Invasion of the snowflake women from another state...

I went shopping after church. I normally don't do that, this being supposed to be a day of rest and all, but sometimes, there are times when you wake up in the morning and find you're nearly out of something that you're going to need in the coming days. So I ran out to the Walgreen's (and, once again, I'm grateful we finally have one in town; it sure beats going into the enormous Wal-Mart - which some folks here refer to, totally unironically, as "the mall," and they will go there and spend HOURS slowly walking up and down the aisles, which makes it tough for the buy-it-and-scram types like me).

Anyway, I found what I needed. And I was able to restock my gatorade supply (I need it, for after fieldwork, and occasionally if you're lucky you can find a variety made with JUST sugar - which tastes better to me than the HFCS variety)

I was walking back out to my car, and another car pulled up to me. It had out-of-state plates. The driver rolled down the window and called to me:

"Do you live here?"

Yes, I told her, I did.

"Can you tell us" (her and her friend in the passenger seat), "where you find the IHOP or the Denny's?"

Um, little problem there. We have neither. We have a Chili's (which is in sight from the Walgreen's) and about every fast-food place under the sun, but no Denny's. And no IHOP, though we keep getting told that one is coming "soon."

So I told them, somewhat apologetically, "We don't have one. There's a Waffle House just up the street if you're looking for a breakfast place."

The woman regarded me dubiously. "You're SURE there isn't a Denny's?"

Oh please lady. You don't know, of course, but I've lived here 10 years. My town is about 10 miles across from east to west and less than that from north to south. I know all the restaurants. I even know where the restaurants that went out of business (like our Papa John's franchise) USED to be.

Now, OK, maybe there's a Secret Speakeasy Denny's someone is running out of their garage without corporate approval, but if there is, I sure don't know the password to get in.

"No, I'm sorry." I called back (Why am I sorry? It's not my fault.)

"There's no IHOP?"

"No, I'm sorry." NO there's no IHOP.

And she looks at me disbelievingly.

"There's NO IHOP?" Now look. Two things here: first, if we could get businesses here by wishing, trust me, we'd have had both a Target and a Trader Joe's a long time ago. And second: I can't stand it when I tell someone a True Fact and they don't want to believe me. I deal with it a lot from students. They come in wanting to know their grade, and I tally it up, and then I tell them, "I'm sorry" (and again: why? I didn't cause them to earn a poor grade) "But the best you can get in the class is a C." And they go into disbelief mode. They tell me to recalculate - I do. They still are, at best, going to earn a C. There is literally nothing they can do to earn a better grade. And yet - some of them - they get the idea that if, I don't know, they WISH hard enough or DENY hard enough, they'll get that A somehow. And it drives me up the wall. So I don't need it from a couple of late-middle-aged women who apparently just need a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity fix.

"No, there's no IHOP," I responded wearily. "We have a Waffle House. And a Chili's. And fast food places." (We also have a couple tea rooms and coffee shops, and they're nice, but they're not open on Sundays, being largely one-person operations). I'm standing there under the hot sun, holding my six-pack of Gatorade in one hand and my bag of  "hygiene" supplies in the other, and wishing they'd just believe me so I could go home and fix myself lunch.

"What if we were to drive east on this road?" the woman asked, gesturing to the highway that becomes Main Street in the downtown, and then again becomes a 2-lane highway leading out of town. "Would we find one then?"

At that point I was really tempted to say, "Yeah, sure, knock yourself out. Maybe a Denny's will magically appear. Or maybe you'll just get to the state line and still be hungry." But of course, that would be rude, so instead, I just said, "Sorry, no. We don't have a Denny's or an IHOP. We have a Waffle House, a Chili's, and a number of fast-food restaurants."

(I suppose I could have told them that if they were willing to drive some 40 miles south, they'd find an IHOP. But I don't think that would have helped.)

The women looked at each other and shrugged. I don't know if they finally accepted what I had told them, or if they thought I was holding out on them, or if they thought I really didn't know what I was talking about, but they finally drove off.

But seriously. We don't have a freakin' Denny's. Or an IHOP. Or an Applebee's. Or a Perkin's. And when someone tells you our little town doesn't, why won't you believe them? There are only 12,000 of us here; we can't have EVERYTHING.

oh, for freak's sake...

I get the magazine Country Living. I enjoy it a lot even though it's a total fantasy for me (My house will never be that neat, I will never find just the perfect antique whatever).

But, like a lot of publications these days, I kind of wish they'd drop the letters to the editor. Because they get some complete wtf letters that make me stabby.

I'm not going to quote the letter - it was about their Christmas issue, where they gave gift suggestions - but it was such a SMUG, insane-lifestyle-mentioning letter that it kind of destroyed my enjoyment of the rest of the issue.

It was from some person who sniffed and said, "I was very disappointed in you for offering gift ideas but not listing all kinds of charities that you could send your money to instead of buying gifts." OK, fine, fair. I know lots of people who do that. And maybe it would be nice. Though I would note the magazine is called COUNTRY Living and not PHILANTHROPY Living.

But then there was the little barb: the person made a comment like, "As long as there is one hungry person in the world, for me to spend my money frivolously on such things as gifts is WRONG."

Oh, good Lord. Step off, lady, step off. (I wonder: does she purchase a subscription to the magazine? That $24.95 could surely feed a starving orphan somewhere. Or maybe she goes to the local library and reads it, all the while making snide comments about the people who live in houses larger than three rooms...)

The other thing is this: typically, CL features gifts made by artisans. Or sold by small businesses. Would not it be taking bread out of those folks' mouths to self-righteously refuse to spend money on anything but the necessities of life and charity?

I don't care, as I said before, if someone chooses to go the route of donations-instead-of-gifts (but please, if you do: let the recipients know in advance. It might feel a bit shabby to them if they went out and spent time and money picking out a gift, and then found you made a donation in their name - which you very likely could write off on your taxes. Okay, so I'm a Philistine, but I like getting gifts - even small gifts - on Christmas and my birthday).

But, what bugs me is the implication of the final comment this person made. It pretty much screams, "I know I am much better than the rest of you, and I want you all to know it."

I also remember once someone sending a screed in to an editor (and it got published!) because a "health oriented" magazine published a recipe (horrors!) for a chocolate cake. Because, "No person who CARES about their health would EVER eat CAKE."

Okay, lady. Let me take you off my birthday-party invitation list then.

I can't STAND people like that. Especially people who look at something I happen to enjoy, sniff, and go, "Well, you know, it's really better to do without because..." Whether it's the people who won't eat "white" sugar (and also will very vocally let you know that their children do not, and nor should you or your children), or who don't watch tv, or who tell people they should only eat locally grown food, or whatever. I think it irritates me because (a) I recognize that everyone is different, and the "right" solution for me is not necessarily the "right" solution for you, and (b) I don't like feeling judged. Which I invariably do by these lifestyle-mentioners. I know, I know, I shouldn't let myself feel that way, but it's hard for me. And it does bug me that I feel like someone is contenting themselves that they are a "good" person at my expense, and that they don't see anything wrong with driving a wedge in what could have been a friendship between them and me just in order to feel like they are "good."

Living that kind of black-and-white life, where certain things that most folks regard as morally neutral are EVIL, must be tiring. It must be exhausting to constantly explain why you can't consume anything with refined sugar and flour in it. (I exempt people with celiac disease or any real medical condition; they tend to be normal and polite about the things they can't eat. I'm talking about the people who recoil when you suggest that you once in a while like a piece of cake, as if you had just said, "I like to boil and eat puppies.") It must be a very small life to live in, where you have such strict tight limits on yourself, and even the sort of ordinary daily celebrations - a birthday, a holiday, a promotion - must be turned into moral crusades where you tell others the error of their ways in enjoying something you have closed yourself off from.

It makes me very tired to deal with people like that. (And the funny thing is some of them refer to anyone who has even a shard of traditional Christian faith as a "Puritan" who is bent upon making life dull and gray. I'd tell the person I know who is like that about the mote and the beam, but I doubt he'd understand it and probably only take it as further evidence that I am trying to CONVERT (oh noes) him)

Just because you cannot - or choose not to - enjoy something, do not make it your crusade to destroy others' enjoyment of it.

But the other thing is the Law of Unintended Consequences: if a critical mass of people decide that they will not buy anything but food and the bare minimum of replacement clothing, businesses that make other things go out of business. Authors don't sell books. Artisans wind up having to wait tables - except, because no one is eating out, they can't get that job. And we become poorer and less interesting as a nation. All because people like the smug feeling of "I'm better than that slob down the street; look, he even still uses INCANDESCENT bulbs!"

