Month: January 2023

Good morning. GOOD morning. Good MORNING! Such an innocuous statement. It really shouldn’t elicit a Sci-Fi level of goose bumps and foreboding and yet, here we are. 

14,965. That’s how many times I’ve heard Good Morning just from the H. in the past 40 years. 

Were they all good mornings? Of course not. Because I am not a robot. And that is why my case feels so cranked at this moment. 

This morning the daily greeting slapped me upside the head like Bill Murray realizing he was caught in a groundhog day loop…still. I know what H said, but what I heard was “Reset to Start.” My response, like so many mornings in the past few decades, has devolved into a monosyllabic grunt somewhere between *hey* and *ungh*.  I don’t want to do the same day over and over until the end of my time on the planet. I want to mix it up! And it appears that even if I begin the “who talks first” morning ritual, the response is…. You guessed it. 

It’s time for some new morning greetings beyond that two word replication. Something with some style, some humor. Just another way to acknowledge that, yes, we have survived sleep mode one more time. My favorite would be the recent meme, “So, it appears the assassins have failed again.” Love that. But it’s only fresh once.  

Maybe “Weird dreams last night?” or how about “Did that new pillow configuration make your neck hurt less?” Or even a segue like, “…as I was saying…” or, “Welcome back!” Anything would be better than 14,966. Anything! 

We hold onto rituals we think are required pleasantries without ever stopping to ask why or if we can change them or delete the practice altogether. Like saying “Bless you” after someone sneezes. It’s Medieval. Literally. They believed that in the exact moment a sneeze happened, that your heart stopped beating and it was a prime opportunity for the devil to jump into your heart. So they quickly stopped that chance with a sticky God Gob blocking the entrance until you were back to monitoring your own devil holes. 

If you grow up Catholic, there are a plethora of weird and archaic practices like the God Gob Devil Blocker move. We didn’t question them because we also believed that a bunch of guys in dresses and women in scary penguin costumes had some magical access to the inner workings of the Universe and to question them was to put our very souls in jeopardy. 

I guess we should feel lucky we dodged a bullet that they didn’t make a required catch phrase for other body functions as well. Though some 10 year old part of my brain is itching to hear the approved flatulence mantra. Mine would be “Christ on a cracker! What died inside you?” 

My new mission is finding alternatives to expected social pleasantries. No more “Have a good day!” From now on, it shall be “Have a different day!”  

Thanks for letting me vent. Now, get out there and make up some ridiculous sayings to change the trajectory of your day. 

Until the weasel hunt is over…