ETS By Tracy K. Lorenz February 5, 2014 Throughout my life when facing difficult situations I’ve employed three different coping strategies. When it’s a Level One challenge I go to the “Worst-First” maneuver; if I have five things to do I always do the worst one first so I don’t have it looming over me and draining my resolve. If it’s Level Two I go with what I call “The Million Dollar Question” which is simply “If someone offered me a million dollars to complete the job I’m complaining about could I do it?” If the answer is “yes” then I know it CAN be done so why not stop whining about it and just do it. Example: Shoveling the giant chunks of road-snow the plow deposited at the end of my driveway. Level Three occurs when I’m presented with a situation completely beyond my control and not of my doing, at that point I go to what I call “Embracing the Suck.” This is a very, very, difficult skill to learn and may be even more difficult to explain because it borders on masochism; you basically have to take what’s causing you the most grief and flip it around so you enjoy it. (BTW, I once knew a masochist who hated cold showers so he never took one.) (Parum pum!) A good example of “ETS” would be guys like Bear Grylls and those other lunatics who put themselves in life threatening, or at least comfort threatening, situations on TV. If you purposely have someone drop you in the middle of a desert without food, water, or proper clothing then you, sir, have mastered ETS. But there’s a fine line between ETS and stupidity. For example, if you’re one of those brainiacs who takes his shirt off to be the letter “K” in “Packers” in December at Lambeau Field then you’re not employing ETS because you’re just looking to get on TV (very likely) or pick up chicks (not very likely.) I’m pretty sure there’s something in women at a cellular level that leads them to reject frostbitten members of the alphabet from the list of possible mates. I witnessed a spectacular example of a crew of ETSers while on a semi-business trip to Belize. The company I worked for at the time was contacted about building a visitors center at the Altun Ha pyramids in the middle of the Central American jungle so I thought, ya know, I might as well go take a look (and find a way to deduct the expense) PLUS I could maybe write a column about it and get paid a little something on the side. The trip out to the site was right out of the movies, an air-conditionedless bus with chickens strapped to the roof roared around blind corners in a manner that would lead one to believe the driver didn’t value human life. After about the first minute of the two hour drive I was convinced we were all going to die it was just a matter of how soon and how much warning would I have prior to my demise (head on collision vs. plunging of a cliff.) I had already endured an hour long “boat” ride down the Monkey River where the guy driving the boat (basically a fancy canoe) had to drive right down the middle of the river because if you went to either side unpleasant things would fall on you from the overhanging trees be it venomous snake or honey-baked-ham sized bats. If you don’t believe me I have pictures, you could have punted one of these bats. Anyway, we survived the trip to the site of the pyramids only now we were fifty miles inland, in the middle of the jungle, in the summer, and the humidity would make The Incredible Mr. Limpid gasp for breath. At the site there were crews of men with shovels basically digging out entire pyramids. I asked the guy in charge where the workers lived seeing as there was no civilization within a hundred miles. He pointed to a series of out-house-sized huts. Between the pyramids was a courtyard where, centuries earlier, the Mayans had played some game where the winners got to kill the losers in a violent fashion. As I was walking on the courtyard I noticed thousands of equispaced holes much like you’d see on an aerated golf course except these holes were about the size of a fifty-cent piece. There must have been 10,000 holes. I asked the head guy what was up with all the holes and he said each hole contained a tarantula. I gave him the lifted eyebrow and poured a very hot Caffeine Free Diet Coke down one of the holes and much to my chagrin a tarantula shot out in menacing fashion. I looked at the guy in charge and he said “Don’t worry, they only come out at night and we’ll be long gone. Yeah, but the workers won’t be. So the last few months I’ve been reflecting back on that experience. I find it hard to complain about our winter when I can go inside and be warm as opposed to sleeping in the world’s hottest jungle surrounded by 10,000 giant spiders. No matter how bad you think you have it someone always has it worse so you might as well smile and grab a shovel. Winter will be over soon enough and we’ll all have riveting stories of snow banks higher than Bob Marley. The secret is to find a way to enjoy the experience even when it’s…snow fun at all.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 22:16:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015