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...Just a Minute...

by Jacqueline Sewall Golden

Edition 13

        Pay attention, class. Today we’re going to explore the reasoning behind the human need to “deserve” anything.

       You’ve seen the ads on TV, “I deserve this credit card,” or, “I deserve this new washing machine,” whatever.  What in the world did you do to deserve these things?  Worked hard for it, well, that’s understandable.  But the idea of just sitting around feeling you “deserve” something goes against logic, especially to this offspring of what Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation

      The working hard for something and getting something nice for that hard work is logical.  I guess I’m finding it hard to understand the rationale of young folks who sit around, work for a couple of years or attend school for a few years and declare they “deserve” that credit card, new car, new outfit.  And I’m not being a throwback to laboring in the fields, sweating buckets, working really really hard from morning to night.  No, just the idea of existing makes you deserving of good things rankles me. 

      We know a sixteen-year-old young woman who does well in school and has an after-school job she’s held for two years.  She is not into drugs, alcohol or any of those naughty things. You could say “she’s working hard.” But that doesn’t excuse the shocker she gave her family recently at her father’s birthday party when she showed up with a tattoo. Not just a sweet little butterfly on her shoulder, which would have been somewhat acceptable but a hip-to-hip dolphin mural, black and red, below her belt line in the rear. When she dropped her britches to show this, uh, thing to the large assembled family, it was definitely a Kodak moment. Her reasoning? She deserved it. Well, she wasn’t packing a gun. Guess we could be thankful for that.

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