Feh.

"free" does not equal "worthless."

As you might remember, I go in for weekly allergy desensitization shots. Fortunately, the campus nurse is willing to do this for me, so I don't have to go out to a doctor's office or even schedule an appointment - she kind of knows to expect me between 3 and 3:30 on Tuesdays, and in return, I am content to sit and wait until she has a moment to attend to me.

So as a result, I see some interesting behaviors in the campus nurse's office. And sometimes, I think that maybe, some of the odder ones are the result of the students' not paying (well, not DIRECTLY, anyway; it's part of their fees) for the service.

I saw another case of it today. Guy comes in, looks around the waiting room, announces he is a half-hour late for his doctor's appointment. (A doctor comes to campus two days a week, on loan from the local hospital).

(In cases like that - where someone announces something like that to a room full of strangers, I'm always tempted to say something borderline snarky like "Congratulations!' or "good for yooooou" in a Squidward Tentacles sort of voice, but I never do).

The receptionist looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, then you will need to reschedule, because you missed your appointment time."

He gave no explanation - no excuse. Just reiterated that he was late. ("Again...good for yoooooouuuu")

The receptionist then said: "We have other people waiting for their appointments, the doctor does not have time to see you today now."

"But...but...Can't he see me NOW?"

"He is in with a patient," and she gestured to the three or four other people waiting with me "And these patients are next."

"But I just need to see the results of my blood workup!" (Don't even try, HIPAA)

"You will need to reschedule."

"Can't one of these people wait while he sees me?"

Okay, this is where I get kind of infuriated. Yes, I can understand life-emergencies. But you did not cite any life-emergency - for all I know, you could have been playing Nintendo Wii or taking a nap or watching ESPN and then gone, "Oh crap...my appointment was 15 minutes ago." And if it's that important...you work around it. I have students leave my class on a regular basis for doctor's appointments. I hate that they do - but I understand that if you're sick, or your kid is sick, you sometimes take what you can get in terms of appointments. And you make an effort to show up on time.

But if all of those things amount to a big FAIL, then you suck it up and reschedule. You do not demand to be seen right then. You do not say (in front of the patients who showed up EARLY for their appointment) that they should wait, because you're an extra-special snowflake who deserves coddling.

The nurse responded to the guy's sorry request with: "The doctor's schedule only allows him to be here until 4:30. There is not time for him to see you today, even if you waited until all these people had been taken care of."

He kind of spluttered at that.

Finally, she said, "You need to come in the other room and I can reschedule you."

(I kind of wished that "rescheduling" came with a side of ass-whuppin', but I'm sure it didn't).

But seriously - who, when they go to a "real" doctor's appointment, one they are paying at least a co-pay for, shows up late with no excuse and then demands in front of the people who are following the "rules" (i.e., the patients who showed up a few minutes early for their appointment) that the rules should be broken for you?

An actual-factual doctor's office would laugh in your face. And charge you for the visit any way.

Entitlement behavior ticks me off. I hope this dude learns pretty fast that he can't change a light bulb in a ceiling fixture by holding the new bulb up and waiting for the Universe to revolve around him, because he's apparently not learned that yet.

I don't get this.

This is going to be my (own, personal) entry into the Friday (bleep) Off thread. (Because I'm going to be busy today, y'all).

Here's a personality trait I don't get: The person who has to squash the happiness of someone else by either (a) explaining all the downsides to why that person is happy or (b) going all one-up-man-ny and talking about how THEY'VE done better or how THEY did that thing YEARS ago.

A similar type of person is described on Cute Overload as a "Nuffer," which seems an apt term, so I'm going to adopt it here.

Some vignettes:

A member of your social circle has just gotten engaged. She (let's pretend it's a she) comes up all breathless and happy with the news. The Nuffer either says,

"Oh, yeah, that's been in the rumor mill for weeks"

or, worse, the Nuffer starts talking about how the happy couple will now have to pay a "marriage penalty" in taxes, and how expensive weddings have got, and what the divorce rate is, and maybe even segue into complaints about his or her marriage.

Nuffer: FAIL. U R doin' it wrong.

The correct response to, "My boyfriend and I just got engaged!" is "Wow, that's great! I'm so happy for you!"

You can then go on to add more congratulations or good wishes if you feel they are warranted.

If you have DOUBTS about the match, the time to bring them up is NOT when the newly-engaged person is standing there in your small crowd, beaming with happiness. The appropriate time is in private - and only if you are a close relative or best friend. If you're a co-worker or an acquaintance, it is not your place.

****

Second situation: someone at your workplace has received an award. The CORRECT response is to congratulate the person. The Nuffer response is either:

a. "Those awards are all political"
or
b. "Yeah, I won one of those 3 years ago." (with the phrase "what took YOU so long" implied)
or
c. Not reacting at all.

****

Third situation: an academic setting. Someone, after a long dry spell of article rejections, gets an article accepted. The Nuffer responds: "Oh, yes, I know that journal. It's a MINOR journal, it's very easy to get a paper into it."

Thanks a freaking fat lot, Nuffer. The polite response would be, "That's great. I'm glad to hear it."

****

Another situation - when I was a kid, I learned to read at 4. People used to think that was kind of impressive, back in the less-competitive 70s. It was something my parents were kind of proud of, something that they took as kind of proof that they were doing the parenting thing right. (I learned on my own, because they read to me a lot, and let me look at the words when they were reading. I don't remember trying to learn to read, I just remember looking at a book one day and realizing that I could figure out what the words said).

Even my school teachers in the very early grades were somewhat impressed.

But now, 4 is actually a terribly old age to have learned to read. Or at least according to the Nuffers. THEIR children learned at 3. Or even at 2. Obviously I was just not that bright, waiting all the way to 4 to learn to read. Why didn't my parents use flash cards? is the implication. Why didn't my mom read to me when I was in the womb, they wonder - no matter that back in the time I was born, people weren't so koo-koo crazy about pushing their babies to become little geniuses.

I've heard from friends who are parents that the whole Mommy Nuffer phenomenon is very bad, perhaps even worse than the Academic Nuffer phenomenon. Mommy Nuffers jealously compare developmental times (how much earlier were their babies able to roll over; how much sooner was their child at speaking his or her first word?)

And they also love to be the "parenting police": "Oh no, you let your child DRINK JUICE? Don't you know fruit juice is the royal road to childhood obesity? Quick, take it away and give the child plain water instead before he develops a taste for demon sugar!" Or, they do things like sniff superiorly and remark that No Child Of Theirs will ever watch anything so mind-rotting as The Wiggles or Yo Gabba Gabba.

And I wonder if some of the Nufferdom stems from a fundamental need to feel oneself BETTER than other people - better because their child is developing faster, or is less feral than very small children tend to be, or because they have somehow made their child's environment purer or cleaner or freer from the base taint of popular culture.

And it must be kind of lonely to inhabit that Nuffer Parent world, where you have to always be vigilant, where you are always looking for the ways other parents slip up so you can point them out to them.

****

Nuffers are people who are never impressed with anything, never happy for anyone else over anything. I don't get it. I don't get why they feel that way. Are they so insecure that they can't be happy for someone else? Do they think happiness is like a big pie, and someone else getting a slice means there's less for them? Are they so damaged somehow that they can't be enthusiastic? Do they always have to let their doubts or negativity about something show?

There is one person in my life who has developed into a Nuffer over the years. I am not sure what did it - whether it's disillusion over how his life is turning out, or a fundamentally sour temper crystallizing in middle age, or what. But I find myself talking with this person less and less because I am so tired by his Nufferdom. And I'm tired of having to take people who are broadsided by it (not being familiar with his tendencies) aside and explain that the rest of the world really DOESN'T feel so negative about their engagement/new baby/promotion/award/whatever.

So, Nuffers of the world: Take a chill pill. Learn to smile. Happiness is not a pie that is divided up; it is more like one of those magical sweets in the Harry Potter or Willy Wonka books that keeps regenerating itself no matter how much is taken and passed around.

And if you're going to do your Nufferly rain on anyone's parade today, you're invited to (Bleep) off. Because seriously: there's enough unhappiness in the world without having people trying to quash the bits of happiness other people manage to have.

Two. Hours.

Okay, this is something that bugs me.

I am in a couple of women's groups (no, not that kind of women's group; we're not revolutionaries in any sense of the word and I think if you showed any of the other women in the group the word spelled "womyn," they'd probably pull out their Red Teacher Pens and correct its spelling).

Anyway, I'm also an officer in these groups. (Don't ask me how that happened. In a couple cases it involves the bad old, "But you don't have a husband or children to take care of" argument which I actually fell for).

