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Unfriendly

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It hurts to be unfriended by a family member. But then again, family isn’t by choice. Family is an accident that sometimes works out ok. If he had cared about my feelings he would have just “hidden” me. But he has proven over a decade that he doesn’t care about my feelings at all.

It isn’t as if we had been arguing. I can only suspect that my posts were a little more frequent than he liked. They certainly were more religious than he likes. I can only guess. It isn’t safe to guess what other people’s motives are, I know. In the absence of communication, imagination sneaks in, however.

When I was in England after the death of my Mom, I learned something sitting on the cliffside in Tintagel. It came to me, unbidden, that family has nothing to do with blood.

Sitting on that cliff, on that bright April day, I was surrounded by tiny wildflowers. I was warmed by the gentle sun. I smelled the sea air and heard the crash of the waves below. I was alone. My aunt had wandered off in the ruins, purported to be King Arthur’s castle. The other tourists were away. In that moment the reason for my journey came to me. In that moment of silence the answer to a question I had not asked came.

I wanted to stay there, forever, soaking up that knowledge. When you get that connection, you want to keep it. But sometimes the connection is just a brief kiss on the head, just a handshake from God. Sometimes God just slips you a note, folded up, pressed into your hand, as you are passing in the hall between classes.

We owe nothing to family just because of their blood relationship. We owe nothing to people who say they are friends and don’t prove it by their actions. They may be friendly enough, but if they don’t make time to be with you, then they aren’t really friends. They may be there only when you are happy, but leave when you are sad. They may ignore your birthday. They may forget that you are allergic to certain foods and always serve them. Holidays can be especially difficult because of their actions, or inactions.

Ties between people are bridges that both have to build. If you are doing all the work, walk away.

Celebrity

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We pay way too much attention to celebrities. Why do we care who they married or divorced? Why is it our business who went in rehab? What does it matter what they think about politics or health?

A celebrity is just an actor, or a musician, or an athlete. It is a job. Just because we see their faces bigger than life and all the time does not mean that we need to pay attention to their every move. Being a celebrity should not mean that we are privy to their private lives. It also does not mean that they are experts at anything.

It is entirely reasonable that the reason celebrities have such insane lives is because of all the attention. Paparazzi create the monster. We feed the monster by reading the tabloids and repeating the gossip. Let them be. Let them have their privacy.

Celebrities should be known for their skill, not their private life and their personal problems or their opinions. Sure, we can get upset at the media for selling us this garbage, but we are to blame too. If we didn’t buy it they wouldn’t sell it. We buy it by reading it or talking about it. Even if we don’t spend money on it, we spend energy on it. The more energy we give it, the more the media will provide it.

Don’t talk about celebrities (or anyone else) unless it is to talk about their skill. Talk about their latest film or song you like. Notice I said “that you like” Don’t give energy to anything bad. Saw a totally tasteless dance from a former teen star? Don’t talk about it. Negative press is still press. Public shaming is still attention. Ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen. That way, that kind of behavior will stop.

Why do we consider celebrities to be experts on anything? We often give celebrities the same attention we give a doctor when it comes to advice about exercise and health. We listen to another about how to prevent and cure autism. We listen to another about how to manage our finances and another about who to vote for. Why? They are amateurs. They may have read up on the topic. They may have had a life experience that has given them an insight, but neither of these things equals any real qualifications or credentials.

Remember the commercial – “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” In that, he wasn’t trying to get you to listen to what he was saying because he played a doctor. He was trying to point out that we “play doctor” with our health sometimes and we do something because it sounds good, not because it is good. But somehow the message got turned around, and we started listening to celebrity endorsements more than those of actual experts.

Being famous and beautiful does not equal intelligence and learning.

We are being sold lies wrapped up in pretty paper. We are being sold flash and not substance. It is all about the sparkle and not about the substance.

Let the celebrities be famous for what they do, for their trade. Let them sing and dance and act. Everything else, ignore.

Strange advantages of your parents dying early.

