An absurdity a day keeps excessive saneness away

Well, I’m finally back in Lubbock after a nice Christmas break. I no longer have a laptop, so for the most part I could only access the internet with my iPhone. While I was away, little things kept making me think, “I should put this on my blog…” But, out with the old and in with the new, right? So I started pondering around New Year’s Eve what ridiculous resolution I would declare to the entire blogosphere… exercise more? Nah, I’m good enough about at least trying to do that year-round already. Cook more? Meh, that’s kind of a resolution loop-hole. I like cooking, and it’s not much of a problem seeing as how I’m too broke to eat out often anyways. Give up coffee? I wanted a resolution, not martyrdom. So, I decided maintaining my current level of work ethic and sanity was enough…

But then I started packing for my return. This is where you think my resolution is organization, or donating back-of-the-closet clothing. Nope. For some reason, my epiphany was this: I should use bendy straws at home. The cool, neon kind. Not the kind with stripes you find at restaurants. So, I blurted out to my boyfriend, “I’m going to buy bendy straws when I get back! That’s my resolution!” to which he politely laughed a bit and gave me a strange look I should be accustomed to receiving by now. Then he joke that he hoped I could follow through on such a commitment. Well that must have been the appeal of it. Because I was totally consumed with excitement for five whole minutes at the prospect of using neon bendy straws and the absurdity of making it a goal to do so for an entire calendar year. After my dramatic excitement, I finished off my packing by promptly tucking the idea away in the back of my mind, where it was nice and cozy resting there with my other absurdities.

Jump four days and there we were, back in Lubbock after a nine-hour drive from Houston, unpacking stuff from the car. Again, it hits me, and I make another mental note, removing “bendy staw=resolution” from whatever lobe stores absurdities and into my short-term memory (the frontal lobe, perhaps?). Then we finished unpacking, and by the time I was done, my mental note of “must buy bendy straws to complete New Year resolution” had already expired.

But this bendy straw thing just wasn’t going to disappear that easily. That must be obvious to you by now since you’re reading the fourth paragraph dedicated to them. When I was grocery shopping the next day I had one last thing I had forgotten to grab the first time I went to the very back of the store. As I turned my cart (with one stubborn wheel) into the canned vegetable aisle while wishing I had remembered to grab green beans the FIRST time I was in the back of the store, something in my peripheral vision grabbed my attention. Yes- you guessed it- something neon. AND bendy! And the LAST PACK! They were right at my eye-level, hanging from one of those white, plastic point-of-purchase displays you normally see packs of sunflower seeds hanging on at gas stations. I audibly gasped, and before that pack of bendy straws was in full sight I had grabbed them and threw down in my cart with conviction. I then grabbed my green beans and walked away from the other people in the aisle while trying to look sane. The canned vegetable aisle has never been so much fun. I knew I had a reason for my sudden likeness of bendy straws, and now I know why…

The conclusion I have come to is this: Bendy straws were fate’s apparatus to remind me to enjoy the little things when I get bogged down by the “big picture” and to find the silly in the serious, if, for nothing else, my own personal entertainment. (And if you got to the end of this post, then hopefully yours, too.) So there’s my sub-consciously founded but very appropriate resolution: With my last semesters of college, I will tackle things one at a time, even if they seem to fly at me all at once. I’ll drink out of a bendy straw rather than chug. And most importantly, I’ll make my bendy straws neon, because they’re the most fun. Happy New Year!