Small ideas from Small minds

I can hold a grudge.  In fact, holding onto past injustices might be my super power.  I was told yesterday that my super power was remembering numbers when I seemed to commit a 20 digit number to memory while I was doing an audit of serial numbers, but I don’t know that this was such a feat when the first 6 numbers were the same for all the phones I was auditing.  I picked up the phone, recited the number to myself, put down the phone, picked up my clipboard and wrote then number down… It looked more impressive than it was, but I was not going to ruin the moment by explaining that it was really only the last 12 or 14 numbers I had to remember – and that only for a few seconds.

 

Holding a grudge, however, is something that I have long been an expert at doing.  I still curse the raven who stole my box of Sun Maid raisins when I was 5.  True, I had provoked the swooping attack by feeding the raven raisins from that very box.  Somehow I expected that devil bird to recognize the difference between my raisins (in the box) and his raisins (in the dirt).

 

Curse you!  You  black-hearted raisin stealing raven!

 

I am only just now beginning to waver in my long-standing boycott of the NBA that was brought on by the player’s strike.  I have been to a handful of NBA games when people I knew were performing at half time, and once after a half time performance I was offered tickets on the 14^th row which I accepted, but I have not spent a dime purchasing anything NBA related since the players began their strike and I began my retaliatory strike.  It is getting harder for me to hold out animosity against current players when they had no part in the original injury done to me.  I am wavering, but not yet willing to call it done.

 

Two years ago, a final application of lawn fertilizer was applied too thick and I ended up with dead stripes around a tree and down the middle of the parking.  It gives me pleasure to continue to refuse the services of that lawn care company when they call – and they continue to call every time they get a new account manager.  The damage only exists in my memory, but I still hold them at fault.

 

Many years ago I caught a book store cheating me.  I actually overheard someone, who turned out to be the owner, bragging to an employee about what a steal he had just gotten for a book he had just purchased.  The braggart paled and ran for the back office when he recognized me as the person who had just sold him the book he was talking about.  I don’t intend to ever give him the opportunity to cheat me again.

 

My father may find it funny that I still often remember to honk as I pass the house where a lady once honked at my father when I was about 12.

 

The funny thing is that the emotions that were originally behind all these reactions are long gone; these things have transformed from things that really bothered me to things that are maintained simply because of tradition.  Maybe I should have started this off by saying that I was really good at upholding traditions.

 

Yes, that would have been more accurate.  Somehow that does not sound like a super power at all – it sounds like the definition of someone with a closed mind… I don’t like seeing myself like that at all.

 

 

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