For everything else, there’s Walgreen’s.

I like the Walgreen’s commercials about a land called Perfect.
Since there is no such place as Perfect, they say, there’s Walgreen’s.These days I’m content with that premise.

So much of the time we look for Perfect.  In people, in places, in really nice Coach bags.
Really nice ones.  Really, really nice ones.  Pardon me, I was having a flashback about the camel colored wristlet I saw in the mall the other night (hint, hint shopping family and friends wondering what to put in a red and green sparkly box for me before December 25^th).

I used to want to live in Perfect.  I complained bitterly when all the places I lived had neighbors with loud music; streets that didn’t allow u-turns and not enough Caribbean restaurants; corrupt officials and hungry children; or park-at-your-own-risk sized parking spaces that cost you, like, 2 dollars an hour. 

I didn’t whine as much about Mr. Not-Quite-Perfects but sometimes I secreted really mean wishes for sundry body parts, for the Ms. Perfects they would find who weren’t me, and their first born children. 

I wasn’t particularly convinced that Perfect existed anyway but it was kinda like in the last year of college when everyone asks you, so whaddaya gonna do now and you know doggone well that you have no clue but you say something practical like I think I will go into social work or else you tell them that you’ve applied to a few graduate programs.

So I made a little box that fit the closest things I could find to Just Right which on the outside seemed like the reasonable steps to Perfect.  Kind of like saying, yes, I’m working on my graw-do-it di-gree in a bad-British-accent-haughty kind of way. 

Just Right wore some really funky clothes, rarely denied itself anything from ice cream to sex; boots to books; tattooes to lip gloss.  And frankly, it got me in trouble more times than many. 

Against the Perfect everyone else lived in, it was the eyesore of the block.  It proved their property value was as wobbly as ever and made them see their roaches, pothole-d streets, and broken floorboards.  Nobody wants you to see those under the rug.  But when visitors trip on it, well, there’s another story.

Hey kids: there’s no such thing as Perfect. 

There is only your world.  You live in it.  Let everybody else knock if they wanna come in, wipe their feet on the rug, stay awhile if they can behave with good manners.