So one of the groups had its planning meeting the other evening. (Yes, evening. I wanted afternoon but the other still-employed member doesn't get done with work until 6).

The meeting lasted two hours. Two stinking hours. In that time, we accomplished the necessary planning in probably about 20 minutes.

The rest of the time? Chatting, and one person sharing several rather hair-raising and borderline TMI stories. In the guise of "sisterhood." (DO NOT WANT).

I didn't say anything but I was getting really weary - I had put in a full day over at school, I was staring down another full day starting in less than 12 hours, I had not had any time to myself that day. And I'm sitting listening to stories about stuff I really would rather not know.

(Why, why, why do women do that? Why do they need to share detail of family troubles and gynecological problems and horrific crimes they've witnessed/been victims of with innocent-bystander women? I thought that counselors and therapists served that kind of function in our society).

And this is one of the things that irks me. And almost makes me wonder if I could find some graceful exit from the group...dealing with that kind of thing. The time bandits. The people who, because their lives are relatively unstructured, see nothing wrong with taking hours of other people's time to SHARE.

And yeah, maybe I'm being antisocial and curmudgeonly - but - I was tired, y'all. Tired and hot and thinking about how nice a shower would feel, and then getting into my pajamas and into bed.

Fortunately, most of the meetings are not like that. But sometimes they are. And I want to get up and say, "You retired folks...you stay at home moms....I know for you sometimes time out of the house and away from your husbands or kids is a welcome change. But as for me - I have to get up at 5 am tomorrow, I worked a full day, I am DONE with dealing with other human beings. All my words have been used up - I have no more to share. I need sleep to be able to restore my stock of patience and tolerance."

(As I said, there was one other "working woman" in the group....a local shopkeeper. And interestingly, she was as silent as I was. I'm willing to bet she'd used up her store of words and perhaps patience and lovingkindness for the day (if you're a shopkeeper, I bet you have a lot of days like that). I don't think she was fuming like I was but then again she probably didn't have to be at work before 8:30 or so [her shop opens at 10]).

But I don't know. Maybe this is how I am deeply antisocial and kind of neurologically atypical but I really, really, really cherish my quiet evenings at home and even though I don't MIND taking a half hour or so to do some planning - and maybe 20 minutes for small talk - I'm really not up for the hour's worth of hair-raising stories.

Sometimes I bemoan not having a BFF, because it seems like most of the other women I know do. But if being a BFF means being able to sit on my rump for hours, and do that strained smile-nod thing when someone is talking about something I really don't want to know about, maybe I'm better off with my hermit's life.

I didn't look at my watch the whole time - it was a small meeting and I was afraid of looking rude. So when I got in the car, and turned it on, I thought to myself, OK, what is Mr. Car-Clock going to say the time is.

And that's when I saw that 2 hours of my life had been drained away. And that's when I got a little angry, because at that point it was late enough (by the time I'd be home) that all I'd have time to do was go to bed, especially if I planned on getting up for my usual workout the next day.

I don't know. I like people but sometimes I almost feel like my diffidence and tendency not to say, "Why, oh why, are you sharing this horrible story with us?!? Why can't we just wrap it up and all go home?" means people take advantage of me a little bit and are time-vampires.

This is why I hate medical "reporting."

A medical story being pimped on the local news:

"Neurofibromatosis: the rare genetic disorder that may affect your family!"

Arrrrgh. "Rare" and "may" are the keywords here.

The incidence of NF, depending on the type, is either 1 in 4000 or 1 in 50,000 (there are several different types). According to this website, about 100,000 people in the U.S. are affected. (Which, yeah, is still "rare" considering there are 300 million in the U.S.)

However - the disease is almost always inherited (only vanishingly rarely is it a mutation). It is an autosomal dominant. So people with NF in their families ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT. A child affected with NF will *almost always* have a parent with it.

I HATE the way my local news channel reports this stuff. I can almost hear the scare-waves going out from the set. (I wonder how many families got worried by that header and started calling their doctors).

How would I present the story? I don't even know. If I were a news director, I'd probably only choose to run the story if (a) there was new information out on treatment/surgery for it or (b) there happened to be a couple families in the area we knew were affected by it, had school-aged children, and wanted to educate the public so that the families weren't shunned. (And even then, I'm not entirely sure that's part of the mission of a news program).

But I hate the trend of Scare Reporting! that comes with medical news. This often seems to center around stuff you eat or drink (just this morning they were telling women to "put down the coffee!" for some reason), or childhood pastimes that are normally safe but maybe one out of 10,000,000 times have some kind of injury ("Next: Killer Playground Slides!"), or talking about how some perhaps-unavoidable condition is going to make you Die Real Soon! ("How having blue eyes increases your risk of Deadly Eye Cancer!").

I'm sure part of it is that without larding the local news with these stories - and their stupid "Relationship Corner" and their recipe-segment and all that junk - the local news would be about 15 minutes long, rather than the 2 hours they stretch it out to every morning. (5 am to 7 am).

And you know? I'm not convinced that 15 minutes of news, and an hour-45 of something else (maybe show old Bugs Bunny cartoons?) would be such a bad thing.

you know...

(An aside: I've been quite political this week, haven't I?)

One of the things that ticks me off re: energy policy is the people who, when presented with the idea of offshore drilling or opening ANWR or going to the oil shale or tar sands

(Which, another aside: I wrote a science report on the oil shale when I was in 5th grade. That was like 1980, folks. They knew back then it could have been a viable source of oil).

Anyway, these people - if they don't pooh-pooh it outright because it Hurts Teh Environment, they will say something like,

"Yeah, but it will take like 10 years to develop that, and people are hurting now."

And this is a total headdesk moment for me.

That is not at all unlike my saying, when I walked in the door of the biology building at My Graduate School for the first time, "Well, it might take me as long as 10 years to complete this Ph.D. thing. And during that time I'm going to be making scut wages as a TA and living in a back bedroom of my parents' house. So I might as well not even try and just go wait tables for a living, because I want money now."

It's almost - it's almost as if the inability to delay gratification in other areas of their lives has infected their political and policy thinking.

And the other thing is: well, dammit, if they had tried tapping the offshore oil reserves 10 years ago, it would be better now, no? So why not invest in that with the hope that in 10 years, we won't all be paying $15 a gallon for gas or something? I mean, of course it's bad now. Of course gas is more expensive than I'd like it to be. Of course anything we do short of finding a magical unicorn that will allow us to turn crap into oil will take time. And there aren't any magical unicorns out there that I've seen.

So my opinion is, stop whining and DO something. (But then, that's my general response to a lot of crap in politics, policy, and protests: if you're sitting on your ass complaining, you're not doing anything productive. Get off your ass and do something. You might not feel so much like complaining when you're done.)

Gonna be busy tomorrow...

...and besides, it's already Friday SOMEWHERE. (We had that discussion with Emily last week.)

So here's my Friday Bite the Wax Tadpole (again, keeping the language PG as that's the convention on this blog).

the flaming idiots who drive their giant beater boat cars slowly down the MIDDLE of a residential street while they gibber on their fornicating cell phone and fail to obey any of the safety laws (especially when there are small children walking home from school on said street) deserve to have that phone dipped in hot queso and ground walnuts and have it inserted in a particular bodily orifice.

I do not know why it is suddenly fashionable for the young set to suddenly buy up the late-70s model "granny cars" (like LTDs and the old Crown Vics), but they've been popping up in my town. They're usually driven by folks in the 18-24 age group, driven badly, usually there are several guys together in the car, and they're all talking on cell phones.

I don't know if it has anything to do with the similar fashion to have subwoofers and such installed in cars so that when the sound system is turned on, all the people living within, oh, about a 3-mile radius of the car just hear loud, blurry, metal-rattling bass. It is as ANNOYING as STINK, especially in the middle of the night, so those guys who have the stupid autobot-to-noise-weapon transforming cars can also bite the wax tadpole. And the fact that there are at least some chaps who are the intersection of those two very annoying sets, they can really bite that tadpole.

Another thought on cell phones: I generally dislike "creeping legalism" but I'm beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea to rewrite the traffic laws so that if a person commits a traffic violation or (especially) is involved in an accident, and it's clear that they were distracted by talking on a cell phone at the time, it gets treated similarly to a DUI. Because I cannot tell you how many near-misses I've been in with some gibbering fool who can't hang up their frickin' phone for two minutes to pay attention to traffic - I've had people pull out in front of me out-of-turn at four-way stops. I've seen people run red lights. I've seen people turn at stoplights when I clearly had the right-of-way and if I had been a leadfoot I would have been t-boned by them. I've seen people nearly hit pedestrians. I've seen people weave all over the blessed road - all behaviors that, 30 years ago, would have made a cop wonder if the person were drunk. Now it's all, "Oh, she's on her cell phone."