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There are some strange advantages to no longer having parents when you are an adult. There are some disadvantages, sure, but it isn’t all sad.

They can’t boss you around and tell you who you have to marry, what your wedding is going to be like, and how to raise your kids. You don’t have to hear from them about how you aren’t living up to their expectations. It is your life, to do with what you will.

You have to look out for yourself. Since you can’t move back in when you get fired or divorced, you have to plan ahead and save up. This may sound like a disadvantage but it isn’t. Nothing makes you have to be an adult like actually being on your own. If you are constantly using your parents as an ATM, you aren’t really an adult yet.

They can’t gossip about you and tell all of your embarrassing secrets to your dates and co-workers. Those terrible stories die with them.

You don’t have to divide your time between them and your children. Older parents and young children require a lot of work. They both are very dependent and at times helpless. You only have so much time and energy and money and it is hard to be in two places at once.

You don’t have to watch a formerly vibrant person decline into helplessness. There is nothing more tragic than seeing your college professor father slowly lose his mind because of Alzheimer’s. There is a certain sadness in seeing your formerly active and independent Mom reduced to spending her days in a hospital bed.

And lastly, it teaches you perspective. It teaches you that there are no guarantees in life. It teaches you that you better get it done now, because there might not be “next year” for that project. It teaches you to choose wisely and not waste your time because you realize how little of it you really have. And, it teaches you to not freak out about a lot of little things, because if you can survive on your own at a young age, then you can make it through anything.

God was with me the whole time my parents were sick. People may say “How come God let them die?” That is the wrong way to think. They died because of their choices. God didn’t kill them – they killed themselves by smoking cigarettes and eating poorly and not exercising. God sent me help and gave me the energy to take care of them and myself during that time. For some people, that experience would separate them from God. For me, it drew me closer. I came to see God as my parent. So ultimately, that too is an advantage. I switched from identifying with weak, temporal, physical parents, to a strong, eternal, spiritual parent.

Sure, I still miss my physical parents. Sure, I wish that they were able to meet my husband. I’d love if they could see how well I’m doing right now. In a way, I know that they can, because I believe in the afterlife. I believe that they are spirit now and know what is going on. I believe that they are connected with all things now and are not limited to their physical bodies. But it still hurts, and I’m still sad. But within that sadness I can see how in some ways I’ve missed a whole lot of other hurt and pain by them dying early.

Anxiety/pain – mental/physical connection

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It turns out that a lot of the physical problems I have are caused by anxiety. Well, this isn’t according to regular health manuals. This is from people like Louise Hay and John Sarno. Arthritis in the neck, asthma, back pain – all are caused by anxiety, they say. This sounds a lot like blaming the victim.

I have a pretty strong suspicion that if I suddenly develop an anxiety-free life, I’ll still have asthma and arthritis in my neck and scoliosis. Of course, Louise Hay and her ilk would say my disbelief is what makes it so. It is the opposite of Jesus saying “Your faith has healed you.”

Let’s turn it all around. What if I have anxiety because I have these physical problems? What if being in pain and having a hard time breathing is a cause of anxiety? That seems to make more sense. What if my daily life being affected by my physical limitations is what causes anxiety?

I notice that none of these alternative healers have any suggestions as to how to reduce anxiety so my physical problems go away. This certainly sounds like an easy out for them. Point out how your reader has caused her own problems, and then don’t offer any solution. If they offer solutions that don’t work, then everybody will realize that they don’t know what they are talking about.

I had my own techniques to reduce anxiety when I was in college, but I had to quit. Pot is great for anxiety, but it isn’t something you can do for long. Being illegal is part of the problem. Smoking cigarettes is also relaxing, but it causes other problems that create anxiety, like cancer. Nothing like trying to alleviate anxiety with something that causes more anxiety.

Now I try to write, do yoga, and draw every day. Ideally, I’d make some jewelry too. These things help, but cramming them into my morning only seems to cause more anxiety. Sure, I could get up earlier, but then I’m shorting myself on sleep. Sleep is a critical building block of mental health.

