Used Beer Mats

When I use that title, Used Beer Mats, I assume that you'll think of the coaster that we often place under a glass full of beer. Yesterday, I baptized my own beer mat. In fact, I baptized two.

I have confessed that I am a Diet Coke® addict. After supper I took my nightly trip to the Coke fridge in the basement. When I reached in to the carton to grab the drink, it shifted and fell sideways, just enough to knock over two bottles of beer: onto the floor, where they broke — and spilled!

To me, beer does not smell good. On occasion, I drink a bottle or two and even enjoy it, but I never really dig the bouquet, if you know what I mean. So, when the beer seeped into two floor mats, they had to go. The mats weren't big, new, or expensive, so it was not a tragedy, but the clean-up was not fun.

This was an avoidable accident; of course, I suppose all accidents are avoidable by definition. From all of the company on the weekend, things were crammed into the fridge. I had one Coke carton stacked on top of the other. A few cans had been taken from the bottom carton, just enough for it to shift a little when I was removing a can from the top carton.

This is a reflection of who I am: one who tends to assume that things are okay and will be okay. I tend not to notice trouble brewing. Once while doing hall patrol with a diligent fellow teacher, he made the remark how he always saw everything that was wrong. Meanwhile, I observed that everything always looked fine to me; I tended to not see problems unless they were pretty obvious.

I think I'd rather be this way (seeing life as copasetic) and have to toss out a beer-soaked mat every now and then, than to always be fretting over all of the things that could possibly go wrong.

What about you? Are you the type to see potential hazards in your fridge, or are you most likely to assume that everything is hunky-dory? What do you see as the benefits or difficulties of being the way that you are?