ext_273807 ([identity profile] joyeous.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] plumtreeblossom 2006-08-23 08:51 pm (UTC)

Ooh. Well, it's a good thing you checked and it turned out well after all.

I had a friend once ask, "you love animals so much, why don't you get a pet?" and I offhandedly remarked, "oh, well they're so expensive. i can't afford it."

I did not get into the explanation of how i really didn't want the responsibility of having a pet, not sure what kind of pet i wanted anyway, not sure if the house could be made "pet-proof," and I would probably wait until i owned a house so that the pet could have more room. These were other reasons that I didn't feel needed to be said, so I just answered the question as simply as possible.

That year, I got a gift certificate for $150 to buy a pet. I felt so bad. It was the nicest gift ever, but something I couldn't use. Thank goodness they didn't buy me the pet itself!

The next year, I offhanded mentioned it would be cool to learn to swing on the flying trapeze. AGAIN, the SAME people bought me a gift certificate for trapeze lessons. I really didn't want to do that, for a variety of reasons, mainly time constraints and being out of shape. It wasn't the money, really, but I guess they didn't understand that.

I've learned now to be explicitly clear WHY I don't want something and when someone says they don't want something, I assume that they don't want it regardless of what they reason they say it is, because there are usually other underlying factors as well.

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