So I think I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing and ignore these people who tell me my physical problems are all in my head but don’t tell me how to work on my mental problems. I certainly believe there is a connection. But perhaps you can fix mental problems by going at them physically. Perhaps my chiropractor adjusting my back and neck is healing me in ways I’ve never expected. Perhaps yoga and water aerobics burn off more than calories.

Dude, I’m not kidding about the peppers.

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I have a food allergy. I’m not alone. People all over have things that they can’t eat. Sometimes the things they can’t eat are by choice – vegetarian, kosher. Sometimes the things are not by choice – gluten issues, IBS, celiac disease. Restaurants are coming slowly to understand that people aren’t kidding when they ask if something has an offending item in it.

But not always.

I am allergic to peppers. It took me years to figure out what the offending thing was. I’d eat something and get sick. I’d eat something else and be fine. I had to do a little sleuthing to figure out what the constant item was. Once I figured it out, I told my Mom and she said “Oh, your grandmother had the same problem.” She could have saved me a lot of trouble if she’d mentioned that, but that was par for the course.

Perhaps the issue is raw peppers. Raw onions are a problem too. Cooked, not so bad. And perhaps the issue is green peppers, and not red ones. I’m not sure. I’m not really excited about finding out. I don’t get sick to the point of death – it just feels like it. And my tolerance to it gets lower and lower each time.

My husband and I were out at a restaurant once and I’d said I couldn’t have peppers and he overheard the wait staff complaining about it later, that they thought it was a stupid allergy and I was just being picky. He was very very angry. It isn’t something I’ve chosen. I don’t want to have to be sick every time I eat peppers. I’m not excited about the fact that so many restaurants think that putting peppers into everything is the way to make anything have a taste to it. You can’t imagine how hard it is to pick something safe to eat these days.

If you are a server at a restaurant and you don’t understand what it is like to want to die because of something you’ve eaten, you need to stop being a server. If you don’t get that someone is serious about it, be grateful that you don’t have that food issue.

I went to a friend’s house and his Mom made gazpacho. I’d never had it. I didn’t know that it had raw onions and green peppers in it. I was very very sick. I was surprised. I was miserable. I learned the hard way what gazpacho was. Normally I can see the peppers or onions and I can pick them out. I pick out a lot of onions and peppers. I’m just used to it. But I can’t pick them out if they are liquefied.

This isn’t a sickness that causes death (I hope). I feel really ill. Everything gets a little weird. The colors get brighter, sounds get closer, and everything gets really intense. I have to take myself to a quiet area and lay down for about 30 minutes, and then the feeling passes. It is really intense. It is kind of like dropping acid, but without the fun part, and not for 8 hours.

Places think they have to spice everything up to make it tasty. It is like thinking all music has to be at 10 in order to hear it. If you only hear 10 all the time, then you’ll never appreciate 5. Food can be very tasty and not spicy. When restaurants put peppers in everything, then I’m left with nothing to eat.

I can have a little bit, but that little bit is getting smaller every year. I don’t know where the line is. It isn’t so bad that I can’t be exposed to peppers at all. It isn’t like the kitchen has to use separate utensils and cutting boards to make my meal. It isn’t like I can’t be exposed to them – I can have fajitas that have been cooked with peppers. I just pick them out. I can have salsa, but I just look carefully before I eat and don’t get the peppers. It is time consuming. It gets old. But it is what it is.

I won’t die from eating peppers, I think, but it sure doesn’t feel well. It is very painful and scary. Perhaps it isn’t an allergy, but a food intolerance. I say it is an allergy so people will take me seriously, but it doesn’t work.

I’ve learned there are some things that invariably have peppers in them. Anything with black beans. Spinach dip. Some veggie burgers. I’ve learned these things the hard way. Normally I can figure it out, but every now and then there is something that sounds promising but perhaps suspicious. I can ask, the waiter says no, and I wait 20 minutes for my food and it has peppers in it. I can tell. It is like an electric burn on my tongue. Then I dig around and find the peppers. Sometimes I just pick out the peppers. Otherwise I have to wait another 20 minutes for my meal to come, and by then I’m really hungry and miserable and my dinner companion’s food has gotten cold.

