By Corinne Wnek
Remember the old commercial where an elderly woman takes a tumble and shouts out, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”? I thought that excellent line just might come in handy for me, too, if I should ever fall, say, off a cliff. The whole ‘cliff’ concept, as in ‘fiscal cliff,’ is pretty clever and makes me wish I thought of it first.
However this fiscal thing gets resolved, I kind of like the idea of threatening to fall off some kind of ‘cliff’ to avoid doing something I don’t want to do or even to simply get my way. Does this sound a little manipulative? Just when I was losing faith in our elected officials, I have to admit that maybe the politicians are finally on to something here.
For instance, let’s take invitations to boring or uncomfortable social situations that might be hard to beg out of. Suppose I state to the person issuing me the invitation that my life is very difficult and complex and is spiraling out of control. And it’s entirely my husband’s fault. So if I don’t resolve my issues by the date on the invitation, I warn everyone that I will fall off the ‘social cliff’.
Further, if my husband will not help nor compromise with me to resolve my problems because he just sees things differently than I do, I can now with certainty declare that I will fall off the ‘social cliff.’ But if he does compromise with me, we’ll attend the affair. Is this a win-win situation?
Now suppose someone doesn’t get the Christmas present of her dreams. Suppose a certain husband believes that a gadget type gift would make his not gadget-loving wife happy when she finds it under the tree on Christmas morning. If that wife was me, hypothetically, this would result in my falling off the ‘psychological cliff.’ Because this wife would then, hypothetically, have the need for a Christmas revenge gift to herself, she would go to her favorite jewelry store on Dec. 26.
Then that husband would go over his own personal ‘fiscal cliff’ with cries heard everywhere, “Help, I’ve fallen into debt and I can’t get out.”
Hypothetically, of course.
