Insulted

In my reading recently I came across this post, Patriarchy in Homeschool Culture by Samantha Fields, in which I found a quote from the book Beautiful Girlhood. Beautiful Girlhood was originally written by Mabel Hale and published in 1922, and has been more recently revised by Karen Andreola and republished.

The section that Samantha quoted went as follows:

One day a handsome young gentleman alighted from a train … As he paced the platform, he soon attracted the attention of a young girl. She watched him flirtatiously out of the corner of her eye, coughed a little, and laughed merrily and a bit loudly with a group of her acquaintances; but at first he paid no attention …
At last he noticed, turned, and came directly to her, while her foolish little heart was all in a flutter at her success …
“My dear girl, he said, tipping his hat, “have you a mother at home?”
“Why, yes,” the girl stammered.
“Then go to her and tell you to keep you with her until you learn how you ought to behave in a public place,” and saying this he turned and left her in confusion and shame. It was a hard rebuke; but this man had told her only what every pure-minded man and woman was thinking. Girls can hardly afford to call down upon themselves such severe criticism. (130-31)

This is where a wide reading of true mid-nineteenth century literature comes in handy for a girl. Let me tell you the rest of the story, without the flowery prose (okay, maybe a little flowery prose).

The young girl immediately got the attention of the conductor and pointed to the offender saying, “Excuse me, sir, but that person, while unacquainted with me, presumed to come up to me and address me with words that insulted both my mother and myself. I trust I can rely on your protection from any further advances on his part.”

I mean, seriously? Let's look at the sequence of events as presented, shorn of any editorial content designed to influence our views of who is at fault here. A young man alights from the train, sees a bevy of attractive young ladies, and begins to pace around the platform. Why is he pacing? Whether he is waiting for another train, or a cab, or his valet to come and get him, the wait won't be made any shorter by him walking up and down. He sees a group of acquaintances, including one particular young lady, and attracts her attention.  Is this the purpose of his pacing? It would seem so to an observer not inclined to blame the woman in any interaction between a woman and a man.

But then, what does the young lady do? She laughs merrily at something that one of her acquaintances says. Obviously she's a strumpet, or wait, here's another thought. Maybe the group has noticed the young man's efforts to get her attention and one of them has said something amusing about him. And now she's laughing at him! So he does what he can to preserve his pride: make it seem like she's the one trying to attract his attention, and insult her for it.

I mean, otherwise we'd have to believe that this paragon of male virtue presumed to approach and address a young lady without a proper introduction just to correct her manners. He’d be lucky not to be horsewhipped. Young Victorian ladies suffered from a lot of disadvantages, true, but a lack of ways to deal with insults from young popinjays was not one of them.

As the authors would have known if they had bothered to read good literature instead of writing the bad kind.

I've Been Here Before

What with Monday, March 17th  being St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday the 15th was the day of our city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. The weather looked a little iffy, with dark clouds covering the sky, but my weather app assured us we were safe from actual rain until 1 PM at least, so John and I took our parade chairs and our chances and went to the parade. We left early, to find parking, which meant we were on the street for over an hour before the floats and bands got to where we were.

And as I have written before, the large crowds of people with little to do draw the people who hand out tracts. The first such gentleman I had seen before at the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade. He was wearing camouflage cargo pants and a matching shirt, and carrying a bullhorn. Last time I saw him, he was preaching through the bullhorn, too, but whatever he was saying was drowned out by the traffic helicopter buzzing overhead. I’m sure that in keeping with the spirit of the day, it was “eat, drink, and be merry”. 

As he passed by, I told my husband I’m surprised that he wasn’t carrying a gun to go with the camo outfit. John pointed out that the man had a backpack and who knows what he had in there. Best we didn’t argue with him. John and I politely turned down all offers of “something to read while you’re waiting” from him and the other proselytizers passing by. 

One man that came by alone was a little harder to deflect. He had been chatting with the people next to us, seeming honestly interested in what they had to say. Then he finished up his conversation and turned to us. Predictably enough, he asked if we wanted one of the tracts he held in his hand, to have something to read while we waited for the parade. I told him that I had already read that one, having been given one the year before. He seemed a little taken aback, but asked what I thought of it.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. He wanted a conversation, I would give him a conversation. “The St. Patrick’s Day parade is mostly a Catholic celebration. The theology in those pamphlets is, as near as I can tell, Baptist. So to me, this is just a matter of tribal infighting, and I find it off-putting, to tell you the truth.” His face fell, but I could tell he wasn’t surprised by my response, and actually seemed to be giving it some thought. 

“I’m not a Baptist, “ he replied. He belonged to a non-denominational church.

“Well, I’m a Methodist,” I said.

Somehow we got from there into a discussion of Lent. I told him that rather than give up something for Lent, I decided to act in the spirit of Isaiah 58:6,

 Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

and donate money every Wednesday in Lent to organizations that do just that. My upcoming donation was to go to the Rolling Jubilee, and I explained to him what that was and how it related to the idea of the Jubilee year in the Bible.

It suddenly occurred to me I was doing a pretty passable job of sounding like a street preacher myself. This was not how I had intended to spend the day. I told him that I didn’t want to keep him any longer and said it had been nice talking to him. He went on down the street no doubt believing that I was bound for hell.

It turns out that donations for the Rolling Jubilee are now closed, so I gave the money to Amnesty International instead. I made seven donations in all:

1) Trafficking Hope, a local organization that helps victims of human trafficking

2) The rehab center where I used to work, which helps loose the bonds of children who are limited by physical and mental disabilities

3) Amnesty International

4) World Vision, when they announced they were broadening their spousal benefits to include same sex spouses. They then reverted to their original policy, but I figured the money I gave will still help someone.

5) A fund to help a woman who needs money to fight a defamation lawsuit from a man who sexually harrassed her

6) A fund to help a family who lost three children in a car wreck pay for funerals (that one strictly speaking didn’t fit the theme, but they were friends of a friend and needed the money).

