The only way that you’ll ever be disappointed is if you have expectations.
And the only way that you’ll ever be frustrated is if you have expectations.
And the only reason that you’ll ever have to wait for anything is
…if you have expectations.
And the only people that have expectations are old. They’ve been around too long and they know what to expect. They know how the world works and how things are supposed to be. And when they take their handful of Supposed To Be’s and try and shove them through a world of Is’s, they find out what we all already knew:
You can’t eat Play-doh spaghetti. Not really.
It’s nothing to get worked up about, really, we all know that you can’t eat Play-doh spaghetti. What gets old people into trouble is that they are trying. Trying to understand why anyone, even a grandchild, would put Play-doh spaghetti on their plate when there’s real spaghetti everywhere. It must be that The whole world is out to get them!
“Hey, they just served Number 7 before Number 6! I’m Number 6!”
“I know you have a number but
Wait until we call your name!”
“What is your name?”
“Arggh!!”
“Ah, yes, of course, Mr. …“Arggh!!”…
“Well, look, you can stand there and huff and puff, if you want to. Or you can wrinkle up your face, fold your arms, and tap your foot really fast. Also, there’s some Play-doh spaghetti at the back.”
“What on earth would I want Play-doh spaghetti for?!”
“To eat,” says your grinning grandkid, who’s busy making purple garlic bread.
We should be grateful for Play-doh spaghetti because Laughter is the most beautiful thing you can’t control. It might be anywhere. You can’t squeeze it out of a toothpaste tube—but if you could, that would be funny.
They can’t stand bees but they sure like the honey.
Now, by ‘old’ I don’t necessarily mean someone high in years, I just mean someone low on smiles. It’s like they say: “People don’t stop playing because they’ve grown up—they’ve grown up because they stopped playing.”
It’s true.
I’ve seen what happens to people who take jobs.
They have to look at a clock to see if they’re hungry.
If you made a clock out of Play-doh, then the time would always be the same and you’d never have to worry about being late. You couldn’t be late. Because whenever you got there, it would be time to arrive. How nice would that be? And, when you got hungry, you could boil the clock and make Play-doh spaghetti. Now, I know you can’t really eat Play-doh spaghetti, but if you made people out of Play-doh, then the Play-doh people could eat the Play-doh spaghetti. But I don’t think that the children would. Because Play-doh children like to eat real spaghetti. And they would offer real spaghetti to all of the grown-ups but every single one of them would refuse (because Play-doh grown-ups prefer to eat Play-doh spaghetti) and they would never ever ever know how fantastically good it tasted.
Bellissimo!