On Laziness

The other day I had a discussion about laziness. The root of the conversation was sort of twofold. First, it demonstrated that I regularly misappropriated the word "lazy" as a blanket criticism. Second, it showed that lazy was not a word that actually did not describe my inherent nature very well.

In order to define lazy, my cohort used the following scenario.

You're out sunbathing on a nice day. You're enjoying the sunshine and nothing else. The whole point of your existence in that moment is baking in the sun. You are taking a lot of pleasure in the entire experience. Then your boyfriend comes along and says, "Hey. Will you please help me wash the car?" And your reply is, "Nope. I can't. I'm too busy sunbathing." This is lazy.

Well, of course that definition does not describe me. Sunbathing is just not my thing. I am delicate flower. If I'm left out in the sun too long, I will wilt, wither and burn. I also admit that I have a really hard time chilling out long enough to just lie back to enjoy the sunshine. I mean, I'm not even allowed an engaging conversation to coincide with my Vitamin D intake? Ugh. Not my thing.

Another problem I saw with the set up is admittedly a little nit picky. Were I to have a boyfriend, I would hope he would have the smarts to avoid washing the car during peak sunbathing hours. No one needs sunspots on their Subaru.

So I was like, "Uh huh, sure," in a way that suggested that I did not totally agree with the "ergo you are not lazy" point of view.

The next day, I was lazing about with the headphones on, enjoying myself as one might enjoy sunbathing. I was listening to Abbey Road, and I was about 3/4 of the way through Sun King, when I felt my phone buzz with a new text message. I knew it was probably from Chrissy, so I figured that I'd ignore it. After all, the B side of Abbey Road is meant to be listened to sans interruption, right? I had priorities, man. If it wasn't important enough to merit an actual phone call, it wasn't worth abandoning The Beatles.

Or so I thought. I had to check the message before Mean Mr. Mustard turned into Polythene Pam. WHO'S YOUR DENTIST? NAME AND NUMBER. It demanded. Thanks, Chrissy. Like I bother to keep that information in a convenient location. "I'll do it later," I think to myself.

30 seconds later, I'm hunting for that damn phone number and calling up Chrissy with the answer. She says, "Can you just text this to me? I don't feel like writing it down." Chrissy knows I hate texting, so she eventually capitulates to digging up that post it note and a pen.

As I settled back down to Abbey Road (from the beginning, thanks to the interruption) and I realized that the sunbathing analogy had a bit of a point.