I did not eat crayons.

In the old cartoons I watched as a child, the main character would often get a devil and an angel on his shoulders who would help him reason out a crucial decision. Well, the devil and the angel never actually appear. Which of course was obvious; unless you were one of those gullible kids who ate crayons when someone tricked you into thinking that they were edible. But what they failed to tell you as a child is that even though our thoughts don’t personify into little creatures that speak either black or white and help us clearly decide what’s right and wrong; we also can’t clearly sort all that out in our minds either.

I would just like to say, I feel cheated. I mean when I started out post-cartoon exposure, it was pretty easy to make decisions; But somewhere along the way things became much more difficult. So much so, that occasionally I’ll need days, even weeks to come to a decision.

But all I have is a bunch of paper bag clothed thoughts on my ‘shoulders’, confusing the hell out of me.

And that’s how we end up with the ‘door slamming effect’. You’ve finally managed to point yourself in one direction, all your logic, all your reasoning, your history, feelings, shmeelings, all of it has finally just added up. You finally reach the critical point, the right circumstance, no time could be better and instead of walking through you slam the door in your own face and take a completely different route. One of the other paper bag thoughts jumped in and messed it all up.

Thoughts are tricky things. And on that fateful day, you won’t know for certain which one is going to sway you; until you get to the moment, on top of the snowy hill.