Today, I watched two people who had been arguing back and forth about some strange inconsequentia come, after heated discussion, to a compromise.
Neither of them seemed particularly satisfied with the outcome.
I call these kinds of compromises the “Ruth Hall Solution.”
Mrs. Ruth Hall was the cafeteria manager at Witt Elementary School where I went for two years.
She said, “half the people don’t like mayonaise and half the people don’t like mustard.”
So she mixed them together in equal amounts and put a dollop on everyone’s hamburger…. A dollop–her solution was born out of many years of feeling like she couldn’t make anybody happy and so she wanted all of us to know this was her final word on the subject.
Surely, there was a better way.