Today, I yelled at a pickle.

I did.  And after it was all said and done, I felt bad about it. Like, I was really starting to think maybe that the pickle didn't deserve some of the harsh words I flung its way (pretty sure I said something insulting about its mother's vinegar). Then I started thinking that maybe I was just transferring some of my anger about other things going on in my life onto said pickle.  So I sat down in a corner at work. Made a list of things the pickle did that annoyed me right next to a list of things other people I may be mad at have done recently which may have caused me to lash out.  It was very cathartic, the list.  I got a lot out of me. I should probably be fired from my job for spending about an hour in a corner deciding whether or not I was REALLY mad at a pickle but...that's America for ya.

So, I got it all figured out. And I decided to be a man.  That "feeling bad"-thing was eating away at me so I knew I had to do the right thing and apologize. However, I couldn't very well apologize to that particular pickle because it had fallen on the floor (the reason I was upset with it in the first place) and been trampled at least 19 times since then.  So I went to its family.  A lovely looking bunch of pickles floating around in a bucket in a freezer. I told them how very sorry I was and how I didn't mean those words that I spewed at their deceased kin (all pickles are related, correct? ugh, now I have to make a Pickle Family Tree next time I have an hour at work to kill) ESPECIALLY the part about the vinegar. "Your vinegar smells delectable, I can tell from here", I told the bucket.  I assume the mother was somewhere in there to hear me apologize or at least that the Daddy Pickle would pass the message on when she got back from market or whatever pickle moms do.  I explained to them that the pickle was dead BEFORE I yelled at it so any lawsuits they were trying to bring up in their pickled brains were null and void.  "Slander" is a bitch word for bitches anyway. I left, feeling better...though I think the eggs were judging me a bit.

Whew. Conscience was clear.  My day had just begun and I already felt like I had conquered the world and been the better person by owning up to my faults.

Today I yelled at a pickle.  It was totally the pickle's fault.  Today I apologized to a bucket of pickles.  None of this makes me a "saint" or a "hero" like you all are thinking right now. But it does make me 100% sure I may be losing whatever grip on reality I had when the week began. C'est la pickle.