When I was in Atlanta recently I called a good friend to see if he wanted to grab some dinner. I ‘ve been going to Atlanta 2 or three times a year for work for almost 20 years and every trip my buddy and I have dinner. This year he was not available mainly because in February he quit his job and moved to Dallas.
“It was kid of impulsive,” he said, “I decided that I couldn’t live with Atlanta traffic any more.” Before I could comment he added, a trifle defensively, “I assume you’ve never made an impulsive decision?”
This got me to thinking. If you reach a certain age you are bound to have made some impulsive choices that you live to regret. For example, in the back of my closet is a pair of gray, ankle-height snakeskin cowboy boots that I wore once, in 1987. They are still in my closet because I can’t bring myself to throw away a brand new pair of shoes but I know I will never wear them again. Did I mention they have four-inch heels, so that when I wore them I was six feet-seven inches tall? Did I mention that they are the world’s only zip-up cowboy boots? Need I explain that they were an impulse purchase?
The nature of an impulsive decision is that it seems perfectly reasonable at the time, although I can’t imagine what my rationale for buying the boots was, because I am really not a cowboy boots kind of guy. I remember that they were pretty expensive and I could not afford them. Perhaps it was the expense of the boots that, several months later, drove me to buy the cheapest car I could find, a Suzuki “jeep” with plastic windows, no radio, no air conditioning and a five-speed transmission.
The Suzuki was priced right, but I had never driven a stick-shift car before so I managed to strip the gears on the drive home from the dealership, causing a massive traffic jam when I could not get the car to go over the Oakland Park Blvd drawbridge. You can hardly throw a car in the back of the closet so I drove that Suzuki for several years, sweating profusely, singing tunelessly to myself and cursing my decision.
I began to think of other impulsive decisions, some expensive, some merely stupid, that I lived to regret. Under the “stupid” category was the 55-gallon fish tank that a friend was giving away because she was moving to California. Under “expensive” was the townhouse in Wilton Manors that, a realtor friend earnestly told us, “could not lose money.” And how could I forget the decision to quit a really good job because it interfered with my workout schedule? I guess I should count myself lucky that my impulsive decisions did not have long-term consequences. My younger brother married one of his wives purely on impulse, and a good friend and his wife decided after much alcohol one night that having a baby was just the ticket to save their ailing relationship. “She got pregnant the same night,” he told me after the divorce. “What are the odds?”
Now, listening to my Dallas friend, I was feeling a bit smug that I at least had never moved across country on a whim and, as he listed all the reasons why he hates Texas, (“It’s HOT!! The traffic is worse than Atlanta! People dress like cowboys in broad daylight!”) I was inspired.
“Since you’re in Dallas,” I asked, “Can you use a pair of like-new cowboy boots?”
