I'm sure all this posting is wildly misleading, but I can assure you that I am not doing NaBloPoMo. I have commitment issues. What I am doing is riding the collective energy with hopes of posting, I don't know - more?
So today, I check in for the briefest of moments to deliver the following bit of breaking news: this morning, having filled up a five-tiered, multi-reward sticker chart, Cletus the Former Fetus has officially earned her Official "I Poop In The Potty" Trip To The Toy Store, where she will obtain a much coveted dump truck made out of recycled milk jugs.
Here's what I have learned about my child: she responds to bribes like a champ. Judge all you like. All I know is that my kid is wearing underwear and waking up dry. If I had to dangle a little cheese in front of the mouse to get there, so be it. Last week, the child's first trip to the dentist was sponsored entirely by a promised trip to the library for a Berenstain Bears DVD (which, can I digress for a moment and share with you the Most Unintentionally Awesome Theme Song EVER? Sung by country sensation Leanne Womack: Somewhere deep in Bear Country/ lives the Berenstain Bears family/ They're kind of furry around the torso/ They're a lot like people, only more so/ The bear fact is that they're just like you and me/ The only difference is they live in a tree). Cletus sat in that dentist's chair as sweet as could be, then announced on the way out the door: "Mommy! I didn't whine!" as if she herself had not realized it was possible until that exact moment.
Lately, Cletus has really been putting us through the wringer. Some days she falls asleep in mid-tantrum and wakes up the next morning still filled with fury, as if she had merely paused for a 10-hour breath. She threw an epic screaming and kicking fit in the church parking lot a couple of weeks ago that I feared might scare a few Unitarians back to their repressed Catholic roots. Once last week when I told her she couldn't do something -- like climb on the table or punch buttons on my laptop -- she stomped over to the couch and announced, "I'm just going to sit and think about how Mommy is mean."
But then this past Sunday morning, so drastic was the child's post-Halloween overstimulation that she actually collapsed, sobbing and thrashing, into my lap in the rocking chair and fell asleep. Out cold for a nap in my lap, like she hadn't done in, well, years. I held her and rocked her for an hour, listening to the radio, doing nothing else, and I can't tell you how grateful and privileged I felt for receiving that gift.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Book club!
At the intense urging of one of my best friends, I recently joined Goodreads. So far I haven't been finding it much fun. Anyone else on there who updates frequently and wants to be my friend?
Anyway, here's what I've been reading lately:
1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers. I just finished this last night. I am always nervous to say outloud when a nonfiction book blows my mind -- like, I worry that people will roll their eyes or feel quietly embarrassed for me because the story that so moved me was actually overhyped two years ago, or was proven to be some kind of sham and I just never heard about it. But this story blew my mind. It's about a contractor who stayed behind in New Orleans during Katrina and, after the storm blew through and the levees broke, rescued a handful of neighbors (people and animals) using a little secondhand canoe. Then he got arrested for looting, thrown into a makeshift prison camp, and held there for weeks without being allowed any of his legal rights. Did I mention he's Syrian-American? The book itself is fine, overwritten I thought, but fine. But the story? Knocked me out cold.
2. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. I've really enjoyed Krakauer's adventure stories in the past, and when I heard him promoting his new book -- with a lefty political bent! -- on Jon Stewart, I got all excited and ILL'd it at my library. The book is basically Pat Tillman's life story, with heavy focus on his enlistment in the Army, his death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's efforts to lie about his death in order to use him as pro-war propaganda. I think something that Krakauer really excels at is situating events within their larger historical and political contexts, and he definitely does that here. I will be honest: I read this thing feeling like a half-literate fool, because I could not for the life of me follow the detailed descriptions of battle scenes that make up a lot of the latter portion of the book. I ended up skimming most of them looking for the word "Tillman," kind of like that Far Side cartoon where the dog sits there hearing "blah blah blah blah ROVER blah blah blah." But when I was able to grasp the narrative, I got pretty into it, and I appreciated how well-documented everything was.
Does it make a loser that I wanted pictures? One of those 8-page glossy inserts in the middle of the book? It's just that I had to keep Google Image-ing everyone to see what they looked like.