7) Emily’s List (I’m sure that one would have gone over well with my tract bearing friend)

So that’s $700 in all. I wish I could say that I learned some valuable spiritual lesson from this, but I am actually feeling pretty grumpy by now. Giving up sodas or chocolate would have saved me money, I reflect. Still, I have to acknowledge how privileged I am. Giving up that money did not mean going without groceries, or heat, or medicine. I enjoy the power to be able to aid those who are doing work that I think needs doing. 

Still, like my chocolate and soda pop deprived friends, I think Easter can’t come soon enough. The end of Lent is taking just a little longer than the end of my career as a street preacher.

So Yesterday In Church

Yesterday was United Methodist Women’s Sunday at St. Anonymous. Usually UMW Sunday is in January, but this year it wasn’t possible to work out a mutually agreeable Sunday with the pastor until March 9, which was the day after International Women’s Day, so it seemed appropriate. UMW Sunday requires a lot of volunteers to take over as greeters, ushers, readers, and a speaker. We started out having members give the sermon, but few people liked doing that, so we moved onto having women guest speakers, often pastors from surrounding churches, but lay speakers as well. This year, we weren’t able to get our choice for speaker, so Dr. J spoke as she does every Sunday. 

I had volunteered to be an usher for the new and sparsely attended 9:45 service, and figured I had better get there early. I got there so early that the sermon from 8:30 church was still going on. I was able to hear it, too, because we have a flat screen monitor and sound in the narthex.

And I got there just as Dr. J was illustrating her point with a story told to her by a friend. The friend has been dating a man who has been divorced for many years. I’m not sure what constitutes “many” in this situation: five, ten, twenty? At any rate, it sounds as though Dr. J’s friend, let’s call her Sue, came along after the divorce and wasn’t a factor. Sue’s boyfriend’s first grandchild was born, and of course, he and Sue went to visit the child.

While they were there, the story continues, the ex-wife (let’s call her Barb, and the ex-husband Mack, just to simplify my typing) also came to visit the child. At this point, as Sue told Dr. J, she was prepared for some discomfort, but what she wasn’t prepared for was the “wall of hate” she felt coming from Barb’s direction.

What a familiar sounding story, I think, and knowing I’m going to have to hear it all over again at the next service, I head outside where the coffee is, while scratching “talk to the pastor about it” off my list of potential solutions to my ex-husband problem. Because I know what I am going to hear next. After all, the sermon is one of a series built around the Lenten Study book, Final Words by Adam Hamilton, and deals with the words, “Father forgive them”. 

When I do hear the sermon, an hour or so later, the Sue and Barb story is as bad as I think. Sue, in later talking to Dr. J, says something to the effect of not knowing the whole history of the divorce, only having heard one side of the story, but then asks something like “Can you imagine what an effect it must have on a person to hold that much hatred in their heart for so long?” 

I am happy to report that I did not stand up at that moment (or any other) and scream what I was thinking, namely, “WTF makes you think that just because Barb seemed hateful that one time, that she has been feeling hatred in her heart 24/7 since the divorce?”

And I will get back to that thought, but first, the rest of the sermon. In a nutshell, hatred, bitterness and judgement fill your heart and don’t leave room for God’s love and grace, and one way to get rid of hatred and bitterness is to pray for the people that have wronged you. Dr. J herself has a few people she is still working at forgiving, through prayer, and it is helping.

Back to Barb. Having been in her shoes (hi, Barb, my sister), I can easily think of several things that could have been going on with her, other than “bitter woman eating herself up with hatred 24/7”. There is a bias in human thought called the Fundamental Attribution Error, the attribution of our own behavior to external, situational forces and other people’s behavior to their intrinsic character.  I think it’s more likely that Barb has made her peace with the divorce, and has been living her life since then, sometimes happily and sometimes not, like all the rest of us, but something about that visit sparked an anger that may have surprised her as much as it did anyone else. She was visiting her first grandchild. At some point, she and Mack had been the new parents, bringing their firstborn home, in all likelihood thinking the love that created that baby would last forever. Why wouldn’t seeing the new baby bring up powerful feelings about how all that had gone wrong?

Maybe it was something even more mundane than that. Maybe Barb had told Mack when she would be visiting so he could plan his visit at another time, and he forgot or didn’t care. Maybe she had simply asked that at the first visit to the grandbaby, Mack not bring Sue. Maybe it was some thoughtlessness of Mack’s in the present that got to her, not the past at all. 

Maybe she really is a hateful, bitter woman who can’t let go of the past. I’m not ruling that out, I’m just saying that in the absence of other evidence, the charitable thing to do would be to assume that she isn’t like this all the time, and that at that moment she was hurting badly.

My first reaction was to want to tell Dr. J that I thought it was her friend who was being judgemental, but a few moments reflection led me to realize I don’t know that, either. Maybe the next words out of Sue’s mouth were, “Well, I don’t know that she feels that way all the time”, and Dr. J didn’t include them because they didn’t fit the theme of the sermon. Even if she didn’t come to that realization, I can empathize with Sue as well as Barb. It must have been scary feeling what seems to you like a “wall of hate”. Most of us don’t do our best thinking under those circumstances. Sue was doing her best to show what empathy she could in recounting the story to Dr. J. I wasn’t there, I can’t judge her, either.

What I can do is reflect that there is an obvious, Christian solution to the problem of forgiveness, and that is, to extend love and support to the person who is struggling to forgive, or doesn’t even want to forgive. Why is it that our first impulse in these situations is to preach forgiveness instead of to extend love? I didn’t stand up and yell that, either. Can I have a cookie?

What I did is reflect on the many times Juliet has told us that when she preaches a sermon, she is preaching to herself as much as to the congregation. She holds herself up to these high standards of love and forgiveness when she has been wronged, unlike me, who figures that if the people who wronged me are still walking around free with their pieces and parts intact, that’s forgiveness enough.

So I decided to take my own advice for once. When the service was over, I found her and give her a big hug, and told her, “I don’t know what those people did who wronged you, but I know you have my love and support.”

It may not have been what she needed, but it’s what I’ve got.

There's more to this story.

T-shirt

I have mixed feelings about this shirt.

Actually, I have pretty unmixed feelings about this shirt. I don’t like it.

