The best of intentions (6/21/04)

I really did mean well. As usual, it didn’t turn out quite the way I had hoped.

My girlfriend had surgery on her foot last week. I stopped at a local flower shop the day of her operation and ordered flowers to be delivered to her. Sounds like a nice gesture, doesn’t it? I thought so, too, but I was wrong.

The florist woke her up from a much-needed sleep. He then waited several minutes until she hobbled down the stairs of her split-level house to the door. Then she had to limp back up the steps carrying a basket full of posies.

She very graciously thanked me for the flowers and said they were beautiful and smelled great. That was my first clue that things hadn’t turned out quite like I had planned.

Any flower that resides inside a florist shop always smells like refrigerated carnations. It doesn’t matter if it is a rose, a lily or any other type of blossom. Once they get inside that cooler the fragrance promptly evaporates and is replaced by the aroma of refrigerated carnations. If my friend thought the flowers smelled good then the pain of running up and down stairs on injured feet did something to her brain. Either that, or all those years we spent working at wastewater treatment plants permanently warped her sense of smell!

I have a history of good intentions that backfire.

One time when my mother was in the hospital I fluffed her pillow for her. The problem was that she had a raging headache at the time and I succeeded in making it worse. If they had given her a cup of tea so that she had her daily dose of caffeine that never would have happened. Instead, I ended up making my mother miserable for no good reason.

Speaking of my mother … When I was little I had a stuffed dog that I slept with. Its eyes were missing and most of its blue fur had been rubbed off. It looked like it had a bad case of mange. Mom got the bright idea to sew some new eyes on this pathetic creature. That night I couldn’t sleep because “it was looking at me!” I could see those plastic eyeballs glowing eerily in the dark even when I hid the animal under the blanket.

She was trying to be nice by improving the toy but it gave me nightmares for at least a week. If I had any sense I would have given up taking it to bed but the thought of that was even scarier than trying to sleep with an inanimate object staring at me all night.

Then there was the time I fixed my daughter her favorite meal that included corn on the cob. The problem was that she was in braces. She had just come back from the dentist and her mouth was extremely tender. I ended up cutting the corn off the cob for her while chastising myself for not thinking. It brought back memories of all those times I had cut the corn off the cob for her father.

The only solace I have is that I am not the only one who does truly dumb things in an effort to be nice. Most of us have had great ideas that fall flat because we forgot to consider one key element. When I sent flowers to my friend I assumed her husband or someone would be there to take care of her. I never intended for her to walk on tender tootsies to answer the door.

It’s a good thing people give me the benefit of the doubt and seldom hold my inconsiderateness against me. I do the same for them when their good intentions fall flat. I suppose it all works out in the end. I really do mean well.[[In-content Ad]]