We went out to eat this Sunday, and it was 3 in the afternoon. We were tired and hungry. My meal had peppers all in it, after asking. I thought about picking them out, but I didn’t do that this time. I called over the waiter. I pointed out the raw green peppers. By this point I’m tired of it all. Sure, it was late in the day and I was on the weepy side of low blood sugar. But I’m also sick of telling people about a food allergy and being ignored. It isn’t something to screw around with. He apologized and got me the tilapia – something safe (usually). We waited and waited and it came and I was tired of the whole thing by then. My husband didn’t eat his meal. He waited for mine to come. His was cold by then and mine was very bland and boring but it was food. The manager came over and apologized and comped our whole meal. He understood because he too has a food allergy. He said they use peppers in almost everything there. We’ll never go back, which is sad because I’d heard such good things about the place.

Years back I went to a tex-mex place with a boyfriend. It was late in the day and he had to go to work. I’d asked the waitress if one item had peppers and she said no. I told her I was allergic. Turns out the other two items on my plate did have peppers. We didn’t have time to wait for it to be fixed. I just started crying. I was hungry and tired and frustrated. I just want to eat. I don’t understand why a waiter can’t understand that if I say I’m allergic to peppers, that means all peppers, in all dishes. Not just the dish I asked about. If there are peppers in the rest of the thing I ordered, then warn me before the order goes in.

Or better yet- put the ingredients on everything. That would save a lot of problems.

Phone

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People. Turn your phone off. You can survive without talking on it all the time.

Show respect to the people around you by not sharing your personal information as you yammer on the phone. Be kind to the person behind the counter and don’t talk on your phone while you are checking out.

You don’t need your phone on all the time. It is ok to turn it off. Or at least turn off the ringer. Trust me. You aren’t going to get a call from the Pope. It can wait. Nothing has to be dealt with right away. It can go to voicemail.

You look crazy when you have a Bluetooth device in and you are using it. You look like you are talking to yourself.

My husband gets so upset when someone calls when he is driving or we have just sat down to eat supper. I tell him to not answer. The phone is there for him – he is not there for the phone. He is slowly starting to understand that it never is an emergency and people can wait. If it is an emergency, they need to call 911.

I once worked with a guy in his 20s who had a hard time grasping that he could not have his phone at the front desk. He said “what if my family needs to get a hold of me?” They can call the office phone and ask for you. He didn’t grasp that he wasn’t the person they would call in an emergency anyway. He was the one who constantly needed to be rescued.

I’m in my 40s. When I was growing up, nobody had cell phones and we did just fine. If our parents needed to reach us at school, they called the office. If our friends needed to call us, they called our home. If we weren’t there, our parents took a message. It wasn’t ever something that had to be dealt with right then.

It isn’t really that urgent now. Nothing has changed, except we have been trained to think that we have to be connected all the time. We are being programmed to do a lot of things all at once, and we aren’t doing any of them well. We’ve forgotten that tools are there to serve us. We aren’t supposed to serve them.

People will call the library to renew their items. I’ll ask for their library card number and they’ll explain that they are driving. They can’t give me the card number because it is on their keychain, so they can’t safely look at it. I tell them to call back when they are parked safely. There is nothing that needs to be done while you are driving that is more important than driving.

I know people who use the time they are driving to make all their calls and pay all their bills. What did they do before cell phones? Everything got done. Somehow we have forgotten this.

I think we have lost something in our need to multitask. We have forgotten how to remember what we were going to look up. We have forgotten how to take the time to be courteous to the people around us. We have forgotten how to do anything later and let things wait.

We have become addicted to doing everything right now, when really nothing is that pressing. The phone uses us more than we use it. It has convinced us that we have to have it. Consider turning off your phone, for even one hour. Do you feel twitchy’? How about a day? A week? Getting nervous yet?

Perhaps we need to start a 12 step program for cell phone addiction.

