Just a Little Spontaneity

I hastily arranged to eat lunch with some people at the Hub who were bringing a bag lunch. I was at home when the plans were made, so I said I'd have a quick lunch and then head over to hang out with them. But after I started eating I realized that if they were going to bring a lunch in a high-school throwback, it'd be fun to join them.

Four wasted Ziploc bags and a short jaunt to the Hub later, I unpacked my already partially eaten lunch:


The idea of wrapping a half-eaten sandwich amused me to no end. All the Chick-fil-A stuff in the picture is what my friends ate. So much for the picnic.

I think embracing a little spontaneity can go a long way. If your life always has to be planned out, you're not going to know how to handle it when you just can't plan it. So when you do things spontaneously it's like practicing being impulsive. Impulsiveness is a skill, of course, which sometimes you succeed at (I pushed a girl into a sprinkler last night--she loved it) and sometimes you don't (I drafted an eBay ad to sell my skin ball and donate the proceeds to charity--it's not even allowed).

But if you don't learn how to be impulsive, then when you really get seized by an impulse, like dropping two of your classes and quitting Chinese, say, then you just do it and might regret it later. So I packed a lunch to stave off withdrawing from a class today. Just wait till Wednesday comes...

Too much spontaneity can be overwhelming, of course. Like when your hat spontaneously disappears. That's right, one minute I was eating my sandwich and debating the theological implications of The Shack, the next minute I'm at Library West and my hat is nowhere to be found. I loved that hat.


Bought in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, that hat has a long history with me. It's made it through a trip with Alex, who had previously only accompanied me on hat-losing adventures. It's been to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, various parts of China, and back to America, to rave reviews. I was standing in Turlington recently when I noticed a girl staring at me. I tried to figure out how I knew her and couldn't. "Oh," she said when she saw me looking back at her. "I just liked your hat."

And now I'm pretty sure my hat has gone on to other heads. But if you find a blue derby-ish cap with a label on the inside in faded Chinese characters describing the size (56 公分) I'd be so excited I'd even think up a reward for you. I bought too many souvenirs, for example, and don't have as many friends as I do presents. I'd give you this really cool pipe I have left. It's extendable and everything. As my good friend Ron told me today, "Put that in a blog and smoke it."