(And I say "she" specifically. Maybe I am being sexist but about 80% of the really bad near-accidents-involving-cell-phones I've seen have had a woman driver committing the offense. And *I* am a woman driver. But - I don't talk on a cell phone, I don't do my makeup in the car, I don't root in my purse for crap when I'm driving. I don't even play the radio if it's heavy traffic or if I'm driving somewhere unfamiliar!)

2 and 1/10 cents per minute

(Added: uh, hi, Joanne Jacobs' readers. I have to make a little disclaimer and point out that the "some people" were the shopkeeper and assistants, not the university. I know rules are in place for a reason and the way things are run economically has to go smoothly....

...I hope this doesn't upset anyone too much...)



....that is apparently what my time is worth to some people.

I periodically have to buy certain lab supplies for the classes I teach. Sometimes this involves certain small businesses in town.

Small businesses that aren't always the tightest of ships, apparently.

We have a credit card issued by the university; it is an immense improvement over the old purchase-order system, where you had to be able to see into the future at the beginning of the semester and (a) predict where you were going to need to buy stuff to get the orders issued and (b) predict how much money you were going to spend.

But the credit card is not without its problems, one of which being that it (apparently) isn't immediately clear to the seller that "I'm buying these supplies for the University" means tax-exempt, even when that same person has made multiple tax-exempt purchases on the credit card in the past, and, in fact, there was a note on file indicating the tax-exemptness.

And being the Absentminded Professor I am, I sometimes forget to remind the shopkeepers. Usually they know, as I tend to buy supplies in the same place every year. But sometimes things get messed up.

Long story short: I was charged tax on something I bought.

$0.44 tax.

So, because that doesn't work given our system, I had to go back and get the transaction re-run. (And yes, the first thing I did was unzip my purse, pull out 44 cents, and try to hand it to the secretary to save myself the trouble. No go; the money is all centralized and there is apparently no entity I could hand my 44 cents to. Apparently the system only works on credit card receipts.)

And no, I did not check the receipt upon receiving it because (a) they never screwed it up before and (b) I was tired, in a hurry, and bordering on having a migraine.

So, having to run other errands, I figured I'd swing by the original store - let's call it The Emporium - to correct the problem.

I explained the problem, noting that while I had not explicitly said NO SALES TAX, she had rung me up before for prior purchases and not charged tax. And my university can't pay sales tax. So the 44 cents would need to be refunded. And I explained my attempt at an end-run around the whole problem, and its failure. "So," I summed up, trying to be jovial and not assign blame, "Because I can't just hand 44 cents to someone at the university and make it good, the charge will have to be re-run."

"Oh" the woman responded. "OhIdon'tknowhowtodothat. OhI'mnotauthorizedtodothat."

I stared at her, gobsmacked.

"I can give you 44 cents" she offered. "Or discount you the next time by that amount."

Um, no. Does not work that way. If you had been paying attention to my initial explanation, you would have known that offering to give me 44 cents does not work.

(I hate being ignored when I'm explaining something.)

I explained that that wouldn't work. She then added, "Yeah, when we switched to this new computer system, a lot of our tax-exempt customers got reclassed as non-tax-exempt."

Um - if you had known that, maybe you could have gone through the list and CHECKED first? Maybe you could have ASKED me when I came in buying stuff and non-tax-exempt popped up?

I said that I really needed the money back, and that would require the transaction to be re-run.

"Well," she offered, "Maybe you can come back when someone else is here."

(I have taken time OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF MY DAY to fix this. And spent the gas to drive down here [granted, I was already out but the Emporium is sort of out of my way]. Telling me to "come back" - especially when there is no helpful schedule of "This is when the owner who can do something is here" makes it impossible for me to plan.)

"Well, you see" I began, "I've already taken the time out of my office hours to come down here. And already probably burned 50 cents worth of gas. To correct a 44 cent error. I really would appreciate getting it taken care of today." (Well, I wasn't quite that calm, and I think I harped more on the "50 cents worth of gas")

So she sighed, and got one of the teenaged dudes out of the back room. And told him the problem. And he kind of stood there, like "Whaddaya want ME to do?"

Finally he said, "I'll TRY to fix it" and took the credit card and the old receipt and disappeared into the back.

I wandered around, looking at the dusty shop displays (The Emporium is the only place in town to procure certain items or else I'd shop somewhere else for them).

I waited.

And waited

And waited.

And looked pointedly at my watch while the original woman ignored me.

And some other teenaged guy came out and tried to strike up a conversation with me but I started giving off my patented "I am not quarry for you no matter what you might think; I am old enough to be your mother" vibe (Yes, I'm old enough to be the mother of a teenaged boy...that thought and all its implications scares me).

And I began to wonder - had teenaged guy #1 run off to Mexico on my department's credit card? Was he downloading all of Aerosmith's oeuvre onto his iPod from iTunes with my department footing the bill? What?

Finally he came out. Handed me a receipt. I signed for it (and as you will see in a moment, had forgotten the original number) and left.

It took - I am not kidding - 20 stinking minutes for the whole thing to get straightened out.

(I HATE, hate, HATE with a burning passion the feeling that my time's being wasted.
And yeah, I know, it's entirely possible the credit card company was jerking him around but considering that there were approximately 18 horny teenaged boy-workers hanging around that joint, you'd think teenaged boy #1 (who seemed more droopy than horny) could collar one of them and send them out to tell me that he was very sorry but it was taking a while and it would be just a few more minutes.)

Got back to the department. Handed the receipt to the secretary along with my tale of woe.

She looks at the receipt, checks something, and says, "The tax was for 44 cents. They refunded 42 cents. There is still 2 cents tax unaccounted for."

I told her I wasn't goin' back, not for anything. She's going to try to call and fix it but damn - I spend 20 minutes trying to get something fixed and they can't do it right? (And yeah, I should have checked the blasted receipt more closely. But at that point my allergies were so bad from the dust-fug that inhabits the Emporium that I genuinely remembered the tax as 42 cents.)

If I have to go back again? I'm taking a book. And sitting down in the middle of the floor. And reading. Just to make a damn point and so I feel like my time's not being wasted.

I really loathe bad, inattentive customer service. I can understand when there's a PROBLEM - if I am apprised of the problem - but I hate sitting around in the dark, so to speak, feeling the moments of my life drain away as no one tells me anything or gives me any hope that the problem will ever be fixed. But with a book to read, I feel like I'm doing something productive.

(And the reading would also take care of having to try to make small talk with the tribal-armband-tattooed, ripped-t-shirt-wearing bad-boy wannabees trying to flirt with me at that store.


Sorry, guys - I just tend to go for the intellectual type is all. If you had glasses and a proper shirt on I'd probably be more willing to talk to you. [well, also if you weren't below my "cutoff" age...])


Update: leave it to the Cats of LOL to capture the discomfort of making small talk with some creepy guy with a wandering eye....


see more crazy cat pics

sadness and gossip

Friends of mine - a couple - are separated and are likely divorcing.

(I knew about this several weeks ago but was sworn to secrecy - they were still trying to figure out the best way to let the entire circle of acquaintances know. And as these are people who both have careers in the public eye, and this is a small town with the typical small-town "sport" of gossip, they had to be very careful. But they've notified everyone now).

I have a couple of things to say about this:

1. This makes me sad. I hate seeing this happen. I thought they were happy together, but I guess we never really do know what burdens people carry, what difficulties they have.

I suppose in a way it's better than them having public fights or trying to make their friends pick sides. But it's a shock and a bad surprise and it takes me a while to readjust my worldview: "Happy couple - not so much."

The other thing about this is it makes my dream of maybe someday finding someone who's compatible and having a late-in-life (well, for where I live, 39 is late-in-life for a first marriage, and I'm 39 NOW with no suitors on the horizon) marriage that was happy and peaceful. Because, I tend to feel, if people who are as "normal" as the members of this couple can't make a go of it, how can someone as idiosyncratic and messed-up as I am ever manage to forge a life with someone else?

I mean, most of the time, I'm happy as a single - but I still hold out that tiny weak guttering candle of HOPE that maybe I will wind up with someone to "grow old with" as the songs say.

But maybe I've just lived alone for too long. I'm too fond of my free time, too fond of my privacy. (One of the issues the couple mentioned as leading to the separation: because of a recent change in careers, they were spending a lot more time together and they realized there were some fundamental incompatibilities).

