition. Think about it. You make plans to go away with a group of friends. Let's say ten people are going to split a house for a long weekend. Well you plan this in December and it's for July. Everything is perfect until someone loses their job, gets herpes, or dies. NOw it's gonna cost you more money and you hadn't planned on that. You're angry! You don't mind the wake, but did they have to die during the NCAA tournament? Honestly, I plan on watching that stuff every year and I make sure that only work and death comes between me and Billy Packer. Seriously, if you're going to die or get married, could you have the decency to do it either in February or August. Probably the two worst months for sports. I'd prefer February, because wearing black in August makes me sweat and nobody wants to drip sweat on a corpse or dance the night away and look like a sweaty Richard Simmons sans the big top styled shorts. Where was I? Oh yeah, plans.
Let's take the most simple thing. A romantic dinner. You have the food in the oven, you've popped the wine, the candles are lit. You have everything timed perfectly. Then you get the call. "I'll be home in a few, I just had to pick something up at the store." You try and calm down, because you don't want to give away the secret, so you play it cool for as long as you can. It's about two minutes away and then you make the call. You find out she's five minutes away, so you turn the heat off. Five minutes in girl speak is actually 10-15. So now you start thinking about what the hell she could have gotten that is taking so long. You call again and now you give it up. You say dinner is waiting to be served and that's when she tells you she actually stopped somewhere else that will take a few more minutes than she said. Dinner is basically ruined. She comes in and you know it's cold and she knows it's cold. She politely tells you how great it is and how much she appreciates it and the whole time you wish she'd choke on something and you could taunt her as she takes her last breaths. During dinner you don't want to talk, but you have to. So you do the small talk move and ask her what she had to pick up. She prefaces her tale with a little comment about how if you would have told her you were making dinner, she would have stopped earlier. So now it's your fault she ruined dinner and you have to wait to hear her mindless story about her shopping spree. You get up mid sentence and start to get the dessert out. You've gotten her favorite and as you prepare it, you try and tune her out. You hear something about pompoms and poke your head out from the kitchen and give a quizzical look. Then she repeats it. "Tampons." Great! The fancy dinner, the wine and special dessert just got washed away by the Red River. You don't know whether to grab the coffee and dessert or the remote control. The night ends with you in a big argument, when you are deemed insensitive for making a Shakes the Clown reference when Michael J. Fox appears on the television. Meanwhile you'd rather yourself be stricken with Parkinson and be molested by the creepy scientist in Back to the Future than spend another minute with the entree-ruining love of your life. All this could have been avoided if you hadn't made a plan. Next time, forget the surprise, make your attempt well known beforehand and then try and execute the same delightful meal without the element of romance. Just remember, this time she'll be telling you the flame is too high or you've added too much salt, and either way, by the end of the meal you'd wish you'd stayed home and the closest you came to cooking was looking at photo shopped porn pictures of Rachel Ray.
The next time you want to make a plan. Think about the repercussions. Do what I do. Wing it. Chances are someone will ruin your day that way too.
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