I once asked my mother why on earth she married my stepfather, a man she never really loved, who caused untold amounts of destruction in our lives and was destined to have a negative impact on me long after his death, and she said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Don’t all ideas seem like good ones at the time? I frittered away what little life savings I had on a really foolish investment, and now I can’t even afford to replace my ragged bed sheets. A friend of mine wanted an instant family, so he married a single mother and has spent the past 30 years trapped in a miserable relationship that is finally ending in the most vindictive divorce I’ve ever seen. I used to have a coworker who was the most charismatic people person on the face of the planet, but rather than go on to have a successful career by using that skill, she instead decided to do drugs, and now is a prostitute who is in and out of rehab.
And then there are those slow motion train wrecks that you can see coming from miles away. Women who marry men that have well established reputations for being Lotharios cannot seriously be surprised when they get cheated on, can they? And while we may be saddened, most of us are not particularly shocked when men who make their living getting entirely too close to wild animals are mauled or gored to death. And if you’re supposed to be on a diabetic diet and you don’t comply, you have to know your health is going to be negatively impacted.
But these “good” ideas insert themselves into our lives in mundane ways as well. Who doesn’t have an article of clothing in their closet that in retrospect causes them to cringe? And it’s a rare person who hasn’t been on a date that has left them somewhat less than starry-eyed.
I wrote this blog entry because I was thinking about apple butter. Whenever I visit Appalachia I always wind up buying a jar of this stuff. It’s the name that seduces me. Apples and butter sound like they’d be wonderful together, like a buttery pie filling. But I learned after my first purchase that there is no butter to be had in apple butter. It’s actually kind of bitter and rank, and I always wind up throwing this vile substance out after the first taste. And yet I buy it again and again because I’m usually hungry at the time of purchase, and because it sounds so good.
What can I say? It seems like a good idea at the time.
(Image credit: 100directions.com)
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