Tangential Excuse-Making
I keep thinking about a shiatsu massage cushion that I tried in the store causing me to melt into the chair and remain there for several more demos to the annoyance of the other weary shoppers, but screw them because it felt almost like the real thing, real hands, and my neck was really hurting. So I decided to buy it, because I deserve it, right, and I took it to the price scanner only to discover it was a little pricey, too pricey. So I put it back because it was expensive AND excessive. There are people starving and I need to be rubbed by an electric-powered mass of plastic every night? And speaking of excessive, I thought, how many Hummers WERE there in the parking lot? But then I thought about how much I love NASCAR and hating Hummers while loving NASCAR is a little hypocritical from a polar-ice-cap-melting perspective, but the people I know who love NASCAR are good people and like it because it is good entertainment and is still in reach as a family vacation for the working and middle class so long as you camp and pack your own food. And because NASCAR has a sense of inventiveness and danger that are precisely the elements needed to raise a family on a working class income. And because I know people who work with hands that never get completely clean after years of grease collecting in the crevices and what is NASCAR but folks who worked with their hands and ran shine in a rather inventive and dangerous way to raise their families and then got lucky. Lucky and rich and what a fantastic fantasy to be a part of, whereas people in Hummers just seem stupid, right, and are usually wearing overpriced J. Crew stuff even though they could get the exact same polar fleece at Target. And then thinking of people looking all round and puffy in their layers of winter, polar fleece for some reason reminded me about that commercial I kept seeing while in Europe last fall about international hunger and American obesity, linking one to the other, and finally putting to rest the old parent-child argument about how you should not waste your dinner because children in China are starving and then the inevitable, well, go ahead and mail my broccoli straight to them. The kids were right, we should have been sending the broccoli AND the ho-hos and then thinking of junk food made me feel guilty, but not quite as guilty as being a fat American with a shiatsu massage cushion while people are starving. And thinking of all the greed and gluttony and the assorted deadly sins I started to think about Oprah who like all the other gurus—and I paused to note that I had said gurus in my head the way Zappa says it in that one song I like—says one must care for the self in order to care for others and maybe she is right and I have after all dedicated my working life to helping others and so maybe I would be a better helper if I had a guilt-free, shiatsu massage cushion and I could share it with everyone I know and then they would be better helpers too. And once we start doing a better job of helping maybe we will feel less guilty and then won’t be as hungry and will at the very least reserve the ho-hos for the less fortunate and then my brain ran out of breath. So I took a few deep ones and decided expensive and excessive HAD been the right assessment and I left the store without the shiatsu massage cushion and as I passed the row of Hummers in the parking lot it felt even more right. But that was days ago and I am still thinking of that nearly-real shiatsu massage and now that I think about it a little more maybe if someone presented it to me as a gift it would not be quite so excessive and I would still share it with everyone I know. I promise.
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