The Strawberry Statement

“Ahh, but the strawberries! That's - that's where I had them.” – Captain Queeg, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial

I walked 30 blocks on Friday morning just to prove a point.

I’m not exactly sure what the point was, but I’m glad I made the effort.

This was the culmination of a rather strange week with some very happy events and a couple of senior moments I sincerely could’ve done without.

And along the way I confronted some character flaws that I would like very much to correct.

It started on Tuesday. I was at the gym, all set to begin my heavy bag workout, where I put in a pair of earbuds and listen to boxing combinations as they’re called out on the Precision Striking app.

But on this morning, I opened up the earbud case and saw one my buds was AWOL.

At first, I couldn’t imagine what had happened and then I remember that the carrying case had fallen out of my gym bag a few days earlier. I quickly retrieved it, but apparently one of the buds had shaken loose and I didn’t see it.

Phooey.

I kept the earbuds in a side pocket of my gym bag, which is supposed to zip close, but the pull tab on the zipper had broken a while ago, making it difficult—nearly impossible—to close things up.

Best Buds

I kept thinking that the earbuds might fall out, but did I do anything about it—like move them to the main compartment of my gym bag or carry them in my pocket?

No, of course not. I just went along with the status quo hoping they would stay put—until they didn’t.

Mental note: magical thinking can be expensive.

I was still brooding about this blunder in the locker room when this young man with whom I had a nodding acquaintance, suddenly began talking to me like we were best friends.

I’m not sure what brought this on, but I got such an emotional charge out of this conversation, I thought to myself, “well, this makes up for the lost earbud.”

Human connection is more important than a cheap item that I replaced with a couple of clicks on Amazon. Yes, it was annoying, wasteful, and unnecessary, but it was time to move on.

I was back at the gym on Thursday for another life lesson.

After my workout, I bounced over to a local fruit store where I picked up some blueberries to go with my morning oatmeal and then I thought, oh, what the hell, I’ll treat myself to some strawberries as well.

The store was crowded, I was running late, and there was this annoying woman standing so closely behind me that I thought she was an aspiring proctologist.

I got so angry and distracted—no, wait, I let me rephrase that: I chose to get angry and distracted—that I gathered all my purchases and stormed out of the door.

Getting Fuzzy

I got home, looked in my shopping bag and saw…no strawberries.

Did I buy them, or did I put them back on the shelf? I couldn’t remember and I started to wonder if my gray matter might be fading to black. And I was forced to admit that my short fuse was the root of the situation.

I did the math -- geometric logic, you might say--and I’m almost certain that I had indeed paid for them and left them at the store. That damn proctologist. I was getting in touch with my inner Captain Queeg and I didn’t like it.

I’ve forgotten food at my local supermarket and in addition to being costly, it’s also a little spooky.

That night I had another great session with my beloved writing class, and I realized that working with these wonderful, talented people was infinitely more important than two bucks worth of strawberries.

Celebrate one and forget the other.

Still, I decided to go back to the store on Friday morning and ask the cashier if he remembered me.

Normally, I would be too embarrassed to ask and just fume and whine to myself. But I’ve been going there for a while and they know me, so I didn’t think it would hurt to ask.

Well, it didn't, but the cashier couldn't recall my order, which is not surprising given the number of people he serves in a day. But I’m still strangely pleased that had I asked.

I bought another box of strawberries and went home to reflect on what had happened. I had taken a nice walk on a beautiful, sunny morning, I asserted myself, and much to my iPhone’s delight, I had racked up a whole bunch of steps.

Let’s see Captain Queeg top that.