Tyler Has Words is the blog of Tyler Patrick Wood, a writer/musician from Texas. You'll get free book excerpts twice a week. On the other days, you'll get words. If you would like an original take on everything by an expert on nothing, this might be a cool place to hang out.

About Deserving Desserts

About Deserving Desserts

Post 395:

            Would you like to look at our dessert menu? Get out of here. I’ve got all kinds of bad habits, but overindulging in desserts has never been a challenge that took much grappling.

            One wonders where we obtain our proclivities—since I was a kid I’ve been like this—we all have these peccadillos.

            On the other hand, I like to eat pretty much everything else. Main course type stuff. I have a friend that says the best way to eat is right up until you start to feel physically ill. It’s a joke, but you get the point—can’t say I argue.

            Isn’t this the best way to go through life—attacking the main course? Eating the totality of what’s on your plate, so to speak?

            Kind of a dumb thing to think about, but remember when you were a kid at the dinner table? If your childhood was like mine, you had to finish your plate. The potatoes, greens, meat, whatever had been provided. I think most little kids don’t like to eat a lot, and I was no exception.

            People grow out of this, but the whole tug-of-war that goes on between parents and kids is a metaphor for the big shebang of life. The kid doesn’t want the meat and potatoes—they want dessert. They want it first and last and in-between. Can’t say I blame ‘em. That’s the idea behind growing up.

            Some people are grown up from the start in certain respects. It’s the things we’re weakest on that need all the work. For instance, I don’t like sweets all that much, but I tend to focus way too much on the desserts of life. By desserts of life, I’m referring to the things you do after the necessaries are tended to. Movies, literature, poetry, music, art—that’s the dessert. In that sense, dessert is my life. Pretty much a fat, overindulgent, overweight shut-in over here. I’m inclined to send the first courses back to the kitchen and just act like they never came my way.

            This, obviously, is a moronic philosophical precept, and one that I constantly have to battle.

            We’re all weak. We all want more dessert than we deserve. Who invented dessert, anyway?

            Think on it. Only in societies flush with indolence and bloated by too much could the concept even be conceived of. Art and literature (entertainments) are the same. Whole societies have been born, lived, and died out without knowing what the hell dessert even meant. The frigging dudes wandering around Siberia 8,000 years ago weren’t discussing the finer points of iambic pentameter.

            I don’t have actual anthropological evidence for this, but I’m willing to go out on a limb.

            Choose your desserts. But choose wisely. Which ones? No idea. Now, leave me alone. I’ve got my plate to finish. See you after.

About Types and Things

About Types and Things

About The Divorcer

About The Divorcer

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