Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Five Slaps

I was chatting on the phone with my mother yesterday evening while cooking dinner and dealing with an over-tired toddler. I half heard her start a story about a patient. Then I heard, "Five slaps a week!" followed by raucous laughter. Of course I had her start the story over. This patient has a job working with particularly thick people. Mom asked him how he was dealing with the stress. He replied, "Well, it would be a lot easier if I could just get permission for five slaps a week."

Having dealt with the same boneheaded error at work twice in one week, I was pretty attracted to the idea. Of course, I don't really advocate slapping people. And five slaps a week is a bit excessive - I think I could make do very nicely with five figurative slaps per month. I've been trying it out this morning. It's similar to Elaine Benes deciding if a man was sponge-worthy. Someone irritated me, so I wondered if the irritation was worth spending one of my slaps. It wasn't, but the decision process made me laugh out loud.

Special note to Derrick: I don't know if you'll be back, but your comment made me laugh hard. Thanks! And no, that wasn't me with the mouthful of cookies.

1 comment:

Katie Alender said...

I just want a portable tent that includes a single chair and a spotlight. When someone annoys me, they will sit in the chair under the spotlight in the middle of the tent while I explain why they are pissing me off and what they should change in order to prevent such an occurrence from repeating itself in the future.

Is that too much to ask for?