If you feel you have to use something all the time and it is something that you lived without before it existed, that is a sign of a problem.

Sure, cell phones and smart phones make things easier in certain ways. But they don’t seem to really improve our lives. We seem to have trained ourselves that we can’t do without them.

We’ve done the same with fast food and prepared meals. We’ve forgotten how to do things ourselves. We’ve forgotten how to take care of ourselves. In our “need” to multitask and do everything right away, we’ve forgotten how to do anything well.

Our lives have become like fast food by using cell phones. It is fast and not real. We have sacrificed quality for speed. Faster doesn’t mean more efficient.

Multitasking is newspeak for screwing three things up at once.

Mediocrity at work.

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What is the point of showing up on time at work? So many of my coworkers don’t. Five minutes is usual for several. Fifteen is normal for one. Not even a “my car wouldn’t start” or “sorry”. Every day. Every week. Late is normal.

Why do I get upset about it? Maybe I should start showing up late, but I wasn’t raised that way. It seems like cheating. If we are paid to work 40 hours, I think we should at least be here 40 hours.

But then there are plenty of people who just show up for 40 hours and don’t actually do anything.

Government jobs aren’t like private sector jobs. It is hard to get fired. It is more likely that low performing people will get transferred rather than fired. They will get shuffled off another department or another division.

I had a coworker who was amazingly inept. I have never ever encountered someone who worked as slowly and as badly. He took twice as long to do half as much work, and he screwed that half up. I and others constantly had to fix his mistakes.

Because we are civil service, we would have to be taken to court to be fired. This is good in a way – it means we can’t lose our jobs the moment a new Mayor or Governor gets elected. Sometimes it is dangerous to root for the wrong political party.

But it also means that if you have an employee who is doing very badly, he gets to keep his job. It also means that if you have an employee who is doing very well, he won’t get a raise. It cuts both ways. Mediocrity is encouraged.

There is no incentive to do well. There is no incentive to train or learn more. There is no incentive to do anything more than the average. You’ll get paid the same as the slacker.

“Ma’am!”

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I was shopping at Hobby Lobby a few years back. There was this weird area that was kind of behind a counter. It kind of looked like the area was just for staff, but all the paint brushes were there. There isn’t anything so special about paint brushes that they need to be controlled. I don’t think there are lots of shoplifters who go for paint brushes. So perhaps the area wasn’t off-limits after all. I asked permission to go behind the counter and the clerk told me that was fine. He kind of looked at me funny, wondering why I asked.

I was in an area that looked like it was for staff – but I didn’t look like I was staff. I had my purse slung across me. I had a shopping basket next to me. And most importantly, I didn’t have on the vest that every Hobby Lobby employee wears.

In a short amount of time lady stood behind the counter that was behind me and said loudly “Ma’am!” I knew what she was trying to do. She thought I worked there. She was trying to get my attention. I ignored her, hoping she’d notice the purse, the basket, and the lack of vest. I had nothing that indicated I worked there. Nope. I was wrong. Louder she called. “Ma’am!”

Not “Excuse me.” not “Do you work here?” nor even “Can you help me?” She barked at me, like I was her servant. Her voice was shrill and sharp.

I got up, slowly turned around, and faced this bleach-blonde twenty something standing with her mother, and said simply “I don’t work here.”

Oh, she said, and walked away.

I wanted to speak on behalf of all retail employees everywhere. We are not your bitches. Don’t yell at us. Don’t treat us like dogs. We are people. We are here to serve you, but we aren’t your servants. You don’t have a right to yell at us.

But I didn’t. I’ve been trained well, to keep my opinion to myself. Lots of retail does that. Having a psychopathic, narcissistic manager will do that.

It is very stressful working retail. Somehow people assume that if you are working behind a counter it means you are beneath them. They treat you like you are stupid. Maybe they get a rise out of putting you down.

The library is a lot like retail, but it is nicer. People assume that you have a degree to work there. To do what I do, no. A high school diploma is the minimum requirement. But I am happy to have people treat me better, usually. There is still some retail “she’s behind the counter so she must be beneath me” attitude going on, sometimes.

