An Object Lesson In Procrastination

Sometimes, to amuse myself, I get one or two of those weekly womens’ magazines. You know, the ones that have a week’s worth of recipes you can make for five bucks (after using all of your cents-off coupons and rebates), how to look like Lindsay Lohan or Tyra Banks without the bucks or the rehab, how to get your kid from crying on airplanes. Stuff like that. And at the back of the magazines are a variety of puzzles. One of the magazines features a bizarre photo – usually something involving pets or babies – and asks the reader to provide the caption. The winner gets a hundred dollars. (It’s sort of a stripped-down version of the caption contest in the New Yorker, where they put up a captionless and typically perplexing cartoon that I guess you have to either live in Manhattan or be in therapy to understand.)

Anyway, this was one of those typical photos:



And immediately I thought it should have been “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”

Husband didn’t agree. Thought something else would be funnier. But I stuck to my guns. I wrote in my caption, got it ready to mail (you can either e-mail it or snail mail it), then it promptly got lost in a pile of miscellaneous crap in my writing area and I only found it a few days ago, long past the deadline.

Then I get one of those magazines again (I always forget the name of the one that has the photos). I’m flipping through it and this is what I see at the back:



And that’s what I get for procrastination. And disorganization. (and oddly, the winner lives about an hour from our house)

So I still send in the captions, when the magazine I pick up happens to be the one with the photo. But this time I mail them right away.