Wonderments 2

What am I wondering about?

Dear Reader, my psychic inbox continues to fill up with random wonderments, and here are some of them.

• One thing that always puzzles me is when couples declare they’re going to “renew” their wedding vows. My understanding is that a vow is a solemn promise that lasts a lifetime, so there is no expiration date. If a vow doesn’t expire, how can you renew it as though it were a gym membership? Now, I can understand why a couple would want to remind themselves of their vows if one or both partners have broken them. But in that case, rather than “renew” the unexpired vows, why don’t they simply “revisit, refresh, and reboot” the vows and then go celebrate their revivified union.

• I’ve noticed for quite some time how often people qualify the things they say with “kind of” and “sort of.” Now, I understand that not everyone must make definitive statements all the time, but when every other sentence features “kind of” and “sort of” you have to wonder how strongly the person is committed to what they’re saying. Sometimes, when listening to news interviews on the radio, I hear “experts in their field” often modify statements with kind of and sort of. For example, the other day I heard a military strategist say, “Well, at the end of the day they kind of had a huge number of missiles.” Really? “Kind of had a huge number”? What does that mean? Was there a huge number of missiles or not? Another time, there was a renowned scientist who said, “I sort of finally grasped what the important issue was.” Since “grasp” means to “seize and hold firmly” how do you “sort of” do that? You may be sorry I brought this up because once you start hearing “kind of” and “sort of” all the time you “sort of” and “kind of” can’t unhear it.

• I recently saw an ad for a mascara that claims to increase your eyelash length by 60%. Really? I can’t believe someone actually measured that. What would they use, a teeny tiny ruler? I’ll bet that some chemists at the cosmetic company applied this remarkable mascara to a lab assistant and concluded, “Wow, those lashes look a lot longer, how about we say 60% for the marketing department.” I mean, think of all the time and technology it would take for those busy scientists to arrive at an actual measurement. In any case, I seriously doubt that an average purchaser of mascara is ever going to check and see if the 60% claim is true.

• For a long time, I’ve been troubled by the rug pad underneath the rug in my office because the pad sheds. Yes, it sheds little pieces of rubbery material. They appear under the rug every time I move it or roll it up for my online Pilates class. One time, during class, my teacher, Caryn, asked me what I was always brushing away on the floor when I was down on the mat. I confessed that my rug pad sheds little flecks of rubber. This made me wonder, why hadn’t I just gone and shaken the darn thing out and gotten rid of the annoying pieces? But I continued to do nothing, and the problem remained.
  
  But then, an interesting thing happened. My friend Natasha was at my house, and for some strange reason I was telling her about my shedding rug pad (which I admit is not a particularly fascinating topic). After looking at the rug pad, she said, “Why do you need it?” She pointed out that the rug was heavy enough that it could stay in place by itself, and she suggested I get rid of the offending pad. Huh, so I did just that, and I must say, she was right—the problem was solved. It then occurred to me that many of the pesky problems in my life could be dealt with in this way. Instead of feeling paralyzed and self-critical about not addressing a problem, I could simply be patient, knowing that in time (when I least expect it) a good friend will come along and tell me how to fix it.