I don’t like it because it sends a message that a daughter is her father’s property (my princess?)

I don’t like it because it sends a message that there is conflict between daddy and the young men his daughter chooses to date, even before the young man has shown himself to want anything other than to be loving and kind to her.

I don’t like it because it rejects the idea of consensual sex between the daughter and the young man.

I don’t like it because it models violence as a normal part of human relations. 

Of course, I do like the idea of fathers holding their daughters in high regard and being willing to protect them. I would like the T-shirt more if I thought that there is no way that it could co-exist with a parent who would ask a daughter who was raped or threatened, “Why were you out so late? Why were you drinking? Why were you dressed like that?”

But you know what would make me really like the shirt? If it were directed at the sons of the fathers wearing it, if it were titled “Rules for Being Allowed to Date Someone Else’s Daughter”, if numbers 2 and 6 were missing, and if number 8 said, “She’s a precious human being with the right and power to say no, just like you, not your conquest.”

They Have to Come from Somewhere

A few days ago I came across Libby Anne’s response to this post, FYI (if you're a teenage girl). I’m not going to write another response to FYI, because there have been many excellent responses made already, and I doubt I can improve on them. Libby Anne links to some in this post, and Fred Clark links to posts containing more links here.

Today, however,  I ran across this gem on Pharyngula, Kronar Writes, linking to this post, which comments on a PUA ranting about how he doesn’t share his seed with just anybody.

Some choice quotes:

It takes more than a nice curve of the ass or a bat of the eyelashes to earn my seed. . .

My salty essence and genetic code is a gift from my father, and his father, and his father, and on it goes.  Its the sticky genetic code of self-sufficient men who have protected and provided for family, women and children.  Its the haplogroup of men who built civilization.  I have the genetic lineage of warriors, business owners, firefighters, blacksmiths, farmers, herders, poets, politicians, soldiers, artists and even chefs.  Hard jobs that help build the world, thinking jobs that help build a culture, they’ve all been done by men in my bloodline.  My ceiling for accomplishment is limitless. . .

I’m not some average guy begging to give my seed away.  My seed is valuable and I know it.Men of lesser genetics may be able to afford spraying their seed anywhere; I allow myself no such atrocities.My sperm could populate an entire society of strong good looking altruistic people and any girl who takes it in would be lucky to be a vessel towards that new world.

I didn’t click through to read the original, by someone calling himself LaidinNYC, but I did follow this link to hear it read in a Saruman voice. That was a treat.

So what does this have to do with the FYI post, you wonder? Nothing directly. It’s just that I have a strong suspicion that Kim Hall’s boys are all going to end up as some verson of LaidinNYC in a decade or so.

After all, this attitude of entitlement, narcissism, and female inferiority has to come from somewhere, and if having a parent who rescues her sons from the dangers of looking at their friends' pictures instead of teaching them how to control their own behavior and attitudes doesn’t inculcate it, I don’t know what would.

I Don't Understand

I don't understand people wanting to get married in a church cause it "looks" nice.* 

I know I have said that myself a number of times: “I don’t understand”, or “I can’t understand”. I’ve said it numerous times in the context of truly not understanding: “I don’t understand quantum physics.” “I don’t understand Hungarian.” I’ve also meant it in the same way that the poster quoted above did. I’ve meant it as, “I disapprove.”

My reaction to other’s people’s use of that phrase is mixed. If I hear or read a position with which I agree, like “I don’t understand why people are opposed to marriage equality”, it slides right by me. If I hear or read a position with which I disagree, I react by thinking something like, “I don’t understand why the world should be limited by your lack of understanding.”

Yes, I do understand that the phrase and its sister, “I can’t understand” function as figures of speech. I also understand that their function is to soften the real message: “I disapprove. I disagree.” If I say I can’t understand, I can slide right out from ownership of my disapproval and disagreement. I’m not trying to start a fight here, I just can’t understand. I know my disapproval means nothing to some anonymous poster on the internet, I just don’t understand. Why are you picking on me for not understanding? Did I try to tell you what to do?

I do allow for content and context. For example, I hear someone saying, “I don’t understand how someone can abuse a child” not as an attempt to evade the consequences of outright disapproval, but as a way of framing that behavior as completely monstrous, impervious to human understanding. I’m not going to quibble with anyone who says that. I’m also glad that there are those who struggle to understand how, so that they can prevent the behavior from occurring.

I have undertaken to be more strict with myself. If I catch myself saying or thinking, “I don’t understand”, I remind myself that maybe I should learn to understand. Understanding does not mean approval or agreement. Understanding does give me more information to draw on in choosing my battles. It gives me a way to affirm whatever I have in common with another person before laying out my reasons for disapproving or disagreeing. It reminds me that sometimes my opinion is unwanted and irrelevant, but that when it is wanted and needed, I shouldn’t be coy about stating it.

And I don’t understand why other people just don’t get this.

*In the example above, the poster was responding to a man who was unhappy that the church was making him and his fiancée spend “a whole Saturday” in a pre-marriage class. He added, “I think my resistance to it is (without turning this into a religious thread) are my problems with the church and I’m dreading having to listen to them.” He said “my problems with the church”, not “our”. It is entirely possible that the church choice is his fiancée’s, and that he respects her reasons for the choice. It is also possible that they are going along with parents, out of a desire to pick their battles. Nowhere was it said that the reason for getting married in a church was because it “looks nice”.

An Alternate Ending

Not that I didn’t enjoy the movie Much Ado About Nothing, but I had a few alternate lines of dialog running through my head.

Hero: Wait a minute, you want me to marry this loser after all? The one who stood up in front of the whole town and told everyone I was a slut? Just because he saw some woman in my bedroom window from so far away that it could have been you in a wig for all he knew? Why would I want to do that, Dad?

Don’t go running off, we’re not done talking yet. You wanted me dead, Dad. I heard you. You didn’t even wait to hear my side of it, you told me to go ahead and die. And now you want to have this big wedding feast and pretend like everything is all right? Who are you, anyway ? No wonder mom ran off. Yeah, yeah, I’ve known about it for years, how did you think you could keep something like that a secret in a house with a bunch of servants? 

