Day 198: Puddle Rinse

Two people are sitting on a bench eating ice cream. (Ok, it's me and a friend)

Each scoop is so big it looks as if it's about to topple off the cone at any moment. It's also mid-August in Chicago, so humidity is actively at play.

The ice cream cones are dripping like crazy. By the time they've been consumed there are ice cream tracks all over our hands.

 

Napkins can only do so much.

 

"I'm going to grab some hand sanitizer from my car," my friend says.

I walk with them, hoping the hand sanitizer would be able to make my hands feel just a little bit more clean. 

 

But then I spot a puddle. 

 

And I pause.

'I don't know if hand sanitizer is going to do the trick - I need water!' I think to myself. 

 

Without a second's thought more, I'm rinsing my hands as best I can in the curbside puddle. At this point I'm basically a bird, bathing in whatever vessel of water I could find. 

 

Forget the fact that this Chicago street puddle was absolutely not clean at all and hand sanitizer would, indeed, have been the better option. I was running on the allure of illusion.

 

water = clean

Let me tell you, that's not always true.

Which is why I didn't actually rinse my hands in the puddle - regardless of how tempted I was. In reality, all I did was make a joke about it.

I think its a good reminder that it's never a bad idea to give yourself an extra beat to think things through. Both about what you really want and what you think is available to you.