Words For My Enjoyment

You asked for it, and so ye shall receive.

Actually, if I had to be completely honest (which is a new thing for me these days), I would tell you that no one necessarily asked for another edition of WFME’s You Decide. But since my experience is often that people don’t tell you what they want anyway (and you have to try to figure out exactly what it is they want), sometimes I’ve gotta take a chance and try to assume what the audience is looking for.

Today I’ve decided that all you readers must decide between being a midget with a receding hairline or a left-leg missing cruise shuffleboard coach.

Life throws many many tough obstacles at us as we careen through the years. We’re challenged with making moral choices, making emotional and financial decisions that could shape our futures and we’re often faced with two distinct pathways and forced to choose one. In my opinion, all pale in comparison to a much bigger, much more substantial decision:

Receding hairline midget or left-leg missing cruise shuffleboard coach.

It’s a tough decision to make and a very personal one, but it’s always smart to identify the pluses and minuses before jumping head first into a pool of sharks. See, being a midget (not a dwarf) is hard enough in this world. Everything is made for bigger folks (not “normal folks” as some might accidentally say) and thus, the smaller peeps of our world are already faced with a disadvantage. Add to this fact that the daily lookie-loos gawking at the little people of the world and you’re suddenly faced with a tough situation. Short, gawked-at, and the subject of ridicule and jokes in the mainstream media.

This isn’t to say that being a midget is a bad thing. It’s just one of those things that just is. But add to the fact that you’re short, periodically gawked at…and then you’ve got a receding hairline? Well, needless to say, it could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back…if you know what I mean. Because now, not only are you looking at me because I’m a midget, but then you’re thinking to yourself things like, “oh how sad he’s a balding midget” and I know you’re thinking that, and then I have to start wearing hats everywhere I go and then people start referring to me as “The Midget Ron Howard.”

Not fun.

But when you compare being the receding hairline midget to being a cruise-ship shuffleboard coach who happens to be missing their left leg… Well… It’s a toughie. First and foremost — who really ever wants to work on a cruiseship? People who work on cruise ships are musical theater-majoring college students who couldn’t get a job on Broadway (and want to sing and dance somewhere), chefs who couldn’t get a job on restaurant row (and want to cook somewhere) and people who had to choose between joining the Army or getting a job on a cruise ship or end up being homeless. Yes, some generalizations there, but 90% true.

So already, you’re working in a place where half the people are running away from land.

Add to this the fact that everyone you come in contact with on each voyage happens to be there to eat and drink themselves to the point of ripping their inner-stomach lining and that everyone’s feeling entitled because they paid “one flat rate” for a ship-full of experiences… And let’s just say you’re not going to be happy. And you’re missing your left leg. And you’ve got to teach old folks how to play shuffleboard.

Eh.

But one might say to themselves, “hey, at least there’s good prosthetics out there on the market, and I’ll always get to travel around the world and I can still reach the sink in my bathroom…” Yes, maybe being a left-leg missing shuffleboard cruise ship coach is the better decision out of the two.

In my personal opinion, despite some of the huge downfalls that come with being the left-leg missing cruise ship shuffleboard coach, I’m going to choose that one over being a receding hairline midget. I just would rather be made fun of for limping and playing shuffleboard in a dead-end job than not being able to reach the mochi in the freezer.

That’s my decision. Officially.

But what’s yours?