Boys Will Be Joys by Dave Meurer

Author:Dave Meurer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012030, HUM011000
ISBN: 9781441234223
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2011-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

15

Always and for Never

“Can we have pizza tonight?” Brad asked after walking in the door from a hard day in the sixth grade.

“No, we just had pizza,” I replied.

“We never have pizza!” Brad complained.

“What do you mean? We have pizza all the time!” I retorted.

“I think I was in preschool the last time we had pizza!” Brad contended. “And it was made of PlayDough!”

Both of us dug into our verbal bunkers and continued firing volleys of ludicrously overstated statements at each other.

“We had pizza two weeks ago!” I snorted.

Boom!

“Two weeks is forever! Two weeks is like the last ice age! None of my friends have to wait two weeks to have pizza!” Brad huffed.

Whump!

When I was your age, we were lucky if we had pizza twice a year! We weren’t pampered! And we had to walk to school in blizzards and hurricanes and meteor showers too!”

Kaboom!

“You forgot the swarms of locusts!” Brad added.

Bam!

“And we had to fight off the winged monkeys of doom!” I retorted.

I cannot count the times we have foolishly feuded because we overstated our positions or failed to define our terms. Recognizing that we were escalating into a stupid argument that largely hinged on different perspectives instead of objective reality, I called a time out.

“Brad, let’s talk rationally about this after we take a few minutes for you to admit I am right,” I offered.

Fifteen minutes later. . .

“Brad, let’s take it from the top. What did you really mean when you said we ‘never’ have pizza? ‘Never’ means ‘not ever,’ and that is just not true,” I said.

“Well, you said we have pizza ‘all the time,’ and that isn’t true either,” he countered. “ ‘All the time’ would mean, like, every minute of every day, even when you are sleeping.”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to choke on pepperoni while we snored,” I mused. “So, how often do you think we should have pizza?”

“Well, the way I figure it, we have three scheduled meals a day. So if you multiply three times the number of days in a week, that equals twenty-one potential pizza-eating opportunities each week.* All I am asking is ten percent,” Brad explained.

“You want pizza twice a week? That’s ridiculous,” I replied.

“But you are still getting ninety percent!” Brad argued.

“I’ll make you a counter offer and meet you halfway. Pizza once a week. What can be more fair than splitting the difference?” I asked.

“Who gets the leftover slices? Can Mark and I take them to school for lunch the next day?” Brad asked cautiously.

“Well, to make sure they don’t go to waste, I’ll take them,” I said.

“Go to waste? Why would they go to waste?” Brad asked, puzzled.

“Brad, Brad, Brad,” I replied, shaking my head condescendingly. “Everyone knows that cold pizza is the primary food of locusts and winged monkeys of doom. You’d never make it to school.”

Whenever you find yourself using words like “never” and “always” it is highly likely that you are doing something you should always never do.

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