No Seconds, Mister Croquet Man

The chocolate chip cookies kept looking at me with their fudgy eyes and I ate so many my stomach is going to hurt for the rest of the night.  "Small price," is what my mom would say.  The price of the materials was small, but not the impetus. I tripped over a croquet bracket at the park today while I was trotting to catch the frisbee.  After I had moved all my hair from out of my face, I held up the metal U and called across the grass to a group of people with their hands on their hips:

"I'm sorry!  I just knocked this over!"

And the guy who had set it up said:

"Well, if you knocked it over, then why don't you put it back?"

Which I tried to do, after pausing for a minute to gauge his seriousness and finding it as equally high as his ranks on the Ruin the Day Scale. While I was bent over and cursing the hardness of the ground, I hollered back at him:

"Is that good?"

Then he stepped one large step to the right, leaned his upper half til it was parallel with the ground, and said,

"Well....not really...I guess just leave it there."

I realized rudeness had become remarkably rare in my life until today.

On account of it being sunny and lovely out, I took the frisbee and wound up as tight as I could like a human size cinnamon roll.  Then I unspooled and let loose and knocked that mallet-wielding wanker out cold.

No.  But I got scowly for a while for being treated like a child, and then I decided to eat a child's dinner of cereal and cookies.  Tonight, the wind is banging against the windows like a loud robber.  I feel like a game of croquet is going on between my internal organs.  I learned my lesson to not bring grudges to the kitchen.

Tomorrow is Monday but it feels like Anyday.  I will not eat more than three cookies, I will relish the meltiness of chocolate chips in moderation, I will try not to think about the mean man at the park, and I will try to remember that savoring single words and/or simmering in their sting are things that happen in places as impersonal as public parks.

Despite degradations mumbled across pressed grass, what Ralph Waldo Emerson said is true:

"The only gift is a portion of thyself."