it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

brilliant, in fact.

we were teenagers, with time to kill, and we had a half day of school.

i invited my friends over for an afternoon of watching our favorite soap opera, all my children.

all sorts of crazy fun was going on with luke and laura and the people of pine valley

and we were going to watch it in style.

my friends were happy to come along for the ride.

this is how i imagined us watching the show that afternoon….

reality was a bit different however.

we took a fan outside,

wheeled the old tv out on a cart,

plugged everything in with a giant extension cord,

got the lounge chairs and drinks in place on the patio,

put on the sunglass and the sunscreen,

whipped up a huge buffet of all of the mini frozen pizzas in the house,

and then.

my mom came home.

and shut down the whole operation.

something about feeding the whole neighborhood

and moving the entire living room to the patio.

and trashing the kitchen.

and as we cleaned up and put everything back,

we made plans to do it the next week at my friend’s house.

it was kind of like a teenage version of ‘cat in the hat’.

except my mom came home in the middle of it.

—

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
 Dennis Wholey