Member Musings features the reflections and thoughts of an NPC member. This month’s featured member is Iris Shur.
My idea was to write a column about all the pithy things I think about during the day because I wonder if other people think those thoughts too. This morning while eating my cereal I had my first “pithy thought” of the day. But by the time I finished my cereal and went to write it down, I couldn’t remember what it was. So that is my first thought or, as it turns out, my first non-thought—that frustration I feel when I can’t remember what I was sure I would.
As I was cleaning up from breakfast and putting the milk in the refrigerator it suddenly came to me. Duh. It had to do with the milk! I was thinking: why do they put the expiration dates on things in obscure places and so faint you can hardly read them with the naked eye? Not a real explosive thought, but I think it often as I turn a sticky jelly jar around and around and upside down looking for that elusive date, or, in this case, a milk bottle. While I am on the subject, do I really have to pay attention to that date if the stuff smells and tastes OK? That is another of my “pithy thoughts.”
This morning I called Arizona. I always have to count on my fingers to figure out what time it is there. Invariably I make a mistake and wake someone up. Family members who live out west are not always kind when I goof up.
At the beauty salon today (and is it beauty salon or beauty parlor?) I was looking at all the products they sell. I browsed through a fashion magazine featuring hundreds of hair products. How can anyone possibly know which hairspray or anti-aging cream to use? You would have to get a doctorate in beauty. Then, I thought, if a wrinkle cream really did work, we would all be using it.
I asked my beautician (hair dresser? stylist?) if I would look good with really short hair like I had in my twenties. She told me that my hair was too thin on top and she would not encourage me to have it cut. I didn’t know that my hair was thin on top. It was not a happy hair day.
My beautician is trying to get her live-in boyfriend to pop the question. I told her how I helped a roommate with the same problem fifty years ago. I bought a card for her to give to her boyfriend which said, on the front, “By now our relationship must be very clear to you.” Inside it stated “Would you mind explaining it to me.” She gave him the card and they have been married about fifty years now. But it didn’t end well for me. She moved out to get married, leaving me with the lease.
While I was having that memory I started thinking about how I got my husband to ask me to marry him. We had been dating a year. One night he said to me, “My secretary bet me that we would be married in a year.”
“Oh no,” I retorted, “tell her she loses the bet. I am not waiting a year.”
Then I thought it would be fun to ask my friends about their engagement stories.
Another pithy thought really is how our minds make such weird connections from one thought to another. And also, how did I remember the words on the card I gave my roommate fifty years ago and I couldn’t remember a thought I had five minutes ago about the milk and the expiration date?
In case you might be interested, that is what went through my head in just a few hours.