I am sitting at my kitchen table and strewn before me are the empty coffins of separated pistachio shells mixed with broken fingernails that used to reside at the tips of my fingers. I look despondently at the measuring cup only a quarter full of pistachios and the heaping bowl of pistachios next to it whose shells have yet to be removed. I am down to the nails on my pinky fingers and silently doubt they have the grit to endure another 3/4 cup of shelling.
Making homemade granola for the first time did not have to be such a torturous experience. When I went to the grocery store, I could have bought a cup of shelled pistachios. But that bag cost $3 more than the bag of unshelled pistachios. Admittedly, I was too thrifty to shell out an extra $3. But I had also read Emerson as a young man and taken to heart his admonition to be self-reliant.
I had only split a few pistachios from their casings when an index fingernail also split. A few snips with a fingernail scissor smoothed out that crisis. But only for a moment, because as I made my way through the shells, I also made my way through all of my fingernails on each hand.
After much fracturing, cracking, splitting, detaching, trimming and snipping, I amassed a cup of pistachio nuts. To celebrate, I decided to have a Peelz mandarin orange. “Easy Peelz-e,” I thought as I dug into the orange’s outer surface. But the peel did not give way. That’s when I discovered I had neutered myself. No matter how hard I pushed the stubs of my fingers into the peel, I could not penetrate that rubbery exterior. I had taken self-reliance and thriftiness too far! I was now a charity case and had to request that Allison honor her bridal vows pertaining to “sickness and health” and start my peel.
***
Immediately following the pistachio debacle, I looked for an opportunity to be less self-reliant and thrifty. The moment came a few weeks later during a ski vacation when, having dropped off my entire family at the ski lodge, I drove to a nearby hotel to check in.
His hotel badge said his name was Kyle. Kyle was on duty when I entered the hotel lobby to get my room key. Kyle had not moved when, room key in hand, I made the following vow: I would pay Kyle, the bellhop, to carry all my luggage to our room.
I pulled out my wallet, saw I had $7 in cash, and approached him.
“Hi,” I said, and handed Kyle my money. He proceeded to put it into his pocket. “Can you bring my luggage to my room?”
“I’m a valet,” Kyle said. “Do you want me to park your car?”
I had never paid someone to park my car and all the parking spaces close to the hotel entrance were already filled. The only other option was to park in the distant overflow lot and trudge through the ice and snow back to the hotel.
“OK. Here are my keys,” I said, tossing them to him. In that same motion I tossed out my plan to pay for a bellhop.
For the next 20 minutes, Kyle watched me, instead of me watching him, carry piles of luggage up to my room. He was even nice enough to sometimes hold the door open for me.
When I had carried the last load into the lobby, I told Kyle he could park my car and secretly laughed in delight at the thought of him, not me, walking the long slog back to the hotel.
Kyle got into my car and backed it 20 yards into an empty spot I had not seen.
Alas, that $7? I could have used it to buy a bag of shelled pistachios.