3. Official Book Club Selection, by Kathy Griffin. Oh beloved celebrity memoirs: usually I just skim through your contents while sipping a latte at Borders. But then I read in Entertainment Weekly that Kathy Griffin talks trash about Oprah and Brooke Shields throughout her book, so I had to read the whole thing. It was lovely and I read it in one sitting and only felt the slightest modicum of shame.
As it turns out, I only read nonfiction, apparently. I did get some fiction from last week's Friends of the Library Book Sale (love!), though: two Julia Glass novels, The Pillars of the Earth (hi Oprah), some ovarian paperback that my sister read called Baby Proof, and a YA paperback about a girl in foster care (a can't-lose plotline for 13-year-olds) called Pictures of Hollis Woods. I'm going to start one of them tonight, I think. Unless I end up playing 17 hours of Scramble again.
Anyone engage in life-changing reading lately?
Anyway, here's what I've been reading lately:
1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers. I just finished this last night. I am always nervous to say outloud when a nonfiction book blows my mind -- like, I worry that people will roll their eyes or feel quietly embarrassed for me because the story that so moved me was actually overhyped two years ago, or was proven to be some kind of sham and I just never heard about it. But this story blew my mind. It's about a contractor who stayed behind in New Orleans during Katrina and, after the storm blew through and the levees broke, rescued a handful of neighbors (people and animals) using a little secondhand canoe. Then he got arrested for looting, thrown into a makeshift prison camp, and held there for weeks without being allowed any of his legal rights. Did I mention he's Syrian-American? The book itself is fine, overwritten I thought, but fine. But the story? Knocked me out cold.
2. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. I've really enjoyed Krakauer's adventure stories in the past, and when I heard him promoting his new book -- with a lefty political bent! -- on Jon Stewart, I got all excited and ILL'd it at my library. The book is basically Pat Tillman's life story, with heavy focus on his enlistment in the Army, his death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's efforts to lie about his death in order to use him as pro-war propaganda. I think something that Krakauer really excels at is situating events within their larger historical and political contexts, and he definitely does that here. I will be honest: I read this thing feeling like a half-literate fool, because I could not for the life of me follow the detailed descriptions of battle scenes that make up a lot of the latter portion of the book. I ended up skimming most of them looking for the word "Tillman," kind of like that Far Side cartoon where the dog sits there hearing "blah blah blah blah ROVER blah blah blah." But when I was able to grasp the narrative, I got pretty into it, and I appreciated how well-documented everything was.
Does it make a loser that I wanted pictures? One of those 8-page glossy inserts in the middle of the book? It's just that I had to keep Google Image-ing everyone to see what they looked like.
3. Official Book Club Selection, by Kathy Griffin. Oh beloved celebrity memoirs: usually I just skim through your contents while sipping a latte at Borders. But then I read in Entertainment Weekly that Kathy Griffin talks trash about Oprah and Brooke Shields throughout her book, so I had to read the whole thing. It was lovely and I read it in one sitting and only felt the slightest modicum of shame.
As it turns out, I only read nonfiction, apparently. I did get some fiction from last week's Friends of the Library Book Sale (love!), though: two Julia Glass novels, The Pillars of the Earth (hi Oprah), some ovarian paperback that my sister read called Baby Proof, and a YA paperback about a girl in foster care (a can't-lose plotline for 13-year-olds) called Pictures of Hollis Woods. I'm going to start one of them tonight, I think. Unless I end up playing 17 hours of Scramble again.
Anyone engage in life-changing reading lately?
Monday, November 02, 2009
This Western Illinois Life
Last Friday night, the husband and Cletus and I went out to eat at the local Chinese buffet for the first time since we moved to town. I happen to be a big fan of all-you-can-eat MSG. I would go far as to say that I have, in the past, experienced sublime bliss upon encountering the right combination of hot and sour soup, "crab" rangoons, and fried tofu and broccoli in brown sauce. And one of those little individual pitchers of hot tea. And a bowl of those fried crispies.
