Picking your battles.

It’s a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

What things are worth going to battle over? How do you know when it’s best to shut your yapper and carry on with your day? When should you pick up your boom and fly? When should you crack open a beer and sit by the fire pit instead?

These questions make me think of my Dad. He rarely gets truly upset. About anything. He might complain. He’s a very humorous kvetch-er. But if Reggie gets legitimately upset, which is rare, it is a very big deal. He is good at knowing when to pick up a stick and charge into battle when absolutely necessary, and when not to. He mostly chooses not to. He was also good at letting us know when it was time to chill out, like when we argued with mom and he would look up from his book, make eye contact with us over the top of his glasses and slowly shake his head to convey, “You don’t want to die on this hill. Find a table, get under it.”   (And now that I am a mom, with small humans arguing with me, and a husband who is of a similar disposition, I tip my hat to that wisdom.)

I can count on one hand the things that make Reggie truly mad.

1. Dishtowels that don’t soak up water. I don’t know why this topic stirs up a lot of internal Reggie-rage, but he cannot abide them. I can hear him in my mind, “You could sew these together, put them out on a lake and use them as a boat! Who makes these things?” Don’t give the man sub-par dish towels.

2. Someone doing something, anything, that smudges his glasses. I was the worst offender, when in 1991 the year of our Lord we dined at an A&W Root Beer and I was playing around with taco sauce packets and accidentally burst one, creating a laser-like stream of sauce into his face which covered his glasses. That taco sauce possessed an oily-ness that should have been researched by the Dept of Defense, because despite 20 solid minutes of cleaning, the residue clung to his glasses stubbornly, creating a grease-sheen that made him furious with me. If ever there was a day he contemplated “forgetting” a kid at a restaurant and driving away, it was that one.

3. A squeaky car dashboard. We had a 1995 Suburban that rolled off the factory floor and into our lives with the sole purpose of enraging Dad. He would drive down the road and randomly, unexpectantly, slap the dashboard and say, “MARGARET, do you hear that?” This went on for years. He took it apart. He put it back together. The squeak remained. It was his own personal hell, the tenth one that Dante forgot to write about: Automobile Auditory Anarchy.

But Reggie has self-confidence and patience. He’s secure enough in his own judgement that he doesn’t feel the need to react right away. He can sit with his anger or irritation long enough to decide the right way to deal with it, instead of reacting in the moment. He doesn’t bark or pop off, which is why the people in his life listen to him and respect him. It’s a gold-mine way of thinking, whether you’re at work or dealing with family or worried about your kids.

So that’s my plan when it comes to picking my battles. I’ll trust myself and sit with uncomfortable things long enough to decide and plan, instead of reacting.

Or eyeing my broom. 

Unless someone spritzes taco sauce on my glasses.

Then I, too, will banish the sauce-assaulter to the farthest backseat of an SUV. And maybe slap the squeaky dashboard. It only makes sense.