Last weekend I posed the question, "What do you like better...screws or balloons?" Unlike most of my friends, who roll their eyes and ignore me when I pose an either/or, 2-year-old H. gives the question genuine consideration and responds with direct honesty, "Screws." I think its a good answer. Balloons are dumb. I feel incommensurate satisfaction at having recieved any answer at all.
The whole thing started about 20 years ago. Sophie's Choice had posited the cruel impossibility of binary options. My parents were separating. I had to decide whether to finish high school or flee the province. I chose flight which was easier than my brother's choice of which parent to live with. I pestered my poor brother relentlessly, "Who do you like better, Kate or Allie?" He never did answer me. To this day, when I slide the question into an otherwise convivial conversation, he responds with exasperated sighs and the occasional administration of physical pain (all people with brothers will know what I mean). But in that perverse opposite land that is sibling communication, this lopsided torture was, and is, an acknowledgement of respect for the horrid decision that he eventually faced, while I ducked out and never declared myself.
Binary choices are not in vogue, pre-rhizomatic dinosaurs from the old days before our eyes were opened to the falsity of polarity, the uncertainty principle, the tyrranical reign of cultural context over meaning of any kind. But we, of course, make them all the time regardless. There is content in choosing one thing over another, and there may even be consequences. Choice is risk, action, carpe diem!
I have a really hard time choosing between Kate and Allie. Kate was more fun, Allie was a wet blanket. Kate was cuter, but Allie was more entertaining. Also, Allie was Chip's mom, so there's a good chance you'd get him in the bargain and he was a creepy but fascinatingly weird little dude. If H. can choose screws, I can choose Allie. She makes me laugh.
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