Guilty Pleasures

(Some of the plot may have been fabricated to assist the story - c'mon you can't tell me you have never done it and at least I've warned you)

The other day I needed to go to the airport to pick a visitor to Melbourne, so I organised the hire car, picked it up, drove out the 30 or so minutes from city to Tullermarine, parked in the short term and crossed the pedestrian bridge and into the chaotic scene of jet setting: business men, families, backpackers and then some, in all directions were adorned with their various luggage accessories and necessities - some looked like they carried with them, their entire lives from start to finish, others a mere laptop bag. As I darted through the myriad of wheelie madness, I headed towards the screen informing me if the plane had come in, then a glimpse of something familiar caught my eye.

It was one of my girlfriends, her elbows supporting her as she leaned across the barriers of the internationals gate, she had a coffee in one hand and a look of nostalgic satisfaction. As I sidled up to her in hope that we could be waiting companions while we waited for "our people" to go through the torturous traverse through customs, I realised from her look that abruptly burst through the meditative spell she seemed to be under. When I innocently questioned who she was waiting for, there was hesitation, as if she were searching through the bank of answers available for deposit, then she realised the account was fairly empty and fessed up that she was indeed waiting for nobody.

The fairly reasonable journey out there had been for her own guilty pleasures. She felt the completeness in her own soul when she witnessed people re-unite and she devoured the residual excitement that trailed off the backs of individuals embarking on an unknown adventure. And this wasn't the first time she had made the trip to witness these scrumptious delights - as her needs of pleasure required it, she would hop in her car and it seems to me that one may have soon required the other hand to calculate the amount of excursions.

This made me start to think of all the possible quirky little scenarios that have organically become apparent to satisfy our humanly needs of satisfaction, pleasure, pure contentment and harmony - happiness essentially. And who out there at that moment was also satisfying their needs and willingly succumbing to the world of wonderful.

Immediately I knew some of mine. One in particular I discovered when I was quite young - the brutish art of kicking over toadstools...... crazy huh? But I just adore doing it. When I was growing up we had a jungle of a back garden and there were numerous dark, moist and misty places that were just ideal for toadstools to thrive. I had been exploring out the back, avoiding at all cost, the creepy crawlies that also loved the dark spots and I saw a patch of them, defiantly claiming the patch of mound, all hideous, stocky, stubby and stunted. So I kicked them, they were so light they went flying. But the real pleasure I got out of it was the sound, the soft and low "thup" sound when shoe hits fleshy fungus - just imagining the sound is giving me delightful satisfaction. Try it sometime. I bet you would enjoy it too.

So what do you do to fulfill your guilty pleasures?

xx

PS. Just found a facebook group with 95 people in it who also express the love of kicking mushrooms - I am not alone