The Chinese buffet here in town is run by an elderly white guy and his substantially younger, substantially more Asian wife. They are known, inexplicably, for their cheeseburgers. The buffet featured about twenty-odd dishes, one of which was vegetarian. (Guess which? Hint: it rhymes with "no gain.") It also offered up a variety of delicacies perhaps better suited to an Old Country Buffet (which, I won't lie to you, Robyn and I patronized once about seven years ago, with disastrous digestive results), including chicken nuggets the shape of large marbles and clumps of macaroni and cheese that had been breaded and fried. There was also a separate sweets station with two kinds of jello salad and chocolate cake.
While we were eating, a man who looked to be maybe in his mid-50s started roaming from table to table, carrying a Big Mouth Billy Bass. The man had obviously just acquired or received this treasure and was delighted by it. He visited each table in the restaurant and invited one of the diners sitting there to push the little red button that would cause the fish to sing. And then he would stand there, grinning at the novelty of it all, until the 30-second musical clip ended. Then he moved on to the next table.
And then we had soft-serve ice cream for dessert.
The Chinese buffet here in town is run by an elderly white guy and his substantially younger, substantially more Asian wife. They are known, inexplicably, for their cheeseburgers. The buffet featured about twenty-odd dishes, one of which was vegetarian. (Guess which? Hint: it rhymes with "no gain.") It also offered up a variety of delicacies perhaps better suited to an Old Country Buffet (which, I won't lie to you, Robyn and I patronized once about seven years ago, with disastrous digestive results), including chicken nuggets the shape of large marbles and clumps of macaroni and cheese that had been breaded and fried. There was also a separate sweets station with two kinds of jello salad and chocolate cake.
While we were eating, a man who looked to be maybe in his mid-50s started roaming from table to table, carrying a Big Mouth Billy Bass. The man had obviously just acquired or received this treasure and was delighted by it. He visited each table in the restaurant and invited one of the diners sitting there to push the little red button that would cause the fish to sing. And then he would stand there, grinning at the novelty of it all, until the 30-second musical clip ended. Then he moved on to the next table.
And then we had soft-serve ice cream for dessert.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Scary movie
Last Friday the husband and I were sprung from the parenting slammer for a date night, which we spent at the movies, seeing Paranormal Activity. This was an exceptional treat. Friends, movie-going used to be my thing. When we were grad students and living in Boston, we used to see a movie a week, if not more. I was Netflixing way before everybody's parents figured out that it was a thing. I've subscribed to Entertainment Weekly for years, and every week without fail I flip right to the movie review section as soon as my issue arrives. Granted, these days the process is bittersweet (or maybe just bitter?), given that only about 5% of all movies receiving positive reviews will end up coming to my town. Our theater typically enforces a fairly strict "animated action heroes/Harry Potter/mall cops only" selection policy in its feature films.
AND YET. There we were last Friday night, in the third row (we sit up close or we don't go, yo), ten dollars worth of popcorn and Diet Coke in our laps, eagerly anticipating a film we had actually read about(!) and wanted to see(!!). The previews were rolling and the theater was packed, loud with teenagers laughing and shouting. I didn't pay much attention to them. I figured they would quiet down once the actual movie started.
Except -- the movie started, and they didn't. Quiet down, that is. In fact, they got louder. At the end of our row sat a clump of teenaged girls, decked out in layers upon layers of those micro-thin long-sleeved t-shirts that are meant to piled up like so much snakeskin. They had their feet propped up upon the seats in front of them (movie theater cardinal sin!) and were all texting and giggling away. Next to them, only a few seats down from us, was a cluster of three similarly aged boys. I don't think the two camps were together, but each was certainly aware of the other's presence. There was lots of posturing, particularly from the girls, who kept whispering and glancing and then laughing out loud in that conspicuously uproarious manner that says "Observe me having the time of my life in your general vicinity!"
