I was talking to someone about our mutual friend, who has been complaining to both of us about his current living situation. Without getting into details here, let’s just say that our mutual friend has studiously avoided taking meaningful action to change his situation for more than a decade.
Whenever we broach the subject with him, he offers a littany of excuses. As I’ve said before – anyone can rationalize anything when they don’t want to do something.
Anyway, we were talking about recent conversations with our mutual friend and it turns out that we both suggested the same actions to him, one of which was to pursue some new hobbies. He has told us that in his school days he was a highly skilled oboe player in the city junior orchestra.
When I said we should encourage him to pull out his old oboe and start playing again, my friend on the said he knew exactly what our mutual friend’s response would be,
“It’s been in storage for so long, as the seals are dried out and it would have to send it to Stuttgart for a master craftsman to restore it to functionality first…I could never do that.“
Send it to Stuttgart! I haven’t laughed that hard in months. That was the funniest thing I’ve heard all year.
I was still giggling about it the next morning when I recalled our conversation. Even today, a week later, I am still laughing as I write this.
It’s an instant classic for me. It ranks right up there beside Prepare for The Universal F***ing.
From this point forward, anytime I am rationalizing why I am avoiding something or procrastinating, my excuse is “I have to send it to Stuttgart.”