Going For The Goo

First published in the syndicated print column, Strictly Haresay

There was a time when I was younger that I dated this guy who was of the classic non-committal variety.  We got along great, had much in common, and if truth be told, I was quite smitten with him.  But the relationship was fraught with mixed messages on his part; he didn’t seem to know what he wanted—which, I came to realize much later, meant I wasn’t it.

Years after we’d parted and I was happily married and chasing two toddlers around, I had a dream about him that finally brought clarity to the situation for me.

In the dream he was literally sitting on a fence, perched there on the top rail, looking down where I sat holding two pans of cinnamon rolls. One pan I’d made very plain, just your basic, no frills kind of cinnamon rolls. But the other pan I’d really doctored up—caramel and nuts in the bottom of the pan, each cinnamon-crusted coil stuffed with raisins and oozing flavorful goodness—the extra gooey and super delicious kind. And I SO wanted him to take one of the gooey rolls because I had made those special and put a lot of extra care into their creation. But alas, he opted for a plain one. So vivid was my disappointment, I still clearly remember the dream some thirty years later.

What I came to understand from the dream, and which was later further reflected by his eventual choice in a wife, was that I was a bit much for his more subdued nature.

To make an Alice in Wonderland reference, when the Mad Hatter tells Alice she is not the same as before, and that she used to be “much more muchier,” my problem with this particular guy seemed to be the opposite. I was inherently much too muchy for his taste, as it turned out. I was the gooey cinnamon roll rejected in favor of the plain.

I recount all this not out of any sense of regret (I now chalk that relationship up to one of those unanswered prayers to which we’re later thankful God turned a deaf ear.), but because this concept of fearfulness toward “muchness” has been on my mind lately, though not in the context of relationships, so much as the realm of political reform.

With so many people, democrats and republicans alike, fed up and disgusted with what our government has become and how it presently functions, and who and what it blatantly serves, I find it amazing that, when it’s all said and done, the vast majority of people would rather stay mired in familiar problems than undertake bold changes toward real reform. As soon as someone steps up and starts talking about making changes, they’re quickly shot down—either ridiculed and invalidated, or attacked and accused. Why is that? No problem was ever solved by the same mindset in which it was created. So how is not doing it differently going to bring us a better outcome?

By my estimation, the current administration is about as plain dough as any palate could withstand—hardly any detectable muchiness there. Certainly not enough to fix all that needs fixing.

It is my hope that, by the next election, enough of us are so fed up with this steady diet of bland and fruitless leadership that we aren’t afraid to vote for someone with much more muchness. That we’re brave enough to bring in someone who can affect real change and bring reform to the whole defunct system. It’s time to go for the gooey roll.