Speaking of servants, I have one. About my age, about my size, busy in my room a lot. So how come it never occurred to one of you geniuses that it could have been her at the window? Because, yeah, if I was going to do the nasty with someone the night before my wedding, it would be right in front of my bedroom window with the light on. I’m smart that way. Anyway, she's apparently allowed to have sex without anyone getting mad at her. So why is that again, anyway? Because she's the one of us who can't afford to take care of a baby.

How could you even believe this, dad? The padre here knew better than to believe it of me. My cousin knew better than to believe it of me. Her on again/off again, now he has a beard, now he doesn’t loser can’t even propose without help from half a dozen people boyfriend knew better than to believe of of me. Yeah, you, who did you guys think you were fooling, any middle school kid could tell how you felt about her. Throw her a wedding, dad, why don’t you? Oh, you were? A twofer? Matching veils. Dad, Martha Stewart you are not.

Okay, okay, I’ll marry the jerk. But don’t think he’s ever going to hear the end of this.

You either.

This Is What Privilege Looks Like

I came across this photo this morning in a thread on TD, called “Second grader in wheelchair set apart from his classmates in school photo”. It linked to a news story from Canada with the same name.

Opinions seem to be mixed as to whether the child’s parents are right to be unhappy about the picture. Some typical comments are as follows:

the chair is as close to the bleachers as it can be.

did the mom want them to sit the wheelchair on the bleachers?

Hard to say if there was any malice here. The class photos are on a bench, which the kid in the wheelchair can't sit on.

I doubt there was any malice intended. They just didn't think about it enough. They should have placed him front and center.

Before the third and fourth posts were made, other commenters pointed out that the wheelchair could have been placed in front of the bleachers with the children on the bleachers placed to one side or the other so they wouldn’t be blocked. Someone also suggested another solution:

And there's room on both sides of the bleachers. Just move the kids to the edge and he would be with the rest of the students. Not that hard to figure out.

But that would create a worse problem!

and that would've made the picture off center and look stupid.

Well, we certainly can’t have any of that.

I agree with the fourth post above though. I doubt there was any malice intended. I mean look at that child. Look how cute he is. I bet he’s everyone’s mascot, moppet, pet. How can you feel malice toward him?

I doubt there was any malice intended when the school contracted with the photographer without telling the company that they have students with special needs, and asking what experience the photographer had with posing children in wheelchairs.

I don’t believe there was any malice intended when the teacher got the memo saying what time to have the children in the gym for the photograph and didn’t think, “Maybe I should go look at the bleachers and get an idea how we are going to work Miles into the picture."

I don’t believe the photographer felt any malice when he centered the rest of the class on the bleachers the way he always poses children and tucked Miles in afterwards.

That’s what privilege does. 

So if you have children who can walk on their own two feet or at least sit in the bleachers unaided and pay attention and smile on command and not get frightened at a stranger pointing an unfamiliar device at them and want to run away, take a good look at this picture.

Because this is what privilege looks like. 

Advise and Consent

I have been spending entirely too much time on Tiger Droppings lately, but the OT (off-topic) board just sucks me in. All morning I have been bravely trying not to post unsolicited advice to one poster who has a thorny problem, or from my point of view, non-problem:

Girlfriend's parents are getting her a "new" car for graduation. She wants a high mileage Infiniti which I think is stupid. Anybody have any suggestions on a 4 door car that gets good gas mileage that I can talk her into?

He is soliciting advice, but not the advice I want to give, which is, “Stay out of it.” Notice the salient points. It is the girlfriend’s parents who are buying the car. It will be the girlfriend’s car. There is no indication that anyone has asked the young man’s advice, let alone suggested that he should solicit further advice from a random group of people with too much time on their hands and unknown expertise in the realm of cars.  

We have further indications of the boyfriend’s motives later in the thread:

quote:
your girlfriend is stupid

 Obviously, so I need to be the voice of reason here as usual.

Uh-oh. 

I really, really, really want to post a MYOB post to this person, but discretion is the better part of valor. Besides, that’s why I have a blog.

As of this writing there are 65 replies to the post, none of which have raised the question of how the  car became the boyfriend’s problem. A side argument has emerged between those who think the young lady is being pretentious and those who don’t, which led to another side argument over whether any white collar worker needs to drive a pick-up truck, but no arguments over how far people should go to involve themselves in their non-spouse SO’s decisions.

Oh, let’s not be so prim and proper about it. It’s really a question of how far men should go to involve themselves in their girlfriend’s decisions, because if she had been trying to talk him out of buying the car he wanted, the thread title would have been, My girlfriend is trying to tell me what kind of car to buy. What’s the best way to break up with her? It isn’t even true to say, “It’s really a question of how far men should go to involve themselves in their girlfriend’s decisions", because apparently in 60 some odd people’s minds, that isn’t even a question.

Perhaps I am being unfair to the young man. Maybe his plan is to wait until GF says something like, “You don’t look excited about my new car” to say, “I just keep thinking that if you got a low mileage Honda Accord and saved up what you would be paying on a car lease every month, in a few years you could trade in the Accord and use the cash for a big down payment on a newer Infiniti with lower mileage. That’s what I’d do, anyway.” If he’s considering a long term future with the young woman, it makes sense to be concerned with how she handles money and if status symbols are important to her.

But then I get back to “I need to be the voice of reason here as usual”, and honestly, I doubt he’s going to be that tactful.

I need to take my own advice and butt out. At least he knows his girlfriend, while I don’t know any of these people. That’s why I am writing here instead of telling him, “If I were you, I’d stay out of this and leave it to your girlfriend and her parents. Otherwise, high mileage or not, I don’t think you’re going to outlast the car.”

That's Not Really So Dumb, When You Think About It

Recently I encountered a thread called The dumbest thing you've ever heard someone say/ask? on the O/T [off topic] board on tigerdroppings. The thread is, as you can predict from the title, about the dumbest things posters can recall that they have heard people say or ask. It makes for humorous reading. Some of my favorite examples:

I was flying to Hawaii from Los Angeles and, when they were explaining to us the life jackets and everything, I heard a lady look over to her husband and ask "We have to fly over water?" 