And these are not children, these are not selfish, foolish people. These are both intelligent and deeply caring people. The kind of people I'd think could work out marital differences if they were possible to be worked out.

(So again - I'm singing, "What chance have I in love" in my head, seeing as two reasonable, stable, sane grown-ups can't work out their differences.)

But it just makes me kind of sad and a little bereft. I'm sad for them but also sad for the fact that I am telling myself I just have to ACCEPT that I will be alone forever because I'm too weird to work as part of a couple. (Oh, I probably knew that before - the whole situation with M. in my past - but I don't think my eyes were fully open to it, I was able to blame M.'s "immaturity" or the fact that he was looking for something I wasn't able to provide at that point in time...)

Also, at least one member of the couple will probably move away (that's how it's always worked in situations with friends who divorced before), so I'll have one less friend in my life. (And if it's the woman...well, for me, hanging with the divorced guy would be a little weird and would lead to problems with situation #2...)

2. This is going to lead to gossip. I HATE gossip. I don't mind the kind of benign information-passing, like, "Have you heard that T. and J. are going to have another baby?" where the information is generally positive, and while you might not TELL T. or J. that you already KNEW when they came to you and announced that J. was expecting again, still, it's a non-damaging type of gossip.

But it seems like so often, especially in small towns, especially among people who don't have a lot going for them otherwise, gossip gets blown up into a big huge ugly monster. A couple isn't separating because of irreconcilable differences, "no, that's what they're TELLING people but really they're both having affairs left and right and I KNOW it because my cousin's roommate's hairdresser was PROPOSITIONED by the guy, and I heard the woman goes to these swinger's parties that they have in the Big City."

Or -"Did you hear that Youth Coach X is really into kiddy p*rn? EVERYONE knows it." (When Youth Coach X is in fact the father of two of the children in the program, serves with CASA, is totally devoted to his wife, and doesn't even look at Playboy magazine because the thought of seeing a naked woman other than his wife outrages his sensibilities.)

The whole gossip situation in my town - it's almost like "So when did you jet in from Bizarro-world?" Because totally, some of the gossip that goes around, it's like the polar opposite of what is really actually true.

And it makes me worry sometimes, because some of the gossip I have heard, repeated to the "wrong" person, could lead to the subject - with no comprehension as to why it was happening to him or her - being arrested or at the very least, questioned by the police.

And you know? It makes me kind of sick. I don't want to hear bad stuff, even stuff I strongly suspect is false, about people around me. Gossip makes me angry - it seems like such a small-minded, small-HEARTED thing to do to people in your community. I have no idea how such rumors get started, but they seem to grow on their own.

(One of my friends - she and her family have since moved away because her husband was offered his dream job somewhere else - experienced this twice. First, there was a rumor afoot that her husband was a serial philanderer - when some of the nights he was supposedly out "catting around" she knew he was sleeping right next to her in bed. The second one was a rumor that he abused their children. And like she said, if that was happening, she'd KNOW. But she was terrified that the cops would investigate him, which she felt would only give credence to the rumor, even though they'd find no evidence of abuse.

Why did these rumors get started? I don't know. Jealousy, maybe? She and her husband had a happy marriage and a good family. He had a good job. He was kind of a good-looking man and in addition to his 9 to 5 job, he taught karate in town - so maybe it was just because he was in the public eye, maybe some crazy person got fixated on him and started some rumor. Or, hell, I don't know, maybe one of the she-sharks here in town propositioned him and he turned her down ("You KNOW I'm a married man") and she decided to spite him by spreading rumors.

I suspect part of the reason my friend was so quick to encourage her husband to take the job and move with her family was to get away from these small-minds.)

But anyway - it amazes me how gossip has the power to mutate into something so wildly untrue so fast. (Fortunately my friend wasn't too upset over the first rumor - she could laugh off the idea of her husband catting around - but the second one worried her a little because of the potential for DCFS or the cops to get involved).

Some years back, one of the "newsletters" I get had a bit of advice. It was aimed at coping with family holiday gatherings but I think it's generally true when dealing with people. The advice went something like, Before you say something, ask yourself three questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it necessary?
3. Is it kind?

And while I can see suspending #3 in "tough love" type cases with relatives, I do think those three rules are generally useful, ESPECIALLY when repeating information about people you know - if you don't know it's 100% true, don't repeat it. If it's information that is more than 2nd hand, or if you don't actually in-person know the person who had the experience being recounted, don't believe it.

I hear so many, "My best friend's cousin's boyfriend's doctor said..." stories that are wild and don't make any sense. People need to use a little of the good old critical thinking.

The other part - is it necessary. That means, is it NECESSARY for the other person to know? I can see, for example, telling a friend of a friend who might encounter either member of this couple "They're separating, I don't know if you knew that" just so they wouldn't cause pain by asking one member of the couple how the other is doing or where they are (if they didn't, for example, show up to have coffee with the friend).

The problem is, so often people seem to think "is it necessary" means "is it necessary to my social status to repeat this?" or "is it necessary for me to win points in the game of life to repeat this?"

And then there's the whole kindness issue. I would regard it as unkind to a person to repeat to them wild, nasty stories about one of their friends. Honestly? If one of my friends is into sexual practices I would regard as peculiar, I really don't need to know. (Only if it were a single guy I was thinking of dating, and probably the information would come out when necessary). I don't want to hear the details of a knock-down-drag-out argument a couple had; it only damages my image of them. I want to believe that people are basically reasonable and kind, and it kills a little bit of my idealism every time some friend-of-a-friend feels the need to share their little nuggets of TMI.

I know, I know, in some circles being the first one with gossip gives you some sort of sick status, but I don't care about status.

You know, I think one of the reasons so many famous people have problems is because of gossip. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your every move scrutinized. To have everything you ever order in a restaurant published in some tabloid somewhere. To have things blown up into some big quivering mess - like, if you pop a Claritin because your allergies are bugging you, the news stories come out implying you're on some kind of illicit pills.

It's hard for celebrities - although I suspect on some level they have to prepare themselves for that, being in the public eye - but I suspect it's even tougher for everyday folks - because you don't EXPECT it. I never expect the stuff that I hear is being passed about people I care about (and I find it upsetting even though I'm not involved). I can't imagine what you could do to clear your name after some kind of rumor about how you treat your kids or what you do when you're away from your spouse comes up. I guess you just kind of have to ignore it, or ask your friends to politely squash the misinformation when they hear it.

But it's just so damn petty, and so unnecessary. People who do that need to find a hobby. Something other than trying to disrupt other's lives to make themselves look good.

People baffle me, part n of x

Got an e-mail today from the campus police.

We now must lock up all the classrooms as soon as we are done teaching in them (unless there's another faculty member waiting at the door to go in and teach.)

Why? Two overhead projectors have been stolen from classrooms in the past week.

I'm sorry but WHAT? What possible use could a criminal have for one of those things? What possible street value do they have? They're big, and they're clunky, and as far as I know they don't contain any parts or chemicals that could be used in the manufacturing of controlled substances or weapons. I don't think pawn shops will take them.

But people will steal them anyway.

I don't like to think it's people stealing them to use in their classroom at a school, but I suppose that's possible.

So, once again, the erosion of the freedoms of law-abiding people continues apace. (And yes, I do think it's kind of an irritant to have to lock every damn classroom every time I'm done using it. Some of the classrooms have faulty locks and it takes five minutes of jiggery-pokery to get them to lock with my key. Perhaps I should tell the campus police about that...)

Because some idiot wanted a couple of free projectors.

The thing that irritates me is this - I have students doing independent research. I often let them into a lab to work on their own. If the way the e-mail was phrased was meant to be applied strictly to the letter, either I am not permitted to let them use the labs any more or I must be in there babysitting them every moment that they use them. And nuts to that. I'm getting really sick of all of us being treated like criminals because of that 1% or less of the human race who can't play by the rules.

(Of course, a SIMPLER solution would be to chain the things to the walls - like at my old school - but that's got it's own problems. Not the least of which is that it's kind of demoralizing to teach in a room where everything looks like the pens at the bank.)(

not angry

I haven't lately talked about politics much on here. I think it's because I'm coming to such a strong distaste for political discourse that I'd rather escape and talk about other stuff.

I was reminded of this this afternoon. In the building where I work, all our offices are down one long hall. You can hear what other people are saying in their offices, if they are talking at all loudly if they have their doors open.

