Back in yonder years, when a sitcom would come on, there was a little ditty where the background of the show was spelled out so you could start watching any episode and not be lost. Example, you never wondered why Gilligan was on the island, or, just how did the Brady family all get together. Would be kinda nice if Washington had a little ditty like that so we would not all be shaking our heads and wondering just what the heck is going on with our country. Obama and three of his flunkies would marry Hillary and three…. sorry, I digress, even though it might be nice if they all went on a three-hour tour!
Now having said all of that just to set up the fact that I needed to set up my latest “As I See It”, the story goes like this…
Once, my lovely wife had a favorite frying pan. When I say favorite, I mean she cooked EVERYTHING in that frying pan. Now as some of you might know, my wife cooks when the notion strikes or we have company. (Not like my Mom that had three cooked meals a day on the table). We really enjoy Sunday lunch now since my son’s girlfriend comes home with him after church. This means my wife cooks! I don’t mean to be a wife-basher by any means cause what my wife may lack in cooking frequency, she makes up in other areas, like weed eating and such. I bet you thought I was going to say something else… OK get a real life! Anyway, back to the frying pan. Her favorite frying pan. Years of use and delicious spaghetti sauce, the bottom had become scratched and had started pealing up and off. I had politely mentioned a couple of time that she might want to think about replacing the pan. Then she would give me the look like “and yes I might think of replacing you as well”. One night as I was doing the dishes, I asked her if she would be upset if I threw the pan away and to my surprise she said no. Of course she was watching television at the time so I really do not think she may have heard me correctly, but acting on whim, I tossed “the” frying pan and the lid into the garbage. When asked about the pan, I explained that the pan could make us all sick from digesting fragments of Teflon, or whatever it is on the bottom of non-stick frying pans that makes those eggs slide out effortlessly on the commercials but in real life you have to use a half a can of PAM to keep them from tearing all apart. She did agree to leave it in the garbage only after I told her I would replace it, which after three weeks, I did.
Now if life were a movie, yesterday would have been categorized as a romantic comedy. My quest for the day, between numerous tasks that I had to accomplish for my job, I decided to hunt down the rapturous replacement pan. Knowing that I had to travel between Georgia and Alabama and passing several shopping meccas, I just knew I would find that Holy Grail!
The first stop would be a mall with dozens of possibilities. Each store turned out to be a no-hitter. Middle aged white male strolling a mall in search of a frying pan. As the sale’s ladies would ask if I needed help, I would relate the story of how I was replacing my wife’s favorite frying pan. Now single guys may know that a puppy or a baby might be chick bait, but when a woman hears a heartbreaking story of how a woman and her pan were split apart and then the man makes it his passion to make sure his woman is happy, well I had lots of assistance looking for that “just right” allusive frying pan. First stop just didn’t pan out… (this would be the comedy part of the movie as well as a pan pun).
Second stop was a famous “Mart” store which one day I will write about just how I loathe to be in them, but nevertheless, I went to make my baby happy. The good news was, I not only found the pan, $25.00, but I also found the perfect bar stool I had been looking for my daughter so she could curl her hair in front of her mirror without having to drag a kitchen chair through the house at 5:30 AM each morning, $25.00, and a picture frame that I had planned to give to my Mom for Mother’s day, $25.00. So we are talking around seventy-five dollars of my money that I was dishing out so all the important women in my life would be happy. (Thus more movie comedy here since all of mankind knows that it takes a little more than $25.00 to make a women happy). The bad part…as I walked to the checkout area, there were only three lanes open and about twenty people in each line. In my mental state of mind, I snapped. I placed all three of my treasures that I had found on top of the potato chip rack and left the building thinking to myself “That will be $75.00 of my money they will not get”. Yes, I would be teaching them a thing or two as they take their millions of dollars to the bank every day….sigh.
Stop three would boast of lowest prices since they were outlet shops. Shop after shop of high-end clothing stores where the sales associate find it a chore to help customers since they are employed by (insert name of a high-end, hoity toity store where the sales associates have their noses stuck in the air and they think their flatulence all smell like perfume). I finally find the kitchen store. As I walk in the front door, I hear one associate talking to another associate about how they have messed up her hire date and what should she do…should she talk to her supervisor which she had already done or should she go over their head and call payroll and if she did that would she get into trouble but since she had already talked to her supervisor then she should not get into trouble… I wanted to say “breath girl, just take a moment and breath”. I find the pans. Yep a real bargain. About twice the price and they didn’t even have bar stools! I start walking out and the girl is still bumping her gums about her hire date instead of acknowledging a customer.
This is where the movie starts to have the sad music playing in the background. The scene…the man is walking slowly back to his car, the sky is overcast, a slight breeze blowing where he once had hair (more comedy since I am going bald). I will have to go home empty-handed. No prize, no treasure, no frying pan, bar stool or picture frame. Music builds to a climax when all of a sudden he has an idea! A real da da da moment! He can take his wife out and let he pick out her own pan at a bigger and better store, plus she get to spend time with this wonderful pan hunter of a husband!
As the movie comes to a close and the theme music starts to play, the man and his wife are seen walking off into the sunset…she with a new frying pan under one arm and her other arm around her warrior, her hunter, the man with a smile on his face and a bar stool and a picture frame in a shopping bag on his other arm. Yes life is good!
And that’s the way I see it…
A View From Bogaville 