Trivial Things

Twice during the last week, Pretty Lady has been approached in a parking lot by a gentleman who wishes to remove the dents from the body of her car. "I'll give ya a good price," they promise. When Pretty Lady declines their offer, they then offer to buy her car.

These gentlemen must think Pretty Lady is a fool.

The primary virtue of Pretty Lady's car is that it moves from one place to another, carrying large loads of stuff, when you put gas in it and press the accelerator. This was the reason she purchased the car, third-hand, after a great deal of research and study. Aesthetics carried no weight with her at all, except as an exciting bonus. "The leather is a little ripped on the driver's seat," the previous owner confessed.

"It has LEATHER SEATS? What an astonishing luxury!" Pretty Lady replied. It has a CD player, too. Blessings abound.

The fact that Pretty Lady's car moves from one place to another, however, is the important thing about it. This factor constitutes 99.99% of its value, in Pretty Lady's mind. The gulf between having a means to move large heavy objects long distances, quickly, at a moment's notice, and not having this means, is vast. We are talking an order of magnitude, here.

In contrast, the difference between owning a functional automobile with no dent in the rear, and owning one with a dent in the rear, is vanishingly small. Occasionally, Pretty Lady notices the dent, vaguely, in passing. She wonders when and how it might have happened; it certainly did not occur when she was driving the car, or she would have a story to tell. But this is New York. The dent appeared, and that was that.

In fact, she suspects a certain class of New York gentleman of the practice of causing such dents, late at night, with the view of accosting foolish ladies in gas stations during daylight, and making an easy buck.

But this is all by the way. These are the moments, Pretty Lady confesses, when she fetches up against the awareness of just how skewed the human psyche can become. It astonishes her that so few people have a clear understanding of functional priorities. They continually waste energy (money being nothing but energy to burn) on trivial considerations which do not affect the fundamentals of existence one jot.

However, Pretty Lady must confess, that after vacuuming her car in preparation for her upcoming vacation, she contemplated the driver's seat with new eyes. She noted that the seat was, indeed, shredded. Upon entering the auto supply shop to purchase a new right-signal lightbulb, she noticed that aut0 supply shops sell such things as 'racing seat covers.' Intoxicated by vacation anticipation, she actually bought one.

So, in fact, the theme of this essay falls to the ground. Long live the trivial, or at the very least, the frivolous.

(With apologies to Cynthia Heimel.)