It is a special moment, then, when you get the notion that you may be engaging in a moronic act as it is still happening. For instance, I sprained my wrist one week ago. It is only a minor sprain -- I can make it through day with only slight discomfort -- yet my father (a doctor) instructed me to wear a wrist splint for several weeks. This presents a moron tax conundrum: would it save me more pain to (a) wear a wrist splint or (b) pretend that nothing is wrong with my wrist?
I really don't want to wear a wrist splint. This thing is highly uncomfortable, greatly diminishes my dexterity, and has a tendency to reek. Also, to wear an ostentatious medical device to treat an achy wrist is just too diva. I might as well start calling for my smelling salts when I get a paper cut. Further, I'm not sure to trust my dad, a hyper-vigilant parent who once sent me to the emergency room for x-rays after I stubbed a toe.
Doing nothing, on the other hand, is convenient. My wrist seems to be improving, too. Of course, it gets tweaky by the end of the day. At those times, I put on an tight bandage and the wrist feels almost as good as new.
So what do you think? Am I heading down the road to permanent disability or have I cleverly avoided weeks of moron tax? Maybe only time will tell. Or maybe, the answer is completely obvious and the reason why I don't see it is because I'm being a moron.
I think most of my best moron tax moments resulted in physical injury.
ReplyDelete(1) When I was about 5 or 6, I squeezed what I thought was a dry sponge over the marble floor of our foyer. It wasn't dry. I realized that a puddle on a marble floor could be dangerous, and I didn't want anyone to slip. So I decided to wipe it up. With my socks. Which were on my feet. By dancing on the puddle. I slipped and bled all over the place, forcing my mom and my sister (who was supposed to be writing a book report) to take me to the ER.
(2) I made a poor call and dated a law school classmate who was extremely dysfunctional. An alcoholic womanizer, really. We dated for a year, and you'd think that that would be enough moron tax for my bad decision. Nope. In the process of breaking up, I got so extremely mad at him that I just wanted to punch him in the face, really hard (an urge I haven't had with any other person I've ever dated). But violence is never the answer (especially when the guy is 8 inches taller and 90 pounds heavier), and I didn't want to be The Crazy Girl Who Punched That Guy, so I made a snap decision and instead became The Crazy Girl Who Punched A Wall And Then Had To Go To The ER To See If She Had Broken Her Hand.