Far less than meets the eye

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Ecumenism is the Universal Solvent of Tradition .

Avoiding Embarrassment


As any Licensed Clinical Psychiatrist, Dog Whisper, Female TV Talk Show Host, or Whole Foods Market Employee who assembles the Radish Display can tell you, the key to remaining upbeat and positive is to establish a routine that breeds confidence and self-satisfaction and constantly reinforces a sense of accomplished professionalism and worldly competence.

ABS does sense the reader thinking; "Well, that was nice but it really didn't have anything to do with avoiding embarrassment and it, obviously, was just an opportunity taken so  ABS could use that Whole Foods Radish Display reference, right?"

You know, if y'all spent a bit more of your time roaming the produce section at Whole Foods and looking at the museum*quality displays that are assembled there then maybe y'all would not be so cynical and quick to judge. A stunning, gorgeous, four foot tall stack of beautiful fresh cucumbers is a wonder to behold.

In any event, for those of you who are employed, or who know their neighbors by their right names (in other words, not like ABS, who recently discovered that the woman he has, for more than a dozen years, called, “Kathy,” actually has the first name, “Mary”) there are many events in your daily lives that provide challenges of various levels of difficulty that you meet and defeat on a regular basis and that challenge-successful response-loop provides a steady stream of self-reinforcing and positive feed-back, all of which tends to keep you feeling good about your own selves.



But, if you are like me and you never really listened to your nice next door neighbor the first time she introduced herself and so you ended-up calling her the wrong name for a dozen damn years, then you may as well hang-out in the Fresh Vegetable Aisle at The Whole Foods Market by your own self, looking at the beautiful vegetable displays, and wondering if things might have been different had Whole Food Markets existed back in the day when Totie Fields (Biography, "Are you gonna eat that?") was alive because nobody will want to be friends with a man who can't remember the name of their next door neighbor.

Right?

Probably not, you finally decide as you leave the store and drive over to, "Checkers" for lunch.

Totie was just being Totie.

As for the routine, ABS is still considering whether or not it is worth posting or should he just leave it uncompleted, like a thought Joe Biden has begun but can't finish...


* If you have a chance to go to a Museum and see "Angels of the Vatican," or "Madonna's collection of Bras and Underoos," which one would you choose to go see?