Dear Reader,
Once upon a time I met a girl who had never seen butter. I was a camp counselor at the time. She warily eyed the little gold packages pyramided next to a plastic bowl of breadsticks until I encouraged her to try it. And when she did, of course, that was the end of our table’s butter rations for the night. She inevitably came to me feeling sick later, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t take away the butter. Not after her eyes blew up like blimps when she licked a little off her finger. How on earth could someone have never eaten butter before? What did she spread on her toast? Hummus?
This story doesn’t have a point, I just found it humorous. But I guess it does demonstrate what I like to call the “too much of a good thing law.” Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I am a firm believer in the saying, “what goes up, must come down.” What I’m saying is, something can only get so good, before it starts to go downhill. Majorly. Life is a whole rollercoaster of hills and valleys. And when you’re a teenager, the rollercoaster is run entirely upside down with no safety bars in the middle of a thunderstorm storm while Wii music plays from some unseen speaker. And very often, the consequences illuminated by those fleeting lightning strikes among the screams and loop-de-loops are far too real.
But of course, it was only butter, and this is only a story. The meaning of it is up to you.
—L.B.E.