I’ll blame Robert Frost.
No—it’s not his fault, really. Better to blame the poster. Remember that one? The autumnal background with “The Road Less Traveled” emblazoned across it? That call-to-arms for fighting against the mainstream impulse?
Not that the poem actually is that, of course. Frost is far too wry for the poem to be so direct.
But I didn’t know that in eighth grade, impressionable to every quip that came my way.
“The road less traveled? Let’s take it!”
In my life, the adage is felt in slight rather than significant ways: I tend to overcomplicate things.
Why do it the same way as everyone else? Sometimes—to my wife’s justified horror—I fail to even Google “how to do _____” before attempting to do whatever it is.
When we set down to build a cardboard airplane a few nights ago for our kiddo’s Halloween costume, I was no help at all—my mind raced to suggest overly complicated means and methods of construction.
“You know you don’t have to make it so difficult,” she said.
Do I?
Taylor Coe 