I just surveyed the contents of the fridge for the fourth time in the last half-hour, and still have yet to fix myself something to eat. This habit used to drive my Grandfather mad when I was a kid. He'd look on in a kind of fascination/disgust as I'd open the fridge, move the milk and juice bottles around, open all the little deli drawers and doors, pop the lids off the plastic bowls to see what was inside, push the condiments around, and then shut the door and walk away empty handed. Not ten minutes later I'd return, open the door, move the bottles around, look inside containers, fiddle with the contents of the drawers and all the condiments on the door-rack, and close the door and walk away... empty handed. In a few minutes I would be back in front of the fridge ready to start the process all over again.
"What ARE you DO-ING?" he asked one afternoon, during my fifth inventory.
"I'm hungry." I said, peeking inside a big, orange Tupperware bowl. I curled my nose at the contents which, somehow to my surprise, were exactly the same as the last four times I looked.
"Well then why don't you make yourself something TO EAT?" he begged.
"Cuz I don't want any of THIS stuff." I said, pointing my thumb at the fridge's interior.
"Well if you don't want any of that 'stuff' as you put it, why do you keep coming back to look at it?"
"I dunno." I said, honestly.
"Do you think that if you leave the room the entire stock of the fridge will transform into OTHER food?"
"I dunno."
"Do you think that on one of your visits you will open the door to find an extended hand, magically holding exactly what you want to eat, exactly how you like it?"
"No."
"Well then why do you keep coming back to look at it?"
"I don't know. I keep thinking I'll see something I want."
"Do you know what you want?"
"No, but I'll know it when I see it." With this he threw his hands up in the air, literally, giving up on the hope that I was ever going to be able to see reason. He returned to his book.
"Someone once said... " his voice rose from behind the pages (he had put the book right up to his nose to avoid having to witness any more of my infuriating Tupperware inspections), "...that the definition of insanity is when one does the same thing over and over with the expectation of a different outcome."
I just rolled my eyes, Grandpa was always spouting that kind of nonsense, but it did inspire me to give up on the fridge for the suddenly appealing, under-scrutinized contents of the cupboards.
{Sidenote: }
[When I noticed I had gone to the fridge four times this morning (and left with nothing, and this memory popped into my head), it got me thinking about Grandpa's 'saying'. I put it into Google and found it attributed to Freud, Einstein, Rudyard Kipling and the ever-popular "Chinese proverb". Same results in Alta Vista and Yahoo... funny...each time I put the phrase in a search I got the same answer, even in Netscape, Ask Jeeves, Net One, Fathead, etc., well anyway, I'm sure if I keep looking I'll find something different.]
Posted by Antigeist at March 31, 2003 01:52 PM