Always seems such a simple word. Forever, constant, continual: these are the meanings most of us consider. In a relationship what's more comforting or romantic than Whitney's "Iiiiiiiiiiii will always loooooove youuuuu?" Take a moment to consider some other meanings of the word: never-ending, ceaseless, feminine hygeine products. The danger of always nearly caught me this weekend and I don't mean an embarrassing trip to Walgreens for my wife.
Always catches us off-guard. The day will be bright with the tranquil twitter-chirp of birds lingering on the afternoon breeze. We'll be having a good time throwing some good-natured barbs at each other about one foible or other. Then suddenly one of us will do it.
"Well, I'd be more inclined to fill up the tank if you didn't always have the car on your days off."
A crackle of thunder pierces the air, a once-twittering bird flops mid twitter-chirp dead upon the ground nearby.
"What do you mean, Always? I spent all week cooped up here so you could have the stinkin' car and you still left me whiffin' fumes to make it to the 'burbs for gas this week."
Always brings the storm from there, a maelstrom of vitriol and hatred carries us away for the next however many hours. In the end, we're spent, a day is lost and there's a dead bird out there somewhere. Sorry, Tweety.
This Sunday I averted a misadventure of the Always kind. Because of my screwball work schedule, Sunday is our Date-night, Shopping day, Hang with Friends day, Relax together day, and Dinner-out night all in one. Due to our various self-inflicted dietary restrictions (Megan, a Vegetarian and me a Pickytarian), dinner-out choices for Sunday usually go something like this:
"What do you want for dinner, Megan?"
"I don't know, what do you want?"
"How about Melvin's House of Meat?"
"How about Tong's Temple of Southeast Asian Food that involves no Meat?"
Sometimes, however, one of us will toss out the other's favorite, or one of the few compromise places we both enjoy. Megan started off the game with that play.
"How about Cheesecake Factory?"
I don't know why, but I have a mental block against the Cheesecake Factory. I enjoy a number of dishes there. They have gratis bread (60% of my reason for liking a restaurant, by the way). They even are a place we both enjoy. For some reason I always do want to say no thanks. This week, however, always did not win. I stopped myself, considered the free bread, and went with my lady to a nice meal out that we both enjoyed. I wish everyone their level best to avoid the always trap too. After all, always left Whitney Houston a domestically abused crack-whore to Bobby Brown.
