First World Problems

I took the kids and my mom to Niagara Falls this past summer.  I was checking out in the gift shop and struggling to hold my purchases while cramming my wallet in my over-stuffed purse.

I apologized to the young man, of indeterminate ancestry, who had checked me out, for holding up the line.  He quipped, in perfect English, "That is a first world problem."

Sensing a kindred spirit, I immediately responded, "Only someone who knows how bad the third world is would say that," all thoughts of the line behind me now gone.

His mother was in fact from the third world, which is why he was raised here, speaks the King's English and works in the Niagara Falls gift shop.

I have come to realize, through one of my liberal cousins, that the "first world problem" line is actually AN INSULT to the first world.

Ok.

People die trying to get here.  People put their children on planes, alone, in the hopes that they will make it here to be swaddled in first world problems.  People claw their way across the desert to be encumbered with first world problems.

So, I have decided to relish all of my first world problems.  Every time that I prop up my hobbit slippers on my leather barco lounger to watch the news, I thank God that I don't have to carry water for 3 miles each way.  (I can walk six miles if I feel like it, but I don't HAVE to, if I don't want to.)

I am thankful every time that I turn on the water to brush my teeth, make dinner, wash the dishes or the laundry.

I am thankful that I have a dog (frowned upon in third world countries) and that I have to go pick up her allergy medicine today.  Poor puppy.

I am thankful that I have to go BACK to NTB to have them fix the tire that they fixed last week on our second car.

I am thankful for a few of the thousand or so channels that I get on several televisions.

And, I am thankful that I can worship the way that I want.

All first world problems.  The first world rocks and if we don't start defending it, we are going to lose it because I am starting to think that liberals (please see my previously published works) want to send us back to the dark ages.