Now, here's the thing: I, like probably most of you, used to be that girl. Being that girl is a fairly benign and, as I remember it, pretty fun thing to do. You're 16, your best friend has her own car, you just got your curfew extended, and nobody pushes arbitrary and barely-enforceable rules like you do: you'll put your feet up on the back of the seat in front of you if you damn well please! (Unless, of course, the usher comes down the aisle with a flashlight and asks you to remove them, in which case you will do so and then giggle with abandon immediately afterwards. Stuffy ushers! WhatEVER! But of course you will leave your feet safely on the floor for the rest of the evening, because although you are a rebel, you are, after all, a Midwestern rebel.)
So it's harmless, the loud laughing and the cellphone-screen-flashing and screaming during scary parts in the movie, right? Except, here's the other thing: I am not that girl anymore. These days, I am a dead tired mother of a toddler who had to work for weeks to schedule a babysitter so that I could get out of the house for three hours with my husband to see a movie, a deliciously scary movie, a deliciously scary movie that I would have really appreciated being able to HEAR for more than five minutes at a time. I am officially That Person. I shush sixteen years olds in movie theaters.
Also, can we talk for just a moment about the wee teenaged boys sitting a few seats to my left? The ones who somehow decided that the film we were collectively seeing required additional narration other than what the director saw fit to include, and who appointed themselves the parties responsible for providing said narration? Oh. My. God. These kids would not shut up. I am talking about every single point of action: if the female main character, a girl who was haunted by a creepy demon, started to walk down a flight of stairs, one of the boys would call out "She's going down those stairs!" Or if a ghostly vision showed up in the girl's bedroom at night, one of the boys would pipe up with "It's right there! You can see its shadow; it's RIGHT THERE!"
It's getting awfully hard to navigate this world of mine, seeing as how I can't tolerate cranky senior citizens but also want to throttle joyful teenagers. I'd consider moving into a plastic bubble (now THERE'S an awesome movie), but I don't think I'd have access to a spigot of butter-flavored popcorn sauce if I did. Which, let's be honest, kind of does make everything worth it.
AND YET. There we were last Friday night, in the third row (we sit up close or we don't go, yo), ten dollars worth of popcorn and Diet Coke in our laps, eagerly anticipating a film we had actually read about(!) and wanted to see(!!). The previews were rolling and the theater was packed, loud with teenagers laughing and shouting. I didn't pay much attention to them. I figured they would quiet down once the actual movie started.
Except -- the movie started, and they didn't. Quiet down, that is. In fact, they got louder. At the end of our row sat a clump of teenaged girls, decked out in layers upon layers of those micro-thin long-sleeved t-shirts that are meant to piled up like so much snakeskin. They had their feet propped up upon the seats in front of them (movie theater cardinal sin!) and were all texting and giggling away. Next to them, only a few seats down from us, was a cluster of three similarly aged boys. I don't think the two camps were together, but each was certainly aware of the other's presence. There was lots of posturing, particularly from the girls, who kept whispering and glancing and then laughing out loud in that conspicuously uproarious manner that says "Observe me having the time of my life in your general vicinity!"
Now, here's the thing: I, like probably most of you, used to be that girl. Being that girl is a fairly benign and, as I remember it, pretty fun thing to do. You're 16, your best friend has her own car, you just got your curfew extended, and nobody pushes arbitrary and barely-enforceable rules like you do: you'll put your feet up on the back of the seat in front of you if you damn well please! (Unless, of course, the usher comes down the aisle with a flashlight and asks you to remove them, in which case you will do so and then giggle with abandon immediately afterwards. Stuffy ushers! WhatEVER! But of course you will leave your feet safely on the floor for the rest of the evening, because although you are a rebel, you are, after all, a Midwestern rebel.)
So it's harmless, the loud laughing and the cellphone-screen-flashing and screaming during scary parts in the movie, right? Except, here's the other thing: I am not that girl anymore. These days, I am a dead tired mother of a toddler who had to work for weeks to schedule a babysitter so that I could get out of the house for three hours with my husband to see a movie, a deliciously scary movie, a deliciously scary movie that I would have really appreciated being able to HEAR for more than five minutes at a time. I am officially That Person. I shush sixteen years olds in movie theaters.
