I am Homer Simpson

Something very important happened to me this week: I was compared to Homer Simpson. Despite this sounding like an insult, this was a good thing. Let me explain.
Paraguay is influenced by American culture through the random movies and TV shows selected to be translated into Spanish and aired on Paraguayan television. The Simpsons happens to be one of them and all of my host families watched the show consistently. I have never been the biggest fan of the Simpsons, although I never actually watched it consistently until I got to this country. Somehow I found it funnier in Spanish, perhaps from the pop culture references that have no Paraguayan cultural translation and other badly translated parts that barely made my host families laugh but made me laugh loudly, and because as much as I thought Homer Simpson was an idiot, he gave me some type of connection to my much missed culture. Although my appreciation for the Simpsons grew enormously, Homer Simpson was far from the person I aspired to me and I still considered him a complete idiot.
Last week I was talking to a friend about my yard and the many plants that I have seeded, transplanted, and water every day without seeing much growth. It is often quite discouraging to feel like I am doing so much work on my house and at the same time feel like it’s not pretty yet. I have planted, but I see no flowers, and the seedling trees will not even be as tall as I am by the time I leave this country. “I just want to finally feel like my house is pretty,” I say, subconsciously hoping that I will be told that my house is pretty even though I don’t think so.
Instead, I get this response: Little smile. Laugh. Pause. “I was just thinking,” pause. “There is this Simpsons episode and Homer decides to plant tomatoes and he goes out to live in the country.” Pause. I start wondering if my thoughts were even heard or Homer Simpsons life is more interesting than mine.
And then the story continues, “He plants a whole bunch of tomatoes in one day and he goes to bed and goes out to his field the next day and doesn’t see anything. He gets angry because his tomatoes haven’t grown yet.”
Ok… This is apparently not a random story, and I begin have a feeling that Homer Simpson and I have something in common…
“And he goes to bed again,” the story continues, “and the next day he gets even angrier because his tomatoes still haven’t sprouted. So he goes to his work, you know the biochemical plant he works at, and he gets some chemical and puts them all over his tomatoes. The next day he wakes up and his tomatoes have sprouted, but they are huge, like trees. So he has all these tomatoes, but they are addictive. People will take one bite of them and think it’s gross, but the more they eat them, the more they want them.”
I am now feeling a little bit dumb and wondering if there was more of a tie in to the story and hoping it’s not just about getting angry that plants haven’t grown yet. But that’s it, story over. I look up, “So I’m like Homer Simpson?” I ask.
Smile that looks almost guilty. Little laugh. Pause. “Yes.”
“Ok, I get it,” I say, now feeling more than a little dumb. I just got compared to a cartoon character, and not just any cartoon character, one that lives on beer and doughnuts, is famous for doing and saying stupid things and who used bio-chemicals to grow tomatoes. But the lesson is not quite over and I am given a few words of encouragement.
“But really, be patient. Your flowers will grow, you just have to wait. It takes a long time for them to grow and you have not been in your house for that long. I left a plant in my backpack for almost a week before I planted it, and it grew fine.”
This is a very true statement, but one that I often forget. I all too often get caught up in the fact that I feel like I am working hard, but not yielding any fruit (or flowers in this case.) The fact is, change takes time and I can’t expect to have plants exploding with flowers right after I plant them. I just had to have my thoughts be compared to the thoughts of Homer to remind myself of that.