And a couple of my colleagues were talking. About how bad off the country was, how the wal-mart-ization of our nation was proceeding apace, how soon there'd be limitations on what you could say or write, how the economy was screwed and everyone was gonna die, etc., etc.

And you know? Not really my experience. Sure, we have some problems. Every nation does. A lot of people are having money problems right now and I sympathize with them - especially with those who got there through no fault of their own (job losses or whatever). Hell, I even sympathize with the people who spent like fools and are now in serious debt. I'm not gonna help 'em out, but I feel for them.

But you know? I'm not doing badly at all. I have a good job. I get an easily-live-on-able paycheck at the end of each month. Granted, I'm frugal, I don't go on fancy vacations or eat out very much or drive a very new car or have an iPod or an iPhone. I don't spend much on clothes - it's an unusual month I spend $100 on stuff to wear. But I do okay. And I'm happy. I have enough money to put some away for the future, enough to buy my spinach and Laughing Cow Lite! cheese and tomato soup and canned beans. I have enough to buy a book if I see one that I want. I don't feel too pinched by my digital cable and home internet subscription.

So I can't really feel anger on my own behalf at how the economy's going. I can't feel - and think it would be wrong to feel - that I am somehow being personally cheated in all of this. I'm grateful for my career - as I said, it pays well. And moreover, it's interesting. I do something a little different every day. And I have a certain level of security - tenure means that something would have to go seriously wrong for me to be let go, and that seriously-wrong would almost certainly be something I'd see coming far down the road. (And even if it weren't? I have some savings. And if worse came to worse, my parents would take me back in. Or my brother and sister in law would take me in. People have got my back even if my back doesn't need getting right now).

So for me, feeling angry about what's going on...well, it seems kind of wasteful. Like I'd be getting my blood pressure up for no good reason. One thing I think I need to work on, considering that my dad has an arrhythmia and high blood pressure, and my younger brother was briefly on blood pressure meds before he quit a job he hated, is to limit things that unnecessarily stress or upset me, that screw with my heart and vascular system. I need to work on NOT screaming "*sshole! *sshole! *sshole!" in my car at the guy who is taking too long to park at the wal-mart. I need to work on letting go, on shrugging and saying, "So I'll be 5 minutes later getting home, big whoop."

Anger can be a useful emotion but only when it motivates you to fix something that's wrong or to correct some injustice. Getting angry because one of the teachers at your kids' school is unfair and being a jerk to your kid, so you then go have a conference with the teacher and iron things out - that's useful. Getting angry because you see someone mistreating horses in your neighborhood and calling Animal Welfare on them and getting the horses moved to a better place to live - that's useful.

But it seems to me sitting around bitching about the state of the nation - when you're not going to actually do anything (and I'd say there's little we can do, concretely, about the state of the nation) is kind of useless. I'd rather go out and pick up trash in my neighborhood because at least I can drive down the street the next day and feel good because I made the street cleaner than it was.

I think that's maybe fundamentally it for me: I'd rather feel good than feel bad. I'd rather do something, even something small, than talk about what's wrong. I'd rather feel like I can do something, anything, to make things better - even if it's a tiny little thing like picking up trash on my street. The big bad stuff I can't really do much about (other than, you know, pray) I just generally don't let affect me. (I really honestly don't worry that much about Iran getting the bomb. There's nothing I can do other than voting for the person I think is most likely to be tough with them and not let them bully their neighbors).

Maybe I'm being stupid. I don't know. I do know it seems that some of my friends are going around awfully beaten down, awfully angry, awfully upset over things they have little control over. And it makes me not want to associate with them when they're in that mood, because it rubs off on me. I don't like walking around feeling paranoid. Feeling like "they're out to get me." Feeling like nothing I can do ever will improve anything because everything is so screwed up so hopelessly that it will never be RIGHT again.

Another, very campus-specific form of this pessimism I hear is this: "The students we get are lazy/unprepared/stupid and it's only getting worse. Woe is us! In five years they won't even be able to read any more!" I don't THINK that's true. And even if it is, there's not a heck of a lot I can do about it. I'd rather focus on the funny kind smart students I have, teach to them, and tell myself "Ever since Aristotle people have been complaining about the up and coming generation being the end of civilization and it's not happened yet; it probably won't happen this generation."

Maybe I'm being delusional but it gets me through the day. I'd rather look for the bright side than always be in DOOOM and GLOOOOM mode.

So maybe I do kind of withdraw a little. I'd rather spend my time laughing at the peregrinations of the Pickwick Club, or flipping through my quilting books going "I want to make that one next! No, I want to make THAT one next!" or working on my garden or writing a research paper or trying to come up with some new way to make what I'm teaching interesting to the students.

petty pet peeve

Or maybe not so petty.

One of my colleagues is ANGRY. It is, apparently (the best I can determine from his ranting) because he effed something up that is going to negatively impact one of the benefits he receives.

He is stamping up and down the hall, cursing, and saying stuff he probably is best advised not to be saying when students are around.

I've closed my door because I'm tired of it. He gets like this maybe once a month. And it's always the same: some little, potentially fixable thing becomes this GIANT MASSIVE HUGACIOUS PROBLEM that comes about SOLELY because the bureaucracy is doing it to SCREW HIM OVER. And him only.

Oh, I've told him: dude, it's BUREAUCRACY. Bureaucracy, by definition, is stupid. It has stupid rules. You just kind of have to roll with it sometimes.

But no. It's always someone's FAULT and it's always done to thwart his happiness and well being.

And the other thing I've done, that I'm tired of doing and will do no more: I offered a suggestion. Call the folks in HR, I said. They're happy to help, I said. I bet they can resolve this for you in two shakes of a lamb's tail. (Because the minor benefit-related issues I've had? HR HAS resolved them snappy fast. And they're pleasant about it. And they always act like it's no effort at all for them, and it's something I shouldn't have to deal with, that it's their job to fix it.)

But no, he won't listen. I guess he'd rather be angry, rather walk around cursing and suggesting this is somehow Bush's fault (but then, isn't everything, these days?). And how it will only get worse in the future.

And you know? Crap happens. This is extremely little crap, at least from what I've seen of it. And yeah, I realize, we're all carrying heavy loads and what is "roll with it" to me is "big massive unsolvable problem" to someone else (and perhaps sometimes vice versa), but I'm really tired of his TONE and his CURSING and his stomping around yelling while I'm trying to work.

(And no, saying "Dude, step off before you have an aneurysm," even said in the politest and gentlest of terms, does not help. He's one of those people who gets MAD and who can't be placated. So I just close my door.)

Petty Pet Peeves

You've been warned.

Sometimes I think I should (at least temporarily) retitle the blog "People Irritate Me." (Or maybe start a whole additional blog for that). Because periodically, people do.

Here are a couple of today's winners:

1. The young lady sitting in her car, parked at the curb, kind of blocking where I was going to have to pull out, who was *talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend who was standing on the porch of the house she was parked in front of*.

Okay, absent some kind of weird contagious disease (They don't hang up Quarantine signs any more, I guess) or some kind of bizarre Romeo and Juliet situation, that is just wrong. Park your damn car in his damn drive and go talk to him face to face. No, I do not care if you are having an argument. No, I do not care if you are breaking up with him - in fact, if you are, it is far, far more honorable to do it to his face rather than to sit there in your car and tell him whatever gentle lie you are using to let him down.

But the worst part? Chickie, I was CAREFULLY backing out. I saw you. I was making an extra-special effort to avoid bumping your car even though you were in a singularly inconvenient spot for that particular area of angle parking. And I had the added complication of someone sitting "behind" where I was pulling out, wanting my space.

So you WERE NOT JUSTIFIED in honking your horn at me. I saw you; you were in the way. I'm sorry if it makes your life so terribly inconvenient that I want to go home at 4 pm and lead my life and do not prefer to wait for you to get done talking to your Romeo. But sheesh.

2. I have a student in one of my classes who apparently wears a Bluetooth piece 24/7. Now, I know I'm really being petty here, because he seems like a nice guy and a decent student, but the earpiece bugs the crap out of me. It makes me think of one of those Borg implants that people on Star Trek got when they'd been assimilated. And it also makes me wonder - does he always have that thing turned on? Is what's being said in class being broadcast somewhere? For someone's amusement, maybe?

I don't know. I know I'm a cranky old technophobe but I really don't like those Bluetooth earpieces. (I've also nearly gotten run over more than once in the Wal-mart by people sprinting through the store, talking to their Invisible Friend and totally oblivious to the Visible People they are nearly plowing into. And I am not a small woman! It's pretty hard to miss me.)

