A new year.
A new decade.
New possibilities.
And yet the paint was still wet on the 2010 sign when I realized I had entered the new year with a well rehearsed list of complaints accumulated towards the end of ‘09. I recited these complaints to any sympathetic ear I could find at the New Year’s Day party we attended.
“Such a beginning,” one might say.
My complaints crossed many subject and territory boundaries.
The coughing towel man: this complaint related to the man at the gym who keeps popping up lately on the treadmill adjacent to the one I’m using. The gentlemen carries with him a large maroon towel into which he wheezes, sneezes and coughs when he’s striding along next to me.
Oh call me picky, I don’t like it.
“Stay home and get better,” that’s what I think to myself when he’s my neighbor.
The sweat flicking man: this guy is a sprinter. He seems to show up when the coughing towel man takes a day off.
I set my treadmill at four miles per hour. That rate puts me at a good clip without profuse panting or gasping. The sweat flicking man, well this guy runs. He’s got that conveyor belt zipping along faster than I’d care to challenge. And so when this guy is your neighbor – he’s loud, he’s sweaty, he’s all over.
Picky, picky.
Out of the gym and over to the lunch counter for my carry over complaint list concerning food service. I’ve got a couple receipts from the bread store itching for a letter to the owners. One infraction involved cold soup. After a stint in line to complain about the cold soup I was directed to heat it up myself in the microwave at the napkin counter.
“The nerve.”
And one receipt was for a pathetic excuse of a grilled cheese I ordered off the children’s menu. The sandwich was $3.99, included no sidesnot even a pickle, and the alignment of the bread looked like it had been sideswiped in the warming oven by a real meal.
“Outrageous.”
So in the early days of 2010 I was honing the details of these complaints for public recitation. I was accumulating just the right adjectives to describe the gym offenses to invoke a gasp or a chuckle. And I was getting the hand motions down pat to create in mid-air the minuscule cheese sandwich with the big price tag.
And there were more complaints – tales of unfair parking tickets, scenarios of foiled gift returns, even with requisite receipt in hand. The list goes on and on.
There was all this ripe complaint material left over from 2009.
And then I got to thinking. The only thing that all my complaint stories had in common was me. The fellows on the treadmill next to me came and went. I stayed. The counter clerks at the bread store changed from shift-toshift. It was I who was the constant.
I, the constant complainer.
There’s a terrific television commercial currently being aired for American Express. The commercial is a collection of simple images, shapes suggesting smiles and frowns formed by everyday items like purses, furniture, a clock.
The American Express commercial is an easy, all be it, obvious illustration of how joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness hover around waiting for recognition. The commercial is delightful and whimsical on the surface. At the same time it is fodder for thoughtful contemplation.
And so I’ve decided to toss my ‘09 receipts for offending meals served. And I’ve decided to welcome my fitness conscious neighbors to exercise alongside me.
Enough already with the complaints of the past.
I’ll start off with the positive for 2010. And a positive, reinforcing suggestion to the gym management: how about moving those treadmills a little further apart?