The label read “doesn’t help you slay the dragons per se, but the vitamin c does help you slay, in general.”
The problem was this particular bottle appeared to be having an off day. He was a bit cockeyed, his cap tilted to the side, perhaps stifling a yawn as if not ready to get up and get about the day, much less slaying dragons; maybe looking up at the big guy next to him with the happy, smiling label bursting with joy and vigor and all that, and thinking to himself, ‘woe is me. I’m not like him.’
Even more dismal was the scene across the aisle where, also on the second shelf, a bottle of tomato juice was likewise not feeling with the program, not up to the task. Or maybe it too was comparing itself to the vegetable juice next to him. Actually, in hindsight, the dour expression and scrunched and hunched shoulders of the tomato juice was not particularly surprising. It was, after all, tomato juice. Do people actually like that stuff?
Which brings me to the point of my observations from my walk yesterday down the drink aisle.
Comparisons of ourselves to others, or thinking we cannot do this or that because of this or that, can sometimes lead to a defeatist, doleful, depressed – even lugubrious (haven’t looked that one up yet) – attitude.
Truth of the matter is, it’s not the bottle, it’s what’s in the bottle that – as the label says – “does help you slay in general.”
And a corollary is, it’s not you, it’s what’s in you, that counts.
Unless it’s tomato juice.
Ah, but you can use tomato juice not just for drinking but also for cooking, David! I like drinking it (or a Bloody Mary mix minus the alcohol), but it is also an ingredient in quite a few dishes that I have been creating in the past.
Some things may look already slain,
But, oh, their uses aren’t just plain. 😉
David,
Because we know each other; having met in the previous century, I looked up your word, lugubrious.
I was forced to look up lugubrious because having arrived on the planet before the technological invention of television I never went to kindergarten.
The result of my zero kindergarten background is I continue to suffer through life with only an 84-word vocabulary. I do not know many words, especially the word lugubrious.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, lugubrious means mournful.
I thought you might like to know.
Joseph Boyle –