3. The whole campaign mess. I'm just tired of it. Tired of hearing all the damn minutia about what John McCain ate for breakfast or where Barack Obama went jogging. Tired of all the opining, all the projecting, all the body-English, all the punditry - all of it. Wake me up when we're down to two candidates. (But please, God - don't let one of those be Huckabee. Just, please. I know he considers himself one of Yours and all, but please...don't make me have to consider him as a choice. Especially don't let it be an Edwards v. Huckabee ticket. Because, despite what I threatened, I really DON'T want to have to write in "Wilma Flintstone" this year. Thanks much.)

What I'd really like? For the writers' strike to end and for us to get some good, entertaining, non-"reality"-based television to watch for a while. We need something to take our minds off of Bill Clinton's hissy-fit meltdowns while campaigning for his wife or Romney's big big hair. And some kind of crazy sitcom or good drama would do just that.

4. Several people I know who are permanently aggrieved about everything (as opposed to me, who is temporarily aggrieved about human nature right now). I mean, seriously: you could comment that it was a nice day out, and you'd hear either an argument as to why it actually WASN'T, or a long diatribe about how global climate change is responsible and we really shouldn't be happy about it. Or you show off, say, a new pair of shoes you bought and think are cool, and they begin asking you if they were made by fair-trade labor and how much of the earth's resources you think they used, etc., etc. It's like they can't be happy about anything and can't stand to see another person happy.

wee little etiquette lesson

So, I gave two exams today. And because my life is now officially Teh Crazy, I had a meeting that started before the first exam finished (I'm on another department's search committee and it was moderately important I was at the meeting - they were doing conference-calls with the references of one of the two top candidates; the next set is Friday).

So the secretary was kind enough to take over for me.

When I came back - less than 1/2 hour before my next exam, thanks to one reference who rambled ON and ON and ON (oh, and here's another wee little etiquette lesson: if you are called to be a reference for someone who has applied for a job, don't talk about YOURSELF, okay? The search committee is probably pretty pressed for time and doesn't want to hear it. I know we were all making those rolling-hand, "wrap it up, wrap it up" gestures as he talked).

Well, anyway, I raced in the door, thinking, "Maybe I can machine grade the first final AND gulp down the yogurt and grapes that is passing for my lunch today in the next 20 minutes." I stopped off to see the secretary to see if everything went okay.

Um, not totally okay.

One girl in the class - well, she's not really a "girl" as she is married and has kids - who showed up late (and cursed when I asked her whether she had a machine-grading form, and then left to get one) and didn't hear my announcement was kind of snotty to the secretary. "Well, then, when is she going to have our exams graded?!?!" she demanded.

This is someone - I described her to the secretary and she agreed it was the person - who has been demanding All. Semester. Long. (And she doesn't even have the grades to back it up. She got a D for the semester, and that just barely).

I went off to my next exam.

At the end of that, one of the students (the last one to finish because she's very meticulous) came up to me and said, "Might you have the finals graded by tomorrow morning? I really want to know if I hung on to my A."

I had been grading their finals as they were handed in (not the best practice, I admit, but I'm so pressed for time this week. And by that point there were so few people and they were so scattered I know no one was cheating). I was almost done with the exams that had already come in, so I told her: come back to my office in a half-hour and I'll see if I have it done.

See, she asked politely.

So I had the two sets of exams - I ran the machine-graded ones through the machine quickly, and then had the grades for the other class' exams. And I thought: I gave the machine-graded exam first; by rights I should enter its grades first and total up the grades for that class first.

But then I thought - but that person was snotty to my secretary. Theirs can wait.

So I did the exams for the class with the student who asked politely first. (And she did come back, and was happy to learn that yes, she hung on to her A.)

The thing that so rubbed me the wrong way about that one student is this: she was one of those people who acted like the universe revolved around her. She acted like she was my only student (not by a long shot, honey. You're not even the only student in that class, and that class is not my only, nor is it even my main, priority). And yet - she failed to hand in a lot of assignments. She showed up LATE to the final without a vital piece of equipment (the machine-grading form). And I had announced that several times when she was in class (heh. One of my friends said, "You should have said, 'Oh, I guess I forgot to announce it to YOU when I announced it to everyone else'") and it was on the final-review sheet.

So you know? Acting entitled but being kind of sloppy about how you "do business"? Not a good combination at all.

At least - she got a D. Which means she's done with that class. (D is technically passing, here.) And since she's not majoring in my field, I will almost certainly never have to deal with her again. Oh, I'll have to deal with others LIKE her, but at least I won't have to deal with HER.

My night, last night

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon, really tired, when I remembered why.

This was my night last night:

Neighbor's dog: "bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark. Bark. Barrrrrrrk. Whine."

then about 30 seconds of silence.

Then: Neighbor's dog: "bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark. Bark. Barrrrrrrk. Whine."
Neighbor's dog: "bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark. Bark. Barrrrrrrk. Whine."
Neighbor's dog: "bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark. Bark. Barrrrrrrk. Whine."
Neighbor's dog: "bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark. Bark. Barrrrrrrk. Whine."

(I could write a GOTO loop to basically give the full effect).

It's also been HOT here again - and that is WRONG. I had to get up and put the ceiling fan on.

And then I got up and dug out a set of the earplugs I bought for traveling. I hate using them at home because I'm always fearful that if my house catches fire, I won't hear the alarm in time. But sometimes you just have to balance the minute risk of being immolated against the pain of not sleeping.

They helped, but not as much as you'd think.

I don't know what to do about the dog. I am not 100% sure which neighbor it is - whether it's the one directly north of me (the cop and his family), or the renters across the street from them (they have a puppy they often stake out in the yard during the day) or Domestic Dispute Couple in the house behind me (I call them that because just about every time I've been out in my backyard this summer, they've been yelling and cursing at each other. If it's their dog, there's probably nothing I can do, because I suspect it's ill-advised to go over to a couple of people who have no problem with using the "m.f." word at each other (and the man using the "c." word to the woman) in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday and ask them if they'd consider taking their dog indoors because when it's out at night, the barking keeps me awake.)

I'm kind of to the point where I can't do much more - I am INSIDE my house, with the windows shut, with the ceiling fan running, with a white-noise machine running. And I can still hear the blasted thing. (I tried turning the white-noise machine up, but as soon as it's high enough to cover the barking, it's so loud I can't sleep).

I don't know. I hate to say it but if this sort of thing continues, my only solution may be to put my house on the market and buy a couple acres out in the country, build a house smackdab in the middle of my land, and hire a builder who knows well how to soundproof.

But why - WHY - are people so inconsiderate? If you can hear your dog, surely other people can hear it, too? (Yes, I know, maybe the people were out for the night and had to put the dog out in case it had to pee). But I'm such a bad sleeper to begin with that any kind of "irregular" noise (as opposed to something like a white-noise generator where the noise is steady) keeps me from sleeping - boom cars, people yelling outside, dogs.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. One summer I had to move into my guest bedroom because of loud neighbors on one side (I'd do that now, except my neighbors on that side...it's two men and one of the guys' wives...have got a band started up. So far it sounds like the only thing they know how to play are the first seven chords of "Smoke on the Water" but what they lack in virtuosity they make up in volume and repetition).

I think this may be an extension of what I am now calling "Living-room Bubble" syndrome, where people think there's a huge bubble around them where ever they are, and whatever they do doesn't affect other people, or the effect it has on them doesn't matter - kind of like the loud cell-phone talkers with the TMI conversations.

People bug me sometimes.

a realization

For the longest time, I have been bugged when people "flaunt" their green-ness. I mean, the people who walk around being kind of ostentatious about saving energy or not using resources or stuff like that.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm all for conservation. There's a lot of stuff I do myself. But I did not buy a canvas sack emblazoned "This Is Not A Plastic Bag" and take it to the grocery and insist that the sacker put all my groceries in there, as I wave it around casually for other people to see.

And it hit me this morning why that behavior bugs me.

It's a parallel, in my mind at least, of this:

"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

It's also like the comment about "when you fast, don't go around all longfaced about how horrible you feel, that's just showing off" that is made elsewhere in the New Testament.

The people I deal with who are selfconsciously green, though, tend to brag about it, rather than walking around all sad-faced. It's like "Gee, I don't even MISS using hot water!" or stuff like that. And I kind of roll my eyes and go, whatever.

I mean - when I was a kid, my dad was hollering at us (this was during the energy crisis of the 70s) to turn off lights in rooms when we left them, and to turn off the water while we were brushing our teeth, stuff like that - a lot of the little ingrained habits that came out of my dad's frugality are stuff that some people tout as "the new green."

