Oh there were some bumps in the road today. The morning meeting I didn't know about that took a strange turn. The woman beside me on the train applying her makeup and deodorant. The day-one momentum is burning off, and I'm starting to wonder: Can I really do this?
Sunset Eat Fresh, Day 2: What would Kermit do?
Photo courtesy kevygee

Photo courtesy kevygee

Who: Nino Padova

I’m giving up: Sarcasm.

Oh there were some bumps in the road today. The morning meeting I didn’t know about that took a strange turn. The woman beside me on the train applying her makeup and deodorant. The day-one momentum is burning off, and I’m starting to wonder: Can I really do this?

I never realized how casually caustic I was until I tried not to be. Sarcasm is that thing I reach for when I want to build some quick distance between me and whatever it is in front of me that’s making me feel uncomfortable and annoyed. Like a pocket flask, and I wish I could say I didn’t swig from it today. But I did. Heartily.

-Television ad for a new cable show where teams compete to prove that sasquatches exist. Finally, a reality show I can get behind.

-The drug store cashier hard-selling me the store’s Rewards program. No thank you, I prefer to pay full-price for this gum.

-A high school friend on a beach posting a bare-chested selfie on Instagram.

Nice bathing hirsute!

These transgressions, and others, put me in a mild funk as I walked home from the train station. But then something happened. A breakthrough!

My 4-year-old daughter greeted me at the door with an envelope. She’d been digging through my desk and found some leftover thank you cards from her birthday party. She handed me one. They were Muppets-themed, this one with Kermit the Frog on the front. On the inside, she wrote, in shaky toddler scrawl, “I Love Daddy xoxox.”

I looked down at her, then at Kermit’s wide, amphibious face—not a droplet of irony in either of them—and I felt every ounce of bite and bitterness drain from my body.

Tomorrow will be better!

Keep Reading: