DON’T MAKE ME PICK A FAVORITE

I have a problem with favorites. Not favorite people, necessarily. I have plenty of those. My problem is with the question. What's your favorite color? Movie? Book? Song?

People have been asking these kinds of questions forever, and I've never understood how everyone else seems to have an answer ready. 

When I was in my 20s and someone asked my favorite color, I often said "rainbow." It wasn't because I was trying to be clever. I genuinely couldn't choose.

And I've apparently been wrestling with the concept ever since.

How does anyone choose a single favorite from a lifetime of possibilities? Does "favorite" mean the thing you love most right now? The thing you've loved the longest? The thing that evokes the strongest memory? And are the rest of you really that certain?

I started wondering whether maybe everyone secretly has the same problem. Maybe people don't really have favorites. Maybe we've all just learned to produce an answer because apparently "I don't know" isn't an acceptable response to "What's your favorite movie?"

Naturally, I decided to conduct some research. And by "research," I mean I posted 12 questions on Facebook. Not exactly Pew or Gallup Poll level research. There was no randomized sample, no margin of error and absolutely no scientific methodology. I just asked my Facebook friends to name their favorites in categories ranging from colors and movies to books, food and places.

The results were surprisingly conclusive.

To quote the great social scientist Taylor Swift: "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me."

People have favorites. Lots of them. Sure, there was the occasional "too many to choose" or "I don't have one." But for the most part, people rattled off answers with an ease I found both impressive and slightly disturbing.  They knew. I don't know how they knew, but they knew.

There was, however, one glorious exception. My friend Donna Vestal, who handles retail services and special events at House of Hope, refused to answer my little survey. Instead, she summed up exactly how I feel: "Why would I pick just one when I get to love all of it?"

At last, a kindred spirit!

I've always thought there was something vaguely indecisive about my inability to name favorites. Everyone else selects a winner and moves on, while I'm still standing there saying, "Well...it depends."  But it DOES depend!

My favorite song when I was 16? That's one question. In college? Entirely different. As a young mom? Different again.

And what kind of song are we talking about? A love song? Best lyrics? Best harmonies? The one that makes me dance? The one I want blasting in the car with the windows down?

You want me to choose ONE from all of those?

Books may be even worse. How do I compare the mystery I couldn't put down with the dystopian novel that transported me to another world?  Some books stay with us because they're extraordinary. Others because of who we were when we read them.

And places? How do I compare somewhere that takes my breath away with somewhere that feels like home?  This all seems like an excellent defense of my position.

Then again, maybe when my friend Jim says The Wizard of Oz is his favorite movie, it simply is. No qualifiers necessary. He knows what he loves best. And maybe I'm just doing what I’ve been known to do with plenty of other things: overthinking the question! Which, come to think of it, probably isn't news to anyone who knows me.

So perhaps my little Facebook experiment taught me something after all. Most people really do have favorites. And maybe my problem isn't that I can't pick one. Maybe it's that I can't leave a perfectly simple question alone.

Can you easily name your favorite movie, song or book, or does the question send you down the same rabbit hole it sends me? Email me at stacy@fireflyforyou.com and tell me which camp you're in or click here to chime in on my Facebook poll.