Earlier today I was sitting on this . . . beach near my apartment(in Boston). These two girls were walking by me and one looks at the other and says "what ocean is this?"

A student asked an ELL student named Juanita how to say her name in Spanish.

Some questions I've been asked by students 

-"Is Alaska really pink?" when we were looking at a map of the states. 

-"Is that the same place we go for Spring Break" when discussing Manuel Noriega.

"Namaste. That's Japanese for 'goodbye.'" - Talkative Midwestern idiot behind my wife, son, and me on Small World at Disney.

It occurs to me, though, in reading through the thread, that some of the examples may have been meant as jokes. Not particularly funny jokes, but jokes. Some examples:

Some girl at a college football game asked where the yellow first down line was at on the field.

On another note a guy from BR that tailgates with us whilst eating Pastalaya [a pasta version of jambalaya, a rice dish] says "I'll bet this would be good if it had rice in it" 

We were talking about.birthdays and this this girl says her birthsay was June 10th (or whatever day its been a while). I asked "really what year? " she says,"well, its every year"

My husband would definitely have said the first two. Then I would have sighed that sigh I use on such occasions and given him the look, while reminding myself he is often genuinely funny. 

I would have said the third.

Others strike me as responses being given out of habit even though the situation is wrong:

Several years back in the drive-thru: "is that for here or to go?"

I can't remember if this was at JFK or Atlanta, but a few years ago, the officer at Customs asked me for my Green Card. After i handed her my US passport. 

This was also in a line for US citizens and permanent residents. [emphasis added]

The worker at the drive through says, “Is that for here or to go” to customers inside dozens of times a day, just like the customs official asks for green cards from permanent residents. Those were probably slips of the tongue, not ignorance.

Then there are the responses that leave you wondering just who has the cognitive issues:

Last week I heard a lady in the elevator tell another lady that one of their coworkers had a baby. The other lady asked how much did the baby weigh and the women replied "6 lbs and 14 oz". 

That one was questioned by several posters who didn’t see anything wrong with it, but the first person to do so quoted it as “6”, 14 ounces”. That led to other posters assuming the error was the woman saying, “6 inches, 14 ounces”, which would have been odd. I think the problem was likely that the original poster somehow thought 14 ounces was more than a pound, although it’s also possible that the 14 was a typo and the woman had said something like, “6 pounds, 18 ounces”.

The thread is actually one of the pleasanter examples of what I call the “Isn’t It Awful?” threads, after one of the games that Eric Berne, father of Transactional Analysis, described in the book Games People Play. Such threads cover subjects like parents who allow their children to behave in ways the posters can’t ever remember having behaved as children, despite the fact that most of them are one-third to one half my age; people daring to appear publicly and do normal things while fat; and what I call the “I’m mad because there are women who do not care about my penis and what makes it happy” threads. As Tigerdroppings started off as a college sports oriented forum, there are a lot of those.

I can’t say I am immune to the charm of Isn’t It Awful threads. After all, I make a lot of Isn’t It Awful blogposts myself. When we most suspect ourselves of being unattractive, stupid, and amazingly ridiculous  or totally invisible to the rest of the world, it’s comforting to think the same about them. Comforting, but distancing. It’s when we suspect ourselves of being unattractive, stupid, and amazingly ridiculous  or totally invisible to the rest of the world that we need to get closer, not farther away.

Where Do You Leave Tracts?

As I have written before, I frequently find myself being targeted with tracts. With Carnival upon us and Mardi Gras only one week away, I expect to be the recipient of a few more. So I was intrigued to run across a thread entitled, Where do you leave Tracts?  I can always use suggestions for how to avoid them.

The thread began with this post:

I want your creative ideas on where to leave tracts.
Thanks to my new job (Christian bookstore) I have access to a wide variety of tracts! Of course I still have to buy them, but at least I've now got a ready supplier!
So, I keep a package in my purse.... but now I'm wondering where would be good places to leave one, besides a doctor's office, waiting room, etc. etc.
Where do YOU leave tracts?

Me? In the recycling bin.

If I get any of the tracts about islam[sic] I put them in Korans in the library and bookstores.By about islam[sic] I mean Christian tracts exposing islam[sic] for what it is. 
I used to leave tracts at a public "share" table in the library but I did that one day, went back a few hours later, and they were in the trash. I don't think the librarians did that, more likely one of the library patrons from a college atheist society. 

Maybe it was a librarian who was tired of patrons complaining about the tracts in the Korans.

1st off make sure they have a local church name on them,so in case whoever reads it is interested they have a place to go.

To complain?

Phone booths are good,as are bulletin boards at colleges and supermarkets.I help deliver food to people so sometimes I can leave a tract in a hallway.And if you are ever stopped by the police for a traffic error,be courageous and give the policeman a tract too.

Oh, I so want to be there when you do.

Where DON'T I leave tracts? LOL, I leave them everywhere. I keep a supply in my car and everytime I get outta the car, I stuff a few in my pockets to leave around. 
ANYWHERE is game!! I've put them inside library books...phone booths...benches at the mall...rest rooms...even lay one on top of the gas pump thingie while I'm gassing up. Everytime I grocery shop, I leave a few in carts, LOL, or even on the store shelves.
The possibilities are simply ENDLESS!!!

The fine for littering is $250.

I leave them inside the handle of the gas pump when I fuel up so the next person has to grab the tract as they grab the pump to fill up their car. I also just went to disneyworld[sic] last summer and I left them all over that place. People from all over the world are there.

People from all over the world, learning what litterbugs we are in the US.

I've left tracts on a coffee shop table, inside a magazine at the salon, on a park bench on a windless day, or in the grocery cart. If you're worried that your tract might be ignored, you could hand one to someone outside the library, at a park, downtown, on a college campus, or at the cashier's stand as you're checking out.

Okay, seriously, these guys have no idea that litter laws apply to them, too, do they?

