Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby

For anyone whose parents were lucky enough to score a copy of "Uncle Remus's Stories", before they were banned due to the excessive use of the word "Ni**er" , you have grown up seeing the world in a different light. My favorite Uncle Remus tale deals with Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit is lazy and obnoxious to his fellow forrest inhabitants "Brer Bear" and "Brer Fox" (cleaver names right?) But what perhaps makes him the most dispicable is his ability to outsmart Brer Bear and Brer Fox at every juncture in the road. The main jist of this story is all three charecters are digging a well in order to recieve..you guessed it! WATER! haha. Brer Rabbit decides hes to pretty to work that hard and wonders off to frolock, leaving the others to carry on his duties. (Obviously this is my own personal spin on the story, Uncle Remus would never think being TOO PRETTY was a good enough excuse, but I do... so here goes) Brer Bear and Brer Fox decide to get Brer Rabbit back and teach him a lesson for once and for all. They build some sort of contraption similar to a scarecrow and shape it to look like a baby. Then they cover it in Tar.. nice friends right?? Well Brer Rabbit is walking down the path and sees this creature whom he beleives to be a real person... Yea right... He stops and says something to the effect of "Good morning sir! Isnt the weather lovely today?" of course.. the tar baby says nothing... Then Brer Rabbit says "didnt your momma teach you its not polite to ignore someone when they talk to you?" again... no response. Brer Rabbit finally gets pissed off enough and threatens to "slug" the tar baby if he doesnt respond.. no response... so now Brer Rabbit's fist is stuck in the tar. OK.. heres where I have a problem with this story...He goes on to hit him again.. then kick him.. then head but him. This all continues untill Brer Rabbit has now gotten both his arms.. both his legs.. and his HEAD stuck in the Tar baby. Obviously this is not the Rabbit that outsmarted Elmer Fudd on Looney Tunes all those mornings.

This is where the story becomes an analogy in my mind. Like Brer Rabbit and the tar baby... you just keep going till you really get yourself in a mess you cant get out of.. he later gets thrown into the Briar patch.(Ouch). I feel like I am well educated and smarter than the average girl. BUT.. I get myself into these situations quite often.. more often than I will ever admit. Mostly with relationships. What is is about relationships? I mean you know your getting stuck.. and you still cant help yourself.. you cant control the urge to pull back and head-but the situation? Ok.. maybe this is a bad analogy but your getting my point. This logic doesnt stop at just realtionships, jobs, pets, family..ect. Why is it so hard for us to just walk away? To say "Thanks, I have had fun, given it my best go, but its not working out and if I stay here any longer Im going to have a head full of tar." WE CANNOT do this... its so hard to admit we have failed at something.. even if failing and bailing out early is WAY better than sticking around long enough to be pulling briars out of your tar covered skin.

Our society puts enormous amounts of pressure on us for EVERYTHING! To get married to, to go to law school, have a family... maybe this is why we keep kicking the tar baby? We dont want to start over again.. rebuild, repair.. most of all take the chance of getting hurt again.. or stuck in another tar baby. So we just keep trying, we keep wasting time on things that arent right for us, people that are not meant for us and a life that were not even sure we want. We just know thats what were supposed to want. MAYbE thats what lifes all about.. constantly getting into situations, then figuring out something from them, and trying really hard not to get stuck in the same tar baby again. Im not really sure how to go about changing this about myself of conditioning my mind to reject these obsedities... but I am sure that Im going to get some paint thinner, try to remove the tar, and keep going... im keeping the paint thinner handy though...