yogurt and self-righteousness

plain yogurt – after you’ve opened the container, do you stir it or do you carefully take off what you need and leave the rest alone?

that, my friend, is the big question.

it’s a question that plagued me, so i complained, err, i mean, talked to a few people about it – with such passion, apparently, that i was challenged to write a blog entry about it.

and it is, clearly, a question of seinfeldian proportions.

here’s what happened: we were having dinner, eating perogies, and concerned with health as i am, i served plain organic yogurt instead of sour cream with it.

one of my table mates apprehended the yogurt container, stuck the spoon in it and proceeded to (what seemed to me) violently stir, nay, disturb the yogurt that lay peacefully in that container.

i flinched. and i spoke up. “what are you doing to that poor yogurt??!!” i shrieked.

“ah – i’m stirring it?”

“what has that yogurt done to you?”

“ah – i’m just stirring it …”

i’m sure i rolled my eyes. what a barbaric thing to do! yogurt is a living thing (i think), all these little yogurt bacteria sitting together in well-organized molecules, kind of like in their little yogurt house, and in comes this barbaric giant with his spoon and creates a soupy chaos!

until that point, while my poor yogurt bacteria were bathed in chaos, i was safely ensconced in a comfy cocoon of yogurty self-righteousness. surely, walking into that yogurt like a horde of raping and pillaging warlords can't be right!

and then my curiosity got the better of me. just like the barbaric yogurt giant, i couldn’t leave the story alone, i had to stir it up. i asked my friends haedy, MJ and timmie about their opinion.

to my despair, they didn’t immediately take my side! worse, it was hard to get them excited about this important topic.

so i tucked my tail between my legs and, on the occasion of blueberries and yogurt for dessert last night, brought the sorry results of my survey back to the barbaric yogurt giant. and he just laughed! he just laughed, and challenged me to write about it in my blog.

i’m still of the opinion that yogurt should be left alone but – well, it appears that the yogurt giant is entitled to his opinion, too.

what’s the morale?

instead of speaking up about the rights of yogurt bacteria, i could have gritted my teeth, causing dental problems and constipation.

instead of defending his stance, the barbaric yogurt giant could have played nicey-nice, cowering to my self-righteousness, which could have been the beginning of a horrible depression.

instead of exploring the world for the wide array of yogurt opinions, i could have stayed marinated in my self righteousness, which eventually would have resulted in calcification of my brain cells.

instead of letting me freely partake of their opinion (and slight lack of interest) on the topic at hand, my friends could have let me believe, by simply and absent-mindedly nodding to my dairy diary, that they agreed with me. the beginning of the end of our friendship?

instead of taking my friends’ feedback back to the barbaric yogurt giant, i could have hid the truth from him, or could have even lied to him, saying that my friends agreed with me! this would slowly have poisoned me from the inside …

what a horrible story this could have turned into!

but we all talked freely with each other.

and now, instead of dental problems, constipation, depression, calcified brain cells, dead friendships and slow poisoning – it’s just a blog.