Weekend assignment #37

  John Scalzi... You all know John Scalzi, don't you? He's AOL's professional blogger. That's right, he's good enough to get paid for it. Anyway, John's newest Weekend Assignment is a silly little exercise on the surface that, if you spend any time thinking about it, will slowly and surely drive you mad. It is, and I quote: We all know what our best personal quality is. What's your second-best personal quality?
  It's that first line that is confounding. Do we really know our own best qualities?Without thinking first, I would  immediately say that my sense of humour is my own best quality. Yet if you asked me to think about it a bit, I would have to admit that most people I know don't get my sense of humour. Things I say that I think should be bitingly funny all too often end up being met with blank stares, or even hostility. At movies, I regularly laugh at things that nobody else in the theater found funny. In the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding I thought the funniest line in the movie, by far, was the Mother trying, and failing, to say the word 'bunt.' My hearty laugh rang out through an otherwise silent theater. People started pointing at me and whispering behind their hands.
  So what, you say. He's not asking for your best quality, he's asking for your second best quality. But, how can one come up with one's second best quality if one does not know what one's best quality is? What if the quality I choose to tell you is my second best quality, isn't really my second best quality? What if it's really my best quality? That would be dishonest. What then? Huh? Huh?
  See, there it is again. The sudden silence. The single blink. The interminable stare.

  I asked my wife what my best quality was. She said it was my moral centre. Well, she said a lot of things that didn't sound anything like that, but that's what I got out of the conversation. I asked her what my second best quality was, and she said it was my ability to communicate ideas to people in ways they could understand. My wife thinks I've wasted my life because I'm not a teacher. Personally, I don't know how teachers do it. I went on a field trip with my son's class this week. An hour and a half in a school bus with 40 kids singing 99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall at the top of their lungs reminded me why I'm not a teacher. I've had larynx squishing dreams for the rest of the week.
  There was an 'extra credit' question too: Note a personal quality you wish you had more of. That one I can answer for myself. Self confidence. To illuminate: We've been redecorating the kitchen. One of the tasks has been to replace a section of drywall on the ceiling where there had been some water damage. We ripped down the old drywall (demolition is always the easy part), and replaced it with new. We mudded and primed, and stalled. We now had half a kitchen ceiling that was stuccoed and half that was smooth. What to do? Nobody could give me any advice. We discussed it, and decided to paint it with a textured paint product, and, as long as it was close, not worry about it matching perfectly. It took me almost two weeks to do that because I was afraid of screwing the whole thing up. When I finally forced myself to go ahead and do it, it was dead simple, and turned out almost perfectly. No problem, I thought. But hindsight is easy, and foresight is always my problem. Not having it, just fearing it.
  John didn't ask for it, but my second quality I wish I had more of would be a better work ethic. Procrastination is probably my worst sin. I'm sure you've all heard the procrastinator's oath. If you haven't, it goes like this: Never put off until tomorrow something you can get out of doing all together. Welcome to my life.
  I had a witty closing line planned for this entry from the very start, but suddenly it doesn't seem quite so funny anymore. What the hell, I'll use it anyway...

  I wish there was something I was good enough to get paid for.