Also, can we talk for just a moment about the wee teenaged boys sitting a few seats to my left? The ones who somehow decided that the film we were collectively seeing required additional narration other than what the director saw fit to include, and who appointed themselves the parties responsible for providing said narration? Oh. My. God. These kids would not shut up. I am talking about every single point of action: if the female main character, a girl who was haunted by a creepy demon, started to walk down a flight of stairs, one of the boys would call out "She's going down those stairs!" Or if a ghostly vision showed up in the girl's bedroom at night, one of the boys would pipe up with "It's right there! You can see its shadow; it's RIGHT THERE!"
It's getting awfully hard to navigate this world of mine, seeing as how I can't tolerate cranky senior citizens but also want to throttle joyful teenagers. I'd consider moving into a plastic bubble (now THERE'S an awesome movie), but I don't think I'd have access to a spigot of butter-flavored popcorn sauce if I did. Which, let's be honest, kind of does make everything worth it.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Question: When does being a librarian suck the hardest?
Answer: When you have to find reference books and authoritative web sites on the topic of Illinois family law for a woman and her eye-rolling, gum-chomping teenaged son, for the purpose of helping said son get out of paying child support to the mother of his newborn baby. Because the son's ex-girlfriend already has a kid with another guy, you see; she makes a habit of getting herself knocked up just to get her hands on some cash, the mom says. And HER son, the gum-chomping guy, gets a disability check, and why should he just have to hand it all over? What about his life? What about his future? What about FATHERS' RIGHTS? Do you have any books on FATHERS' RIGHTS?
Being a librarian sucks the hardest when you have to sit silently and hand over the information that will enable douchebags to nourish their own douchebaggery.
Being a librarian sucks the hardest when you have to sit silently and hand over the information that will enable douchebags to nourish their own douchebaggery.
Monday, October 19, 2009
What's on your mind?
I have close to 25 aunts and uncles, 50-odd cousins, and who knows how many children-of-cousins (what are those called -- second cousins? cousins once removed? nameless shorties who show up at funerals?). . . and lately it seems that they're all showing up on Facebook. Never mind that half of them used to be Amish; they seem to have figured out this technology thing since leaving the flock.
I live hours away from my geographically closest relatives. Both sides of my family used to have annual reunions, my mom's family at Christmas and my dad's family in the summer. But now that all of my grandparents have passed away AND due to the fact that several of my mom's siblings are currently warring after their co-owned bakery business tanked, these get-togethers have become rather sporadic. In that respect, I guess establishing family connections on a social networking site is kind of a good thing. Instead of annual face-to-face superficial communication, we can engage in more regular passively electronic superficial communication. Wheee!
Oh, but the status updates. The status updates from these distant relations are blowing my mind on a daily basis, and not usually in a good way. Most of them seem to fall into three general camps. First, there is the Super-Religious Camp, whose members post Bible verses and the lyrics to worship songs as their status updates regardless of the fact that doing so makes no linguistic sense. For instance, "Joanna Keim For I will follow you Lord, I hunger for your spirit" does not a sentence make.
Then there is the Let's Ruminate On The Day of The Week Camp, whose members are prone to acquiring cases of The Mondays and spend a lot of time engaging in countdowns to the weekend. They also, by the way, often fail to achieve a proper sentence. "Brian Kauffman Ugh! Is it Monday already?" is followed by "Brian Kauffman is Happy Hump Day!" before escalating to the inevitable climax: "Brian Kauffman TGIF!!!!!!!"
But the third and final group, the Oh, Of COURSE You're All Rabid Republicans Camp, is the one that's really starting to bring me down. It's like, I've always known that the vast majority of my relatives are superduper Fox News Nascar conservatives, but somehow the veiled passivity of the Facebook format allows them to put it right out there in a way that you just don't do at a family reunion volleyball game. Every day, every time I log on (which, come on, I work from home, I'm logging on with every other breath, basically) somebody's just finished taking a quiz called "Is Barack Obama Hastening The End of Days?" or posted a link to some YouTube video wherein teenagers use puppet theater to illustrate the "holocaust" being perpetrated against fetuses. "Rachel Williams doesn't want the government to decide when we die. Say NO to communist health care!!"
