The Pea
(Written many, many years ago) All day at work I had preached the virtues of the “little things”. Being involved in a service-oriented job, and having lived long enough to know from experience, I had come to be an ardent believer in the old adage that it’s the “little” things in life that matter most
Little did I know that on that very day that belief would be put to the test by what most would agree to be the most insignificant of circumstance.
Finally, I was on my way home after a long day at the office, actually the most recent in a string of long days at the office.
Even though it was relatively early it was dark, adding to my sense of how long the day had been. Needless to say, I was in no mood for any additional aggravation or nonsensical happenstance – enough was enough, at least for today.
As I drove over the back-country roads on my way home I remembered that the family had taken an excursion to the dentist and wouldn’t be home when I got there. So, like all manly men the big question hit me – what to have for dinner?
Considering the hour and the unavailability of any good fast food places (quite the oxymoron) along the way, I figured the best thing to do would be to take my chances with “The Beast” (what real men call the refrigerator).
After throwing my suit jacket on the couch, and wolfing down a handful of chocolate chips to give me strength to tackle the monumental task ahead, I did it! I opened the door to the world of real food, manly food, you guessed it – leftovers!
The next step seemed almost as overwhelming as the first. There before my eyes in a sea of colored, burped, plastic containers were my choices – but what were they?
Forge ahead with reckless abandon my manly instincts told me, so in I went
Ah, yellow… vegetable soup. Nah, I don’t think so. Beige… meatloaf pockets! Nah, not interested. Orange… leftover spaghetti. Eureka, the mother of all leftover food! And the great part was that it tastes almost as good cold as it does heated up so “cooking” time, three minutes versus thirty second in the microwave, would be minimal – just what the doctor ordered.
I guess at that moment, all things considered, I should have realized that this whole process of dinner was going too well, and should have been on guard, for at that very moment it happened!
As I was proudly sliding my dinner’s companions back into their place in The Beast, Mr. Yellow slipped, and much to my dismay revealed the fact that in my haste to move on to a more suitable choice than ordinary vegetable soup, I had neglected to properly secure and burp the lid.
The result was a decent size bowl of vegetable soup all over the bottom shelves of the refrigerator and an instantaneous explosion of rage in me!
Wow, I thought, I never even knew I knew some of these four-letter words, and the combination of them seemed to flow as if by magic – although I doubt if my high school English teacher would have been very proud of my sentence structure.
Nevertheless, to those within earshot I’m sure I got the point across (thankfully I lived in the woods so the only things within earshot were a few squirrels).
As I squatted next to the open refrigerator, head in hand, four-letter words still very much in my conscious thought, I asked the questions we all ask when things don’t seem to go our way – Why me? Why this? Why now?
Miraculously, I was shown the answer, for at that very moment one single, solitary, tiny little green pea came rolling out, bounced off the bottom shelf, onto the floor, and came to a stop right at my feet as if to say “Hello!”
In that one moment it’s as if that tiny little pea said, “Don’t be such a jerk. Is this really worth getting this upset about?”
Well, truth be told, I somehow realized that that little pea was right, I was being a jerk and I started smiling which joyfully, soon turned into laughter – something I hadn’t done much of during the string of long days at the office.
So, you see, I’d been right all along, it is the little things that matter most – sometimes something as little as a pea.