Another place is on top of newspaper machines, or inside of them if you buy a paper.
Also, many Catholic churches have a Mass on late Saturday afternoon. they are open a half hour or so before the Mass for confession. 
In the back of their churches they usually have some type of literature table. 
I leave those "Do You Know You're Going To Heaven" type tracts there.

Leaving tracts in rival churches. [jihad envy] I bet you wouldn't dare put them in a mosque. [/jihad envy]

Putting them in someone's hand is always the best. If one is not comfortable doing that, leaving them in nice, public places is great (with permission). I am not comfortable at all leaving tracts in public restrooms...just seems inappropriate.

But leaving them on gas pump handles, where they will be in the way of the next customer, does not.

I leave them at store counters, tables,plant them in pockets ,open purses, in arcades, waiting rooms,books,under doors, in drawers, mail boxes, ect.[sic]

That one drew a prompt response:

Leaving tracts in mailboxes is against the law. As is placing them in people's open things. One could get into big trouble if caught doing that. I used to leave tracts on store merchandise, but I quit doing that after I heard that doing so is a poor testimony. Imagine being a store clerk on duty, straightening up a rumpled stack of jeans and finding a 4 Things God wants you to Know tract in the middle of the blue jeans. It's going to get tossed and will be looked upon as littering. As Christians we need to make sure that in our witnessing, we aren't breaking the law by littering, or other things like that. It's a poor testimony to a watching world. 
Our lives are walking gospels. This is what the world sees on a daily basis and reads. In James, James says to "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves." Don't get me wrong, I think handing out tracts is a wonderful ministry. But too often I see people who claim to be Christians. They are all crabby and cross with store employees, or aren't polite to them, and then expect the store employees to take a tract and read it. That person's life speaks louder to the store employee than that paper does. 
Brethren we need to make sure we not only know God's word and share it with others, it needs to get down into our hearts and change our lives as well.

You know, that post makes a lot of sense.

It also got a response:

Really I didn't know any of that was against the law? [sic]Thank you for telling me.

Really? You had no idea that leaving pieces of paper strewn around is what people mean by littering? You had no suspicion that putting something into another person’s open purse might be frowned on by the legal authorities? Not to mention scary to the owner of the purse?

I deliver to people,s [sic] houses and was already warned about witnessing by my boss..I leave what you could call time release tracts.Tracts that will not be found for a long time due to where you put them.Say on top of a tall cabinet,behind a desk,things like that.This way God in his providence can still reveal the tract to the occupant whenever He chooses simply by moving some furniture or cleaning on top of a cabinet.

You know what else has a time release system? Jail.

Throwing one in a car window is fine but please DON'T put one under the windshield wiper, folks!!! I dunno about YOUR states, but it is illegal in mine. It's called "tampering", just by TOUCHING another person's automobile, and you can get a fine.
One time I left flyers on a parking lot FULL of cars, putting them under the windshield wipers. A cop just happened to see me and them (lol) and HE MADE ME REMOVE EVERY ONE OF THEM!!! It was summertime and hot as blazes out. I just about had a heat stroke going back through that large parking lot, lolol. He actually STOOD there and watched me, to make sure I removed every single one, believe it or not.
NEVER AGAIN!!! So please don't do that. There are soooo many other good ideas!

A police officer enforcing the law. Just one more sign of a fallen world.

I tend to stick with my tract-in-a-bag-of-candy. Living in Houston, I have 2 languages, and 2 types of candy. The Spanish types like a hot, salty fruit candy. UGH. They sure get excited when I hand THAT over.

Spanish types? And I know the “UGH” is directed at the candy, not the Spanish trick-or-treaters, but “UGH” is right. Can’t you feel the love? 

There was one house in my neighborhood that I discouraged my son from going to on Halloween because they handed out those scary you’re-going-to-hell Jack Chick tracts.

I try to go wherever God leads me. Today he had me hand out a New Testament to an obviously Muslim guy running the Dollar store. He was surprisingly open to receiving it.

What would make him “obviously Muslim”, anyway? Was he praying toward Mecca when the writer walked into the store? Did his T-shirt show a picture of Salman Rushdie with a target over it?

One of the other posts referred to an evangelist as having been “saved from a tract.” I wish I knew how he did that. I’d sure like to be saved from a tract, a lot of them, in fact. 

Here's a Tip. Learn Some Math.

Like many other people, I have been following the story of the Applebee’s waitress who posted this picture online, and subsequently was fired. The diner, who identified herself as a pastor, wrote, “I give God 10% Why do you get 18” on the receipt.

I can’t claim to have read everything written on the subject, so perhaps this point has been brought up before, but while I have seen people challenge both the pastor’s and the waitress’s ethics in this incident, I haven’t yet seen anyone challenge the pastor’s poor grasp of math.

A percentage is a percentage of something. It is meaningless to compare two percentages without also comparing the starting point: what are these two percentages percentages of? I can express any number as a percentage of something. I can express the tip we left the waiter at a very fancy restaurant last night as a percentage of the bill we were given, as a percentage of the total take in tips the waiter got for the night, as a percentage of the total take in tips the waiter got for the week, or as a percentage of the gross national product if I want to, and in each case, it’s going to be a different number.

If the pastor is doing it right, the 10% she gives to God is 10% of her income. The 18% she gave the person who waited on her (and according to some accounts, she did pay it), was a percentage of her bill for dinner. I suspect the latter amount is less than the former. Otherwise, we need to call in Gail Vaz-Oxlade.

I did some Googling to find out how much people in the US spend on food and especially, on dining out. We in the US spend a lower percentage of our incomes on food than people in other countries do.  Estimates vary, and the lower your income, the higher the percentage of it you will spend to feed yourself, so let’s take the higher end of the range and say that the pastor spends 15% of her income on food. It’s unlikely she spends all of it eating out, but let’s say she spends half of it eating out, just to be on the safe side. If she tips every waitress 18%,  we multiply 7.5% by 18% to see what percent of her income she spends in tipping. Those tips amount to 1.35% of her income, far less than God is getting.

From other Googling I have done, I see many people report spending anywhere from 2-5% of their income dining out, though some spend more. If we use the 5% figure, 5% of 18% gives us 0.9% of the pastor’s income going to waitresses (and waiters), less than one tenth of what God is getting.