I've got this one cousin, Joe, who posts -- I kid you not -- five to six new status updates per DAY, all of them about health care reform. I'll give you a hint: he's against it. Typically, I ignore this kind of bullshit because arguing about this stuff online just never goes anywhere. But his latest line of reasoning involves going off on how the elimination of "pre-existing condition" restrictions will result in "healthy, responsible" people having to foot the bill for people who make bad choices. Because that's what people with chronic conditions invariably are: stupid, fat, lazy smokers. "Joe Perfect is tired of having to pay the price for other people's mistakes. Equal coverage for everyone is not fair to me and my family!" (This, of course, coming from a self-avowed member of the first camp described above. WWJD, indeed.)
After I had read so many of these little mini-whines that I could barely see through the smoke erupting from my ears, I went against my better judgment and posted a response to the above. I was polite and brief: said hello, mentioned his wife and children and my hopes for their general health and well-being, and then brought up the example of my brother, he of the life-threatening chronic condition that busted in out of nowhere and beat the shit out of my family. I noted that should my brother lose his job, he would never again be able to buy private insurance. Period. I urged Joe to be cautious about his judgments, and to remember that sick people were just that: people, who deserve the chance to receive treatment without losing everything they have.
His response verified why I should have just left the whole damn thing alone. Oh Melinda, he replied, your words mean a lot to me. Daniel is a great example of the minority, but unfortunately most people with pre-existing conditions are simply wretched drains upon the system. As long as Daniel stays employed or uses Cobra, he will never need to worry. Most people don't know that. (Yes, he actually said that to me: most people don't know that. As if I had never heard of this magical program called Cobra, as if I had heard it mentioned before and thought to myself "why are all those doctors talking about a snake?")
Oh man. I think -- at least in political matters -- there's a place for distant family, and it's, well, distant. I just left it at that, and I blocked his status updates, and I said a little prayer of my own, thanking whatever force it was out there in the universe that led me to get the hell out of my hometown and enroll my little 18-year-old self in a liberal arts college way back when. I may still be paying back my student loans until the actual End of Days, but at least I know what it is that I'm paying for. There but for the grace of God go I.
I live hours away from my geographically closest relatives. Both sides of my family used to have annual reunions, my mom's family at Christmas and my dad's family in the summer. But now that all of my grandparents have passed away AND due to the fact that several of my mom's siblings are currently warring after their co-owned bakery business tanked, these get-togethers have become rather sporadic. In that respect, I guess establishing family connections on a social networking site is kind of a good thing. Instead of annual face-to-face superficial communication, we can engage in more regular passively electronic superficial communication. Wheee!
Oh, but the status updates. The status updates from these distant relations are blowing my mind on a daily basis, and not usually in a good way. Most of them seem to fall into three general camps. First, there is the Super-Religious Camp, whose members post Bible verses and the lyrics to worship songs as their status updates regardless of the fact that doing so makes no linguistic sense. For instance, "Joanna Keim For I will follow you Lord, I hunger for your spirit" does not a sentence make.
Then there is the Let's Ruminate On The Day of The Week Camp, whose members are prone to acquiring cases of The Mondays and spend a lot of time engaging in countdowns to the weekend. They also, by the way, often fail to achieve a proper sentence. "Brian Kauffman Ugh! Is it Monday already?" is followed by "Brian Kauffman is Happy Hump Day!" before escalating to the inevitable climax: "Brian Kauffman TGIF!!!!!!!"
But the third and final group, the Oh, Of COURSE You're All Rabid Republicans Camp, is the one that's really starting to bring me down. It's like, I've always known that the vast majority of my relatives are superduper Fox News Nascar conservatives, but somehow the veiled passivity of the Facebook format allows them to put it right out there in a way that you just don't do at a family reunion volleyball game. Every day, every time I log on (which, come on, I work from home, I'm logging on with every other breath, basically) somebody's just finished taking a quiz called "Is Barack Obama Hastening The End of Days?" or posted a link to some YouTube video wherein teenagers use puppet theater to illustrate the "holocaust" being perpetrated against fetuses. "Rachel Williams doesn't want the government to decide when we die. Say NO to communist health care!!"
