Catch and Release

You know that scene in Better Off Dead where Lane Meyer is getting chased by the paper boy? “Two dollars…” He gets to his car, fumbles furiously in his pockets and suddenly screams a desperate, “KEYS!” That thought pops into my head all the time. Usually when searching for keys to get out of the house on time, or kids’ socks…where the hell do those things end up anyway?! If I were more organized, I could eliminate this recurring thought all together…and if I had three wheels I’d be a tricycle.

I have been trying to think of an appropriate analogy for my recent relationships with men. At first it felt like I was the ball in a game of bumper pool bouncing from one to the next, but I’ve never played bumper pool so I don’t know if that ultimately works. Then I thought of pinball, you ping around for a while then roll off the playfield and reemerge again once you have enough quarters to continue the game. That didn’t seem quite right either but closer. The Whack-A-Mole game floated into my head this morning (insert puns as you see fit)…they pop up and you smack them down eliminating them in more rapid succession as you get more skilled in the game. That misses the mark because I do not revisit old boyfriends. Once I’m done with them, I’m done.

Maybe it’s like sport fishing, you pull one into the boat long enough to decide whether or not it’s a keeper and keep going until you find that Citation-worthy catch. The only unfortunate part of this analogy is I just realized that in a couple of those episodes I might have been the fish…damn.