The Center Roll

Habit has its beginning in thought.  Whatever becomes second nature to us has first caught on in our thinking - only to operate, in time, without thinking at all.  Breaking with deeply ingrained addictions is something else again.  Since we were old enough to understand we have been bent to a certain thought, molded to act and react until we follow though habitually.  If what we did gave us comfort or made us feel good, we did it again.  We have to fight habit with habit, deliberately changing on thought, one action, for another.

When I have a problem I try to take a look at it and move on.  Maybe the next day I'm washing the dishes and suddenly the solution is there.  It just pops out of the deep mind and I say, "Ah, ha!" and the whole thing is solved.  In my experience this sort of intuition can only occur after I've disengaged my logic circuits from the problem and given my deep mind the opportunity to cook up the solution.

We went to a play recently called "Every Special Thing" or something like that.  I can't remember bullshit details like the names of things or people.  Anyway, the premise was that the main character would write down things that made his life special, more memorable, more enjoyable.  He did this every day until he ran out of things to write down.  Some of the stuff was obviously big time: marriages, children, the death of parents, etc.,  but there were dozens and dozens of little pleasures that would pop into his mind: the halo around the moon on a misty night, hopscotch, rolling suitcases, crawdads in a creek, shit like that.  It brought to mind the cinnamon rolls that my mom would make for a breakfast treat from time to time.  They were store-bought, in-a-tube lumps of dough that probably had absolutely no redeeming nutritional value unless you consider processed white sugar as a positive nutritional additive.  She used a round baking pan to cook the rolls.  Seven were circling the outside of the pan and the one that wouldn't quite fit was stuck in the middle.  This was the roll that was everyone wanted.  It had no crusty edge where one side of the roll touched the outside rim of the pan and sometimes a bit of the frosting that mom put on top of the rolls leaked from the other rolls onto the one in the middle, this center-of-the-universe roll.  We fought over it, winner take all, snooze ya lose, no quarter for the vanquished.  Today I wonder why we didn't just split the middle one but I can't ever remember doing that.  I don't recall any regular system of rotation, either.  This was competition in its purest form.  I can clearly remember one instance where I surreptiously removed the middle roll, then repositioned one of the side rolls into the vacated center, probably to fool my little sister who must have been promised the magical roll.  I can't remember getting caught for this sleight of hand.  I bet I got away with it, all before seven in the morning.  A liar and a cheat right outta the chute.

I have a long history of poor behavior.  But . . . this I would do again, in a heartbeat.