I've got this one cousin, Joe, who posts -- I kid you not -- five to six new status updates per DAY, all of them about health care reform. I'll give you a hint: he's against it. Typically, I ignore this kind of bullshit because arguing about this stuff online just never goes anywhere. But his latest line of reasoning involves going off on how the elimination of "pre-existing condition" restrictions will result in "healthy, responsible" people having to foot the bill for people who make bad choices. Because that's what people with chronic conditions invariably are: stupid, fat, lazy smokers. "Joe Perfect is tired of having to pay the price for other people's mistakes. Equal coverage for everyone is not fair to me and my family!" (This, of course, coming from a self-avowed member of the first camp described above. WWJD, indeed.)
After I had read so many of these little mini-whines that I could barely see through the smoke erupting from my ears, I went against my better judgment and posted a response to the above. I was polite and brief: said hello, mentioned his wife and children and my hopes for their general health and well-being, and then brought up the example of my brother, he of the life-threatening chronic condition that busted in out of nowhere and beat the shit out of my family. I noted that should my brother lose his job, he would never again be able to buy private insurance. Period. I urged Joe to be cautious about his judgments, and to remember that sick people were just that: people, who deserve the chance to receive treatment without losing everything they have.
His response verified why I should have just left the whole damn thing alone. Oh Melinda, he replied, your words mean a lot to me. Daniel is a great example of the minority, but unfortunately most people with pre-existing conditions are simply wretched drains upon the system. As long as Daniel stays employed or uses Cobra, he will never need to worry. Most people don't know that. (Yes, he actually said that to me: most people don't know that. As if I had never heard of this magical program called Cobra, as if I had heard it mentioned before and thought to myself "why are all those doctors talking about a snake?")
Oh man. I think -- at least in political matters -- there's a place for distant family, and it's, well, distant. I just left it at that, and I blocked his status updates, and I said a little prayer of my own, thanking whatever force it was out there in the universe that led me to get the hell out of my hometown and enroll my little 18-year-old self in a liberal arts college way back when. I may still be paying back my student loans until the actual End of Days, but at least I know what it is that I'm paying for. There but for the grace of God go I.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
An open letter to the seasoned senior population that comprises approximately 85 percent of my town
Since I seem to be in the letter-writing mood these days, I thought I'd take a moment to send some warm wishes out to you, the nice, wizened elders who together with all the imported hippy students comprise the heart and soul of this here college town.
Elders, we see a lot of each other, you and I. It turns out that semi-employed freelancers with small children keep the same schedules as senior citizens. Who knew? Like you guys, I run my errands and buy my groceries during the workday. Also like you guys, I eat dinner at the ripe old hour of 5:30 PM. And also like you guys, I like to hang out at the public library. (On that last point, though, I don't call the copy machine a "xerox machine," and I don't fail to write down my Hotmail password and then expect you guys to somehow magically know what it is, and I don't yell at you guys about how everything was just perfect with "the old card catalog." So it turns out that we do, in fact, have a few differences.)
But what I really wanted to talk to you fine folks about this afternoon is a little activity I like to engage sometimes called driving. Now, this is uncomfortable for me, because the last thing I'd ever want to do is come off as being ageist. But I know that sometimes modern guidelines and "rules of the road" can be confusing, so I just wanted to go over a couple of key pointers that you may or may not be aware of.
First, let's talk about four-way stops. See, a properly executed four-way stop requires equal parts caution and confidence; you've got to pay attention to turn-taking while protecting yourself and your passengers from harm. Generally, the first car to arrive at an intersection featuring a four-way stop should be the first car to leave it. So, basically, if you get there before me, I'm going to wait for you to go before proceeding myself. See how that works?
Problems happen, though, when the driver of the first car to arrive at the intersection gets a little sheepish, a little nervous, and decides instead to let all other cars within a five mile radius both approach and proceed through the intersection before crossing through himself. This may seem like a safety-conscious, neighborly thing to do, friends, but really all it does is create a parade of drivers who, confused and annoyed, have to inch through the intersection stutter-by-stutter, certain that at any moment you will decide that it's finally your turn and lurch forward into their driver's side door.
