"Not Right Now."

vlnewby

There's a place I go sometimes that has mostly healthy choices in dining, a place I can feel okay about going out to eat. One can either have a made to order dish from the menu, or enjoy the salad bar. Included in this salad bar are some sweet things and a few baked goods. They also have a soft-serve machine that pumps out some of the tastiest cold treat you can imagine. They say it's frozen yogurt. I'm not callin' anybody a liar, but that soft-serve is WAY better than you'd expect a frozen yogurt to be...but, yeah, it might be frozen yogurt.
So we've been going there for years. We've always told ourselves that those healthier options are the reason we go. But you can bet your socks we sure always got some of those baked goods and soft serve while we were there.
Well, now that I'm trying to do things a little differently, I discover that, particularly with the soft-serve, that "one is too many and a thousand aren't enough." What I mean by that is that I have a tendency to get one just because it's there, and the one I get is bigger than it needs to be. And I'm about like as not to get one "for the road."
The sad truth is, it turns out I don't have any business courting the soft-serve machine. In fact, it's best if I just leave the soft-serve alone right now.
Oh, boy.
As I began to realize that, I consciously avoided that place for months. By and by, I had some social occasion to find myself in that restaurant again. What to do about the soft-serve?
Somehow I came up with a line of thinking that goes a little something like this:
This restaurant practices a good business model, so chances are good to strong they're going to be in business for a nice, long time. So - perhaps I could simply put off that soft-serve for now.Not saying I can never have one ever again - just not right now.
Not right now.
It was like an out of body experience, watching me order, and watching me tell the baked goods, "not right now." The real thing, though, was to be able to say "not right now" to the soft-serve. And "not right now" to my friends who WERE having soft-serve.
"Don't you want one of these? I can get you one...."
"Thanks. but not right now."
Not right now.

Sure enough, that restaurant is still going strong, and they take real good care of their soft-serve machine. One day I might have one, but not right now.

Not right now.