Mmm mmm good...or not

You know, Forrest Gump had it wrong.

Okay, it was actually Mrs. Gump who said, "Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get." But she was wrong.

A box of chocolates comes with a handly little diagram that shows which candy is which. The oval one? Butter cream. The long skinny one? Caramel butter crunch. The one that looks like a chocolate covered cherry? Yeah, it's a chocolate covered cherry. So a box of chocolates isn't really much of a surprise, is it?

No, life, to me, is more like opening a can that is missing it's label. The can, which represents a day, looks no different than any other can. And yet when you open it, you don't know what is inside. Most days, you open the can, and it's the same old thing. But occasionally, you open a can, and it's either creamed corn (BLECH!) or peaches (tasty).

This last week has been one of those weeks where each can brought it's own surprise. The first can was my son's orders to his first unit. At first it looked like a can full of creamed corn, but it turned out to be not so bad. He's going to a land unit in Virginia and was hoping for a boat in Washington, but on second glance, most of his shipmates went to cold places, so it turned out to not be so bad.

The second can was definitely creamed corn. My daughter is a teenager, and if you don't have a teenage daughter, or you've never been a teenage girl, let me tell you: life is never easy. My daughter decided to take a personal day, and the night ended with her grounded, and her bedroom door residing in her brother's room. I made it thru work on about five hours of sleep, and perhaps it was that lack of sleep that made me ponder some of the things she had to say the night before. Let's just say that I'm not going to be nominated for any Dad of the Year awards.

The week ended with us having my mom over for dinner. I love my mom, like any good son, but at the same time, I have TREMENDOUS resentment towards her. Besides the fact that I had to buy a place for her to live (because she couldn't live in my house or I'd have had to kill her), her attitude towards my dad, and the 'I'm the victim' thing she pulls, drives me batshit crazy. At times I want to give her a shake and scream, "It's been 20 years, get over it!" But I don't. Because I'm the good son, the one who has it together, and that whole 'Family comes first' mantra, while cliche, still means something to me.

I suppose life would be a lot less stressful if all of the can were labeled. But if that was the case, not all of them would get opened, and the surprise that waits inside each one would be left to rot. And that would make life pretty boring. Each can holds both good and bad, and opening each can, while sometimes painful, makes us into the people we are. Of course, it's obvious that some people are eating cans that are...um, tainted. But we'll talk about that at a later date.

So I will continue opening cans, waiting to see what is inside that unlabeled container, fully aware that I could be getting creamed corn, or something worse.

But I always hope for a can of peaches.