How about this? When it's your turn, go. When it's not your turn, stay.
Great. Now that we've got that out in the open, let me draw your attention to one more little thing: those white and black signs with numbers on them, the ones posted by the side of most roads? Those are speed limit signs. What's that you say? You know that those are speed limit signs? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that perhaps you were under the impression that they were little roadside math problems, designed to keep your skills fresh and sharp. After all, your first impulse upon seeing one of them is generally to take the number displayed upon it and divide it in half, using the resulting figure to guide your travelling speed.
Now, I like a leisurely Sunday drive through the country as much as the next girl. But usually -- and I'm not saying always, just usually -- I like to restrict those Sunday drives to, well, Sundays. And also, to the country. When I'm travelling on main streets or busy roads, I'm often trying to actually get to a destination, and from time to time I also have a set time at which I'd like to arrive. Say, today maybe. Or at least later this week.
I know, I know. What's the rush? When I'm your age, I'll understand. And you know? I probably will. And I'm sure there will be a special place in nursing home purgatory for whippersnappers like me who, when but wee thirtysomethings, were impatient with their elders. But until then... I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass you on the right.
Kids these days. No respect.
Love, M
Elders, we see a lot of each other, you and I. It turns out that semi-employed freelancers with small children keep the same schedules as senior citizens. Who knew? Like you guys, I run my errands and buy my groceries during the workday. Also like you guys, I eat dinner at the ripe old hour of 5:30 PM. And also like you guys, I like to hang out at the public library. (On that last point, though, I don't call the copy machine a "xerox machine," and I don't fail to write down my Hotmail password and then expect you guys to somehow magically know what it is, and I don't yell at you guys about how everything was just perfect with "the old card catalog." So it turns out that we do, in fact, have a few differences.)
But what I really wanted to talk to you fine folks about this afternoon is a little activity I like to engage sometimes called driving. Now, this is uncomfortable for me, because the last thing I'd ever want to do is come off as being ageist. But I know that sometimes modern guidelines and "rules of the road" can be confusing, so I just wanted to go over a couple of key pointers that you may or may not be aware of.
First, let's talk about four-way stops. See, a properly executed four-way stop requires equal parts caution and confidence; you've got to pay attention to turn-taking while protecting yourself and your passengers from harm. Generally, the first car to arrive at an intersection featuring a four-way stop should be the first car to leave it. So, basically, if you get there before me, I'm going to wait for you to go before proceeding myself. See how that works?
Problems happen, though, when the driver of the first car to arrive at the intersection gets a little sheepish, a little nervous, and decides instead to let all other cars within a five mile radius both approach and proceed through the intersection before crossing through himself. This may seem like a safety-conscious, neighborly thing to do, friends, but really all it does is create a parade of drivers who, confused and annoyed, have to inch through the intersection stutter-by-stutter, certain that at any moment you will decide that it's finally your turn and lurch forward into their driver's side door.
How about this? When it's your turn, go. When it's not your turn, stay.
Great. Now that we've got that out in the open, let me draw your attention to one more little thing: those white and black signs with numbers on them, the ones posted by the side of most roads? Those are speed limit signs. What's that you say? You know that those are speed limit signs? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that perhaps you were under the impression that they were little roadside math problems, designed to keep your skills fresh and sharp. After all, your first impulse upon seeing one of them is generally to take the number displayed upon it and divide it in half, using the resulting figure to guide your travelling speed.
Now, I like a leisurely Sunday drive through the country as much as the next girl. But usually -- and I'm not saying always, just usually -- I like to restrict those Sunday drives to, well, Sundays. And also, to the country. When I'm travelling on main streets or busy roads, I'm often trying to actually get to a destination, and from time to time I also have a set time at which I'd like to arrive. Say, today maybe. Or at least later this week.
I know, I know. What's the rush? When I'm your age, I'll understand. And you know? I probably will. And I'm sure there will be a special place in nursing home purgatory for whippersnappers like me who, when but wee thirtysomethings, were impatient with their elders. But until then... I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass you on the right.
Kids these days. No respect.
Love, M
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