But just for fun, let’s assume that the pastor, like the average Kenyan, spends 45% of her income on food, and that all of that is spent dining out (unlike the average Kenyan, I suspect). That would mean all her tips add up to 8.1% of her income, still less than God is getting. In fact, our pastor would have to spend over 55% of her income eating out for the 18% tips to equal God’s 10%, and if you spend more than half of your income dining out, then don’t blame the waitress for your cash flow problems. Learn to cook. Maybe clip coupons. And don’t write notes to the cashier on them, just in case she has a camera, too.

Thanks a Lot, John Metz

Back in the early 80’s, I left a violent marriage and was on my own with a six year old and two part time jobs. I responded to this change in my circumstances by becoming depressed, although how deeply depressed I only recognized when I finally began to feel better. There were days that I actually got through in ten minute increments. I’d tell myself I’d get up, take a shower and then decide whether to get dressed. I’d tell myself to get dressed and then decide whether I was going to go to work. Then I’d tell myself just get in the car and head for work and then decide whether to stay or tell them I was sick and go back home.

As you might imagine, this was not a good way to live.

My very smart son reacted to the break-up of his family and a depressed mom by having trouble in school. When his troubles were compounded by the death of one of his best friends, he began leaving the classroom and sitting outside “to think about Bear”.

During this depressed and gloomy time, I used to take the two of us to the nearby Denny’s for dinner from time to time. They had (maybe still have) an extremely inexpensive children’s menu, but even better, they had some of the kindest waitresses I have ever known.

Apparently these women could recognize a troubled soul. When I came in and my son immediately began wandering around with the excuse he was going to the restroom, I would hear, “Oh, he’s all right; now what can I get you to drink?” Whenever I needed mothering, I’d dig up stray pennies from under the couch cushions and head there.

One afternoon, I had a parent teacher’s conference before lunchtime. I took one look at my son’s report card and burst into tears. He was so obviously struggling, and I felt like it was all my fault.

After the conference, I went to Denny’s. I ordered a sandwich, I forget what kind, but whatever it was, they were out. I burst into tears again.

“Let me get you something else, no charge,” the waitress said. I tried to explain that I wasn’t crying over the food, but she refused to take payment for my lunch.

My life eventually improved. I got help for myself and my son, I met my husband, my son graduated from high school with honors and from college and has a good paying job he enjoys. When I have to think back on that dark, dark time, the waitresses at Denny’s are one of the few bright spots.

And now John Metz had to go spoil all that. John Metz is the owner of several Denny’s franchises who planned to add a five percent “Obamacare” surcharge onto his customers’ tabs, and suggested that maybe the customers could deduct that amount from his employees’ tips. 

"If I leave the prices the same, but say on the menu that there is a 5 percent surcharge for Obamacare, customers have two choices. They can either pay it and tip 15 or 20 percent, or if they really feel so inclined, they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server, who is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare," Metz told The Huffington Post. "Although it may sound terrible that I'm doing this, it's the only alternative. I've got to pass the cost on to the consumer."

This did not go well for him. Unfortunately, it also did not go well for other Denny’s owners, even the ones who had no intentions of mistreating their employees or customers. Metz is a one man wrecking ball.

He even managed to wreck some of my cherished memories. Thanks a bunch.

Logistics

I feel bad complaining about this while on the East Coast there are people sitting without power and some of them without food. I’ve lived through the aftermath of hurricanes and tropical storms before and I know how slow it is to recover. The logistics of getting help to areas that are flooded, covered with debris, and without power, through traffic that is making its own way without traffic signals, while the people doing the helping are often worried for their own families’ safety, are difficult, to say the least. I am safe, dry, and well-fed, and cranky because a package got delayed.

But then I remember that some politicians talk about running government like a business, or even privatizing government services, and my minor complaint with a business that’s being run like a business takes on a more sinister cast.

As I mentioned before, I ordered a coat from LL Bean. LL Bean’s default mode of delivery, the one you get for no extra charge, is to ship UPS, the company that makes a big deal about logistics. The package was due to arrive on October 30, and since it was being shipped from Illinois to Louisiana, there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t arrive on time.

So that afternoon from 2 PM on, I made frequent forays to the front porch to look for a package. No package. By 6 PM I had begun to make dinner, when my husband came in with one of those notices from UPS that say they made an attempt to deliver a package but couldn’t leave it because it needed my signature.

Keep in mind, my husband and I had been home all afternoon. I went to the porch and checked the doorbell, and found it working just fine. We weren’t running the vacuum cleaner or any other loud household appliances that would mask the noise. I had a bad feeling that the UPS driver, rather than having to ring the bell and wait around for an answer and then a signature, just walked up to the house, stuck the already prepared note on the door, made a tentative knock and ran. 

I have already had a bad history with Brown. Several times in the past I have used their tracking site to track packages, read that a package had been delivered, and looked in vain around my porch and yard for it, only to have it show up the next day. So I called their customer service line and complained. I was home; I would have heard the doorbell. They tried to get the driver to come back with my package but he had gone home for the night. It would be delivered tomorrow.

So on the 31st, I stuck the notice of attempt to deliver back on the door with my authorization to leave the package without my signature, just in case, and remained vigilant. Around six I heard the truck coming down the street and ran to the front porch. A truck had just pulled up to my neighbor’s house. I watched the driver walk up to the door, drop (not place) the package, ring the bell, turn and leave in one fluid movement. Little kids who play the old trick of ringing your doorbell and running away would have been envious. I hope that package didn’t contain glassware.

Then he got to my house, handed me the form to sign and then my package without so much as a word.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? You got the coat. You live in Louisiana where it’s going to be 80 degrees this afternoon.

The big deal is, I know why this happened. It happened because businesses cut costs by cutting out a lot of the lowest paid jobs instead of trimming the higher paid jobs at the top. That leaves the drivers with longer routes than they would have if there were more drivers, and that leads them to cut corners. The big deal is, my coat was outside my house a little after 6 on October 30th and I was home to receive it but I didn’t get it for another 24 hours because someone was too rushed for time to let me answer the door, or even have a chance to answer the door. If customers complain about such service, it is just barely possible that Brown might wonder what they can do for me. If drivers complain, who is going to listen?

And this is the model some people want to use for government. This is what we are looking at when we privatize needed government services. Look at New York and New Jersey and ask yourself, what if it wasn’t a coat some old lady in Louisiana didn’t need right this minute? What if it was an emergency delivery of bottled water, or baby formula, or a coat some old lady does need right this minute because it’s cold and she has no heat? Do we want to run emergency relief like a business - like that business?

Like the ads say, it’s logistics.

Unkind

By now, I am sure all of my readers have heard of Ann Coulter’s unfortunate tweet about the third Presidential debate, in which she said, “I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard”.

Her use of the word “retard” drew immediate and vociferous criticism, as one might imagine, including a well thought out letter from Special Olympian John Franklin Stephens.

Like many others, I was repulsed by Coulter’s use of the word “retard”. I think Coulter has every right to her opinion of the president’s intellect. Mocking presidents is a tradition that is pretty much as old as our tradition of having presidents. As I recall, President Obama’s immediate predecessor came in for a lot of it, too. I’m glad to live in a country in which we can mock our leaders. I just agree with those who believe using a word that is hurtful to people who are not in her line of fire is cruel.

But it isn’t her use of the word “retard” that has me most up in arms. What really drew my ire is her using the word “kind”.

Let me see if I can explain what I mean without getting both of my feet in my mouth along with whatever others I can borrow. I am certainly not suggesting that we should be unkind to people with disabilities, cognitive or otherwise. They get enough of that as it is. I like kindness, and think there should be more of it in the world, especially in the sense that I should practice it a lot more than I do.

But there is an underlying tone to phrase “be kind and gentle to the retard” that goes beyond just the use of the word “retard”. It draws a distinction between us of the three digit IQ’s and them, and makes it clear who are the actors and who are the acted upon. We get to choose to be kind. They get to hope we do. And there is something about that distinction that is patronizing, and condescending, and even unkind.

There’s a story I can tell that may explain what I am driving at. Back in my working days, I had a student, B. I worked with B on her language skills off and on from her baby days to her middle school years. B is what used to be called a slow learner. Concepts came hard to her. She needed to be drilled and drilled and drilled in them, but once she finally got them, she got them.

One day we were working on vocabulary. It was late in the day and I was having a hard time explaining what I wanted to explain. I said something snappish. I didn’t know it was going to sound snappish until I heard myself say it (that happens to me a lot), but it did. It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize when B looked at me curiously and asked in a sweet voice, “Are you okay?”

Who me? I’m fine except for that whole feeling about the size of a postage stamp thing I suddenly have going on. “I’m just tired,” I said, “but that was no excuse for me to sound mean. I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

We finished our lesson, and when I returned B to her mom in the waiting room, I told her the story, even though it meant telling on myself. I was proud of B for her skill in dealing with an uncomfortable situation and thought her mom should know. “Yeah, she’s like that,” her mom said proudly.

Some people are like that. You don’t have to be smart or mobile or otherwise “normal” to be kind. Ms. Coulter is not the gatekeeper of kindness to the world, and neither am I (and a good thing, too.) What you do need is to be able to feel like other people, no matter how different from you they are in superficial ways, are part of your tribe, part of your kind.

Subscribe Later

A warning notice from my virus software keeps popping up on my computer. No, it is not a warning about some virus that is munching its way through my files in preparation for grabbing my address book and launching itself at all my friends and family. The warning advises me that my virus software subscription is about to expire.

To dismiss the warning notice, I have to select one of three choices: one takes me to their web page to sign up for another year, another says, “I have a subscription key” and takes me to the software itself to use said key, and the third is “remind me later”. There is no, “I don’t want to renew your software” option. The “later” in remind me later is not something reasonable, like a week or so from now, it’s “later” as in “whenever my computer wakes up from sleep mode”.

Last year I tried to disable the reminder feature. In consultation with my son, who knows his Macs, I deleted several preference files, to no effect. I decided to wait until the subscription expired, taking the reminder notice with it. The subscription expired. Weeks later, the notice still kept popping up. 

I finally renewed the software at the request of a group I email links to frequently, because they complained that they were getting buggy links from somewhere and wanted all of us who sent them to make sure our submissions were virus free.

I think I am going to need to contact the company to find out if there is any way to get rid of the notice. My first question is going to be, why do I want to renew a subscription to virus software that reminds me so much of a virus?

This Is Your Last Chance

Every week, or even more often, I get the same phone call. It’s a robocall telling me that this is my last chance to get a more favorable rate on my credit card. You would think that a last chance would come about only once, instead of for weeks on end, but in the word of telemarketing, that is not so. It’s like particle physics, completely counterintuitive. 

I used to get a version of this call that allowed me to push the number 3 if I wanted to discontinue future calls (a strange option given that this is already supposed to be my last call), but now the only option I get is to talk to a live operator. I have toyed with the idea of connecting to the live operator and asking to be taken off their call list, but I worked as a telemarketer once, between my senior year and the start of college, so I try not to make their lives hard. 

Yes, before you ask, my number is on the Do Not Call list. It doesn’t seem to help. Twice in the past I mailed in a request to that address you send to to get your name taken off junk mail lists and I swear both times my junk mail increased. That may have been pure coincidence, but I’m not going to risk it again, or the telemarket equivalent.

Today I got a variation of the "this is your last chance" credit card offer. To take advantage of it, I would have to have at least $3,000 in total on credit cards and at least one card in good standing. I have zero dollars on my credit card at the moment and my husband has the tickets for an upcoming trip but that’s it. I’m really not their target market.

What worries me is that there must be people out there who respond to these calls, otherwise the companies that use them wouldn’t be doing it. The scare tactics (this is your last chance), misleading wording (making it seem like there is a problem with a card you already have rather than an attempt to sell you a new one) and sheer relentlessness work on somebody, and probably the somebody who can least afford to fall for these tricks.

Some people have no shame.