And it does kind of bug me when people play "who drives the fewest miles" poker. It's not useful or helpful and it does kind of create irritation in others.

Do you see them? Do you hear them?

I took this weekend off and went for a day of boutique-type shopping. About an hour south of me there's a small city that prides itself on its "historic downtown with unique shops." There are many antique shops, and a couple of quilt shops, and a tiny yarn shop, and lots of shops selling what one of my friends derides as "stuff you don't really need" - scented candles, hard-milled soap, fancy keychains, that kind of thing.

(True, maybe you don't REALLY need it. But I like the hard-milled soap. I'd much rather use a nice bar of soap made by hand by someone who is interested in color and botanical extracts and such than a bar of Ivory that I can get 3 for $4 at the wal-mart but that will go all mushy in a few weeks).

I like going there and shopping for several reasons:

1. It is AWAY. I mean, it's out of town for me - if someone "needs" me for something, well, they just have to keep "needing" me until I get home. Or do it themselves. (I keep my cell phone turned off for just that reason).

2. It's nicer stuff than is sold locally. Oh, I understand the whole economics of it: I live in an economically-depressed area. Most folks where I live live on a stricter budget than I do, a budget that doesn't necessarily allow for bars of hard-milled soap or $1-a-piece chocolate truffles. But the thing is, in Wal-Mart-land, so many things kind of get lowest-common-denominatorized that sometimes, it's almost a little depressing. (I know: again, I have a friend who claims that "if you can't get it at wal-mart, you don't need it." Well, I suppose again, it depends on how stringently you define NEED. Technically, one doesn't NEED toilet paper as long as one has some leaves or an old copy of the Sears-Roebuck catalog. And one doesn't NEED drinking glasses, as one could drink water straight from the tap or milk straight from the carton and buy all other beverages in single-serving cans).

3. Did I mention that there's a yarn shop? And two quilt shops? I have none of that locally - my only local crafts-supply option is the aisle-and-a-half at the wal-mart, and that cants heavily to scrapbooking these days. (Scrapbooking is just one of those things I do not get. It's not that I think people who scrapbook are silly or are wasting their time or anything, it's just...it doesn't appeal to me. And that lack of appeal, I have to admit, extends to my being sat down by one of the scrapbookers and made to look at months' worth of family pictures, mounted in clever and cute ways.) So it's a real joy to get out and see what's out there, what new products are available. I suspect the way I feel is kind of like how the pioneer wife felt when she FINALLY managed to persuade her husband to hook up the buckboard and take the whole family into town to the dry-goods store.

I always wind up buying more than I "need," because I tell myself: and it might be a long time before you get back here. Again - I bet that's a bit of what the pioneer women felt, except they would doubtless have been on a far stricter budget.

That said - I find that more and more, my enjoyment of taking a day out is a bit...intruded upon...by the way some people act.

More and more, I see people who act as if they believe either
a. they are at home in their living rooms and all that is around them is merely a virtual, online experience

b. they are in some kind of a bubble and no one else can see or hear what they're doing

or

c. They are the Most Important Person in the World and so it doesn't matter what those other shlubs think or feel; being the Most Important Person entitles them to act however they want.

We have our own version of Valley Girls around here. I'm not sure what else to call them. They're typically very "priveliged" women - usually they're what some deride as the "idle rich." Trophy wives, some of them. Their days seem to largely be filled with shopping, decorating and re-decorating their houses, going out for lunch with their friends, and...I'm not sure what else because I only ever see them out shopping and in restaurants.

The ones I saw Saturday were no exception. Cell phone plastered to the ear, they barrel through antique store after antique store, gabbing away to their invisible friend (usually it's some litany of complaints about husband/kids/gardener/housekeeper/neighbors or an ongoing discussion of how they CAN'T find the thing they WANT. Or how some store had the NERVE to have the thing they wanted, but have a SOLD tag on it...that some other patron got to it first).

I don't know. This behavior always strikes me as strange because when I'm in an antique shop (or even an "things you don't really need" shop), I like to slow down. I like to walk through, paying attention to the things, considering the ones that catch my eye. Is that wall-shelf just what I need? $65 is a lot of money to me but it's a cool-looking shelf. No, wait, on closer inspection it's kind of roughly cut; poor workmanship's covered up with a coat of white paint. Okay, move on....

For me, when I get to go shopping like that, it's a whole day thing. It's an escape. I'm usually alone (and NO, that doesn't bother me. I LIKE shopping alone). Rarely, I'm with a single close friend or with my mother. But at any rate - the point of the day is looking at stuff, considering stuff, enjoying the stuff.

Watching the Southern Valley Girls (and I nearly got run over by one of them; she was walking fast and not watching where she was going), I get the feeling that for them, shopping is kind of like me going to the wal-mart at the end of the day when I realize I'm out of milk and I need it: get in, get what you need, get out.

It's very much "hunter" as opposed to "gatherer" and that strikes me as strange behavior for an antique shop.

The Southern Valley Girls are also the same people who SPEAK. VERY. LOUD. AND. STACCATO. to the Hispanic lady behind the counter of the sandwich shop - they assume she doesn't speak English, when in fact, if they had paid attention to her interaction with previous customers in line, they'd see that she speaks English at least as well as they do.

Oh, and they keep up the conversation on their cell phones while they're ordering.

(I'm sorry, but I consider that the height of rudeness: if someone is waiting on you - like at a lunch counter, or a cosmetics counter, or at a checkout stand, HANG UP THE BLASTED PHONE. There is a fellow human being in front of you. Acknowledge them. Even if checkout-counter people are surly sometimes. They deserve at least your attention. Your invisible friend will wait for you.)

And, still on their cell phones, they sit down - two or three at a table - still on the cell to someone else.

It's really bizarre to me. I suppose it's because I don't LIKE talking on the phone (even as a teenager I didn't talk on the phone much; I never "got" the marathon gab-fests with girl friends or with the guy you were "going with." Although actually, I think most of those consisted of both of you just sitting there holding the phone, not knowing what to say.) But I look at it and I'm like: you have two friends in front of you, and you can't get off the horn with your other friend long enough to talk with them? Why even meet for lunch, then?

I also got to hear an awful lot of one-sided conversations: again, mostly complaints about husband/boyfriends. (And yet, people pity me because I'm single).

I really DO NOT UNDERSTAND the need to be on the cell phone for that long. I know I don't have anything that interesting to say - I can barely eke out a 20 minute conversation on the phone with my PARENTS once a week, for goodness sake. And I'd suspect they're more interested in what's going on in my life than most friends would.

But the biggest thing that gets me is the whole "person in a bubble" phenomenon - I was jostled, stepped on, nearly run into - all in the span of a few hours. And it wasn't that crowded - it was sort of a rainy day and there weren't as many people out as there often are. But it's getting, more and more, like people are so intent on the person who's speaking in their ear that they fail to notice that they're bumping into another person on the sidewalk. (Or maybe they don't consider it; maybe the person on the sidewalk isn't a person to them?)

It makes me kind of sad - it's like we are becoming a nation of navel-gazers, people who can't see past the tips of our noses. I wonder what would happen if someone had a heart attack, or a stroke, or fainted, or something, on the street? I like to think that someone would immediately step up and get help for the person, but looking at some of the people I saw Saturday, I almost feel like at least some of them would sigh in annoyance (again, to their Invisible Friend) and roll their eyes as they stepped over the stricken person.

I wonder if there's a bigger connection with what's going on in society to this - the fact that it's increasingly hard to have any kind of discussion of a controverisal topic without someone becoming mean-spirited about it and stooping to ad hominem attacks rather then trying and debating the IDEAS on their merits. Or of kids who grow up with basically feral manners, who don't understand the importance of saying "excuse me" or "thank you" or not making hurtful remarks to people (I know, I know: "that's kids." They've done it for ages. But it seems to be getting meaner lately).

I don't like the thought of us becoming a nation of islands unto ourselves, where we are all tiny tinpot dictators of all we survey, where we justify rudeness to others because they are "other," and where, instead of stopping and trying to enjoy whatever is in our vicinity, we are so focused on our litany of complaints to our Invisible Friend speaking in our ears, that we don't see the birds singing or the flowers blooming or the artwork in the shops or all of the wonderful things that surround us, if we just LOOKED.

What part of "I don't want to hear it" don't you get?

So, one of my colleagues comes by my office.

"I have some news about Dick Cheney" he says (this is someone who has ALL the snarky jokes from ALL the snarky "comedy news" programs out there and who shares them with all and sundry, even those who don't appreciate them.)

I put up my hand. "I'm really stressed out and busy right now and I'