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          A         "A Meditation on a Decision"       aNAda #7    A
        A                                                            A
     A                     by Phairgirl                02/08/00         A
 A                                                                          A
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	It all began in seventh grade.  My best friend at the time was
 Jennifer Sue Schetgen, an interesting girl with a lot of problems whose
 family had something I had never been exposed to: money.  What Jenny wanted,
 Jenny had.  And she was never happy with what she had, she always wanted
 more.  She was spoiled.  She was fun.  She was pretty messed up.

	But she was my best friend in the whole world.  We had met in
 homeroom in seventh grade, given that she sat in front of me alphabetically.
 We had to make a seek and find with other classmate's names, and to do that,
 we went around the room getting people to write down their name on our list.
 She kept talking to me, even though I was really antisocial and not
 expecting to ever make friends.  She informed me that she was John Lennon's
 second cousin, which I thought was totally rad.  Years later, I found out
 she made that up.  But nonetheless, she was cool, and she liked the Beatles
 and lots of other really good music.  We were instant friends.

	Jump a year or so, after her parents got a divorce, and where we sat
 in her mom's apartment in her New Kids On The Block poster-wallpapered room.
 We sat on her day-bed, giggling and laughing over her new Magic 8 Ball.  I
 had never seen anything like it.  I had no idea how those pretty blue
 triangles worked.  I was in love with the Magic 8 Ball.  The two of us
 laughed and laughed, asking such questions as "Will Jordan Knight marry me?"
 We later took her collection of NKOTB dolls, layed on the floor, threw them
 up in the air to watch where they landed, and depending on where they hit
 us, we would call them perverts and throw them in the corner.  Even later
 still, we would take Twinkies and Ding Dongs and smash them into the posters
 on the wall and lick them off, pretending the pictures of the New Kids were
 voodoo dolls and that somewhere, somehow, we were doing them a very nice
 favor.

	But even through all of this fun with Jen, I still spent most of my
 time playing with the Magic 8 Ball.  According to the 8 Ball, I was going to
 marry Jordan.  I loved Jordan.  And if it said otherwise, I would throw it
 at the wall.

	It amuses me now how important the 8 Ball's words were to me.  The 8
 Ball gave me tremendous power; it gave me hope for the future.  It made me
 believe I could do things that I never thought I would do.  It would dare me
 to take chances.  It tried to yank me around and force me to dictate my own
 future.

	And so this brings us to the present day, where I spend a lot of time
 trying to decide what I should do.  I do not own a Magic 8 Ball.  I can
 afford one, but I don't buy one.  I have played with World Wide Web Magic 8
 Balls, but they are a farce.  They are not as environmentally random and
 full of dark blue watery goodness like a real 8 Ball.  I do not trust them;
 they are controlled by machines.  A real Magic 8 Ball is an object of
 material circumstance.  Plus, it knows all.

	It just so happened the other day that I decide to visit an old
 favorite site of mine, connect-time.com, which is home to the Dumpster Diver
 and the Sock Finder, among other great fixtures of the World Wide Web.  And
 on this day, I noticed something that intrigued me: The Decision Maker.

	I had high hopes for the Decision Maker.  I envisioned myself once
 more giggling with Jen, deciding which New Kids we wanted to have kinky sex
 with, and forcing the Magic 8 Ball to make us giggle even more.  I
 remembered how messed up Jen was.  I remembered shaking up the 8 Ball too
 much and not being able to read it.  I remembered tossing the Jordan Knight
 doll and having it land in my crotch.

	But what I wanted most of all was for the Decision Maker to force me
 into a decision resolution that I didn't want to take.  I wanted to ask the
 Decision Maker a question and have it tell me to do something I didn't want
 to do.  I wanted the Decision Maker to dare me.  I wanted the Decision Maker
 to force me to admit things to myself that I didn't want to recognize.  I
 wanted to laugh and throw the Decision Maker across the room if I so
 desired.

	And with that wistful hope and a touch of courage, I asked it a
 question.

	Once again, I was reminded there is no substitute for a Magic 8 Ball.

	Do you know what that damn Decision Maker was?  It was... a decision
 maker.  It was just that.  It asked you to enter your possible decision
 resolutions, as well as the factors that influence your decision.  It then
 would calculate, based on these influences and your rankings of them, what
 the best resolution would be.  DO YOU REALIZE HOW LAME THIS IS?  I CAN DO
 THIS IN MY OWN HEAD.  I DO NOT NEED CGI TO MAKE ME LIST PROS AND CONS.

	Of course, I was perfectly honest with the Decision Maker.  I asked
 it my question.  I listed all paths I could take.  I listed my reasons for
 why I would make all such decisions, and ranked them.  And of course, the
 Decision Maker told me exactly what I felt I should do.  It told me to take
 the pussy way out, because I had told the Decision Maker that it was the
 easiest, most painless, and simple route.

	The Decison Maker told me I should avoid making my decision.  The
 Decision Maker would not step forward and dare me to take a crazy step that
 could either ruin my inner peace or make me happier than anything in the
 world, depending on the outcome waiting on the other side of my decision.
 The Decision Maker told me to run away from this, just as I have been doing
 all along, simply because it was the most logical solution to ouchless
 living.

	And what about the Magic 8 Ball?  What did it have to say about this?
 As you may recall, I do not own a Magic 8 Ball.  However, my brother does.
 And though it may not be that same truth-telling scribe that sent Jen and me
 into hysterics, it is certainly much better than some damn Decision Maker.
 So I decided to ask... should I have my hax0r friends decimate that Decision
 Maker?

	It said, "It Is Decidedly So."  I smiled.

	I asked it my original question.  It said, "Ask Again Later."  I
 smiled some more.

	I asked it if it was a truth-telling scribe like Jen's Magic 8 Ball.
 It said, "Cannot Predict Now."  I laughed at the cocky piece of shit and
 threw it at the wall.

	See, this is much more fun.

	Jen and I went on to write a 375 page book called "Life."  I loaned
 it to a friend of mine to read and she moved to California and never
 returned it.  I should have asked the Magic 8 Ball first.

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 {  (c)2000 aNAda e'zine *                       * aNAda007 * by Phairgirl  }
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