An Essay on Virtues

I find the virtues of self control, discipline and restraint to be highly overrated, maybe because I don’t have them.  Keeping on a regular program of exercise and weight work-outs is a real challenge for me.  I have hidden books of crossword puzzles and Sudoku from myself when I needed to get some work done around the house.  I also moved the games that came with our computer into the Recycle Bin to keep from playing non-stop Spider Solitaire. After I retrieved the games from Recycle in a moment of weakness, I had no alternative but to banish them forever from my life by emptying the entire Bin.

Sweets hit me like a tidal wave drowning any feeble urge I might feel for moderation.  I can’t keep cookies, cakes or candies around because they call to me no matter where I am in the house. Sometimes I find myself ransacking the house in a sugar frenzy. Occasionally I get lucky like the time I miraculously scored York Peppermint patties from Paul’s box of leftover camping food.  (Of course, I have to hope that he will have forgotten them by the time he packs for the next trip.) 

Holidays pose tests which I usually fail.   Unless I wait until 4:00 p.m. on October 31 to buy Halloween candy, I wind up doing quality control on most of a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups every year.   It’s hard

not to start every one of the Twelve Days of Christmas with a few cut-out cookies  as an eye-opener.  One time I bought Easter candy for a visit by David, Megan and John, with extras to send to John’s girlfriend in California.  As Easter approached, however, I decided that the girlfriend probably didn’t care that much about candy, and, anyway, she would never know many opera cream eggs and coconut goodies everyone else got.  So, I ate three of hers, along with most of her jelly beans.  By the way, once you’ve eaten more than a critical mass of goodies you’ve been saving for other people, there isn’t enough left to make a respectable showing, so you might as well finish off the rest.

For the record, though, I am not the only one in the family with self control issues.   Paul is very disciplined about his exercise routine, has no interest in puzzles or computer games and would be more likely to leave his sock drawer in a mess and throw out all of his radios than to succumb to M and M’s  or Oreos in the morning. He has been known to O.D. on pizza, but his Achilles heel is garden stores and greenhouses. Yes, Paul is a plant junkie.   The yard of our old house was too shady for the more interesting and colorful annuals and perennials; and he got lots of hostas from friends, so that kept his urge to splurge somewhat in check. 

The real Paul surfaced a few times, like when he and the boys decided to plant a small section of his parents’ unused garden plot and wound up cultivating a huge area with everything from tomatoes to potatoes and peppers to pumpkins, plus squash, watermelon, corn and fifty basil plants.

Our current house has lots of sunny space for perennials, earning Paul the title of garden store’s “Man of the Decade.”  When he brought home more perennials and herbs than the gardens at the side of the house could hold, he found places for the overflow across the back
of the house. I think he encourages winter die-off in some of his plants because it gives him more buying opportunities in the spring.   His irrationally exuberant buying streak came to a climax two years ago in early May, or at least, I hope that was the climax.  I was out of town

when he went to buy a couple of new perennials and some annuals for our three outside pots.  Without my influence, he dove deeply into the greenhouse, lured down the aisles by the siren songs of anemones, hydrangeas, Jacob’s ladders, clematis, rosemary, thyme and just about everything else except cactus, I guess.  When he came up for air at the check-out counter, he had over $400 worth of plants on his carts.  The shock of that experience did reform him somewhat and he doesn’t visit a greenhouse without a chaperone now.

So, I’m not alone; but I am admittedly the family member with the biggest self control problem.  Last Monday, however, was different.   I exhibited a surprising amount of restraint in Macy’s baby department, and nobody was even around to give me the credit I deserved.  I went there to buy gifts for two baby girls and found lots of adorable items to choose from.  I looked at dozens of sundresses, onesies and little stretchy sleepers (or “union suits” as my dad called them) in pink and lavender with flowers, butterflies and strawberries on them before I made the final selections. 

Then, somehow, I found myself among racks of overalls, onesies and sleepers in blue, tan and green with
cars, trains and dinosaurs on them.  All of a sudden, I was carrying another seven or eight little plastic hangers of clothes.  Several things stopped me before I reached the cash register.  I thought of David and Megan’s apartment which already contains bikes, guitars, photographic equipment, tons of books and CDs and four seasons worth of their clothes.   I thought about the stroller and other baby items they have already accumulated as gifts and loans.  I also thought about the upcoming baby shower their friends had planned and all the baby goodies with which they will be showered.

In the end, a previously untapped fountain of self control bubbled up from within me, and I did not buy one thing for our grandson who is scheduled to arrive around June 1.  Well, to be honest, I did

buy one thing, but only one. When there is so much temptation and everything is on sale, just buying one thing is really the same as not buying anything, although I don’t seriously expect Paul or any other male to follow this line of thinking.  Anyway, I can never claim to be a model of self discipline; and, yes, it was me who finished off the half-eaten pint of Graeter’s raspberry chip ice cream; but occasionally I do keep myself in check.