Advice – Who Needs It?

I don’t know how many of you love advice or use it, maybe you all do, but somehow I don’t think so.  I think we’ve been rebels of advice from Adam and Eve onward.  Too bad they couldn’t have given the old heave-ho to Satan’s advice and kept the nugget from God.

I am a bad one with advice.  I don’t like it unless I asked for it and even then I’m iffy.  Most of the time, we’ll just say I’m not a big fan of advice.  Is this a smart way to be?  Most probably not, but it is the way I’m wired.  At 55, I really doubt I’m going to change that.  Most advice seems to be saying to me, “Hey You!  Yeah You!  I think you’re too stupid to figure this out on your own, so I’m going to tell you what to do and how to do it.”  Like on a morning when it’s obviously icy and slick out, please don’t caution me to drive careful.  I’m not a moron.*  I know people mean well when they’re handing this out and sometimes I can take that into consideration and not get super annoyed, but my knee jerk reaction is to be sarcastic.  As in “Dang!  There goes my plan to go 90 on my way to work.” I also know I have given that advice at times with the best of intentions.  So with that intro, I want to examine one piece of advice that probably almost all of us have heard:

“Don’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry.”

First of all, whose business is it of anyone else when I go to the grocery store unless I’m in charge of feeding them?
Second of all, that advice sucks!!
Sure, if you’re trying to eat healthier and not as much junk food, it makes perfect sense, but you know what?  If you follow that advice, you end up with nothing GOOD in the house to eat.  I’m thinking right now of what I’ve got to eat this morning when my tummy is arguing with me and telling me that even though I ate the healthy greek yogurt with the healthy granola sprinkled on top, I still need something else to fill me up.  So examining my choices which are pretty bleak this morning (I do need to make a trip to the store), I find I have carrots, cheese, wheat English muffins (trust me they’re not as good as the white ones and I bought them in a moment of trying to be healthier), chocolate kisses that believe it or not do not sound good when you’re really hungry, apples and that’s about it.
So… because I have followed the advice of not going when I’m hungry, I don’t have any good stuff sitting around waiting to be eaten in my moment of hunger.  This does not sound very wise, does it? I didn’t think so.  As a matter of fact, NOW when I am hungry does sound like a great time to go.  See ya!

*Contrary to popular opinion.  I think moron is still a politically correct word to use.  Don’t tell me if it’s not.  I want to continue using it in blissful ignorance.