ON ADAPTING

My sister recently moved into a new house in California. The house is new, and they are experiencing their share of "the money pit" style difficulties. For example, their "master toilet" (an expression I may have just invented - and love) was leaking through the ceiling into the living room. While I think this is amusing, it would be less amusing if I were in the living room - as her husband was.

But they are handling it in stride, adapting to the changes in their life much better than Tom Hanks and whatshername in "The Money Pit." Their laptop broke, my niece has discovered the joy of throwing things over the railing from the second floor to the first...but they adapt.

I get very stuck in routines in my day-to-day life. Every Saturday I have pretty much the same thing for lunch (slice of mall pizza and a small Coke with no ice), then go to the same stores in the same order to buy different things in the same series - new Stephen King comic, new Terry Goodkind book, new Guitar Hero game, etc. Same Lean Cuisines, though.

The question I am forced to ask myself today is this: how well do I adapt to big changes in my environment? I think the answer is "not as well as I could." A friend wrote to me a year ago about people being "chameleons," and adapting to their environment by changing in order to fit in. I know that I am guilty of this, to an extent. I don't think I'm a very good chameleon, though, as I maintain a certain core during all my adaptations. For example, in high school, I took the attitudes of my friends - trendy stuff is bad, Primus is good, etc. - but didn't start smoking marijuana or doing nitrous. When I went to college, my friends were typically studious and leaders - but I didn't stop having fun and being immature.

So it comes down to the fact that I adapt by not adapting. Or, to quote a certain Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, "I change by not changing at all."