I remember a time at the end of a transaction I said “thank you”. The guy got really angry and said “You are supposed to say ‘have a nice day'”

No. I’m not. There isn’t a script. If there was, he’d understand that it was time for him to exit stage right.

I don’t say have a nice day because it is trite. I don’t like it when people tell me that. I said “thank you” and it doesn’t even make sense for me to do that. I helped him. The library doesn’t make any money from people, so it isn’t like we need to say thanks. I said thanks to be polite. But he jumped on me.

Weird. If people want good service, they need to not be mean. I expect that in his mind, he gets shoddy service everywhere he goes. You get what you give.

Lucy

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Remember Lucy from peanuts? The one who always managed to convince Charlie Brown that she would hold the football for him so he could kick it? And she always pulled it away and he always fell? The one who treated everybody like dirt? Yeah. That Lucy.

Lucy is a bitch.

I’ve never understood why Charlie Brown let her do that to him. I’ve never understood why he didn’t just say “no thanks” and walk away. Again and again she lied. Again and again he fell and got hurt.

Remember the saying “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”?

I’ve never understood why everybody let her talk like that to them. She bossed everybody around. She thought that her opinion was so valuable she set up a “the psychiatrist is in” stand instead of a lemonade stand like a normal kid. She made fun of Linus her brother for believing in the Great Pumpkin.

So really, is Lucy a bitch, or is it that everybody created this monster by not standing up to her?

I feel that Charles Schultz didn’t do anybody any favors by having this character. The audience wasn’t taught how to stand up to a bully. I feel there is a lot of stress in seeing Lucy be hateful to people over and over. Children can end up feeling helpless, and learn that being bullied is normal and there is nothing you can do about it.

On Sesame Street there was a character called the Snuffleupagus. Only Big Bird could see him. Everybody else thought Big Bird made him up. The creators decided to change this because they felt that it was sending the wrong message. They felt that children would feel that parents wouldn’t take them seriously. They felt that this was especially important if the child had something serious to report, like being abused. They felt that otherwise they were teaching them that their reality would get treated as a fantasy.

Sure, it is just a cartoon. Sure, it isn’t real. But children are constantly learning, even when we think they are just being entertained. Why not teach them something useful for a change? Why not teach them that they don’t have to be victims, whether the abuse is coming from a peer or a parent?

Shame

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I’ve heard a lot recently about how teachers should be aware of how their behavior might cause their students to feel shame. They are supposed to do away with all measures of success because it will make the lower performing students feel shame. Sure, each child has a different learning style. Sure, each child learns at a different pace. So some kids will not be on the same level as others. This is normal.

But something seems wrong about this.

If every kid makes an “A” for effort, then an “A” doesn’t mean anything. Why work hard? Why study? Your grade will be the same as everyone else’s. There is no motivation to improve. There is no feedback as to how you are doing.

The world doesn’t work like this. When they graduate they won’t be in a work environment that congratulates them for just showing up. When they enter the work world they will wonder why people don’t appreciate it when they spend an hour on Facebook and Twitter rather than working. Why try? Why work? You’ll get the same grade, right? They will be in for a rude awakening.

It isn’t healthy to treat “average” as “amazing”. Does it cause “shame” to encourage a child to try his best?

It would be better to teach kids how to have self respect. They need to learn how to love themselves as they are. They need to be OK with being different – because we all are different. They need to learn self esteem.

Being different isn’t wrong.

Having the wrong answer doesn’t make them a bad person.

Learning this will save them a lot of trouble throughout life.

How much of this is the responsibility of the teacher, and how much of this is the responsibility of the parents? How come teachers are being expected to do much more than teach?

Sure, a teacher needs to be mindful of what she says. We all do. That is just part of being a good person. But the other part of the equation is that the parents have to do what they can to teach their children to not lose it every time they get a less than perfect grade.

It doesn’t mean the kid is bad. It just means he has to work harder, or find a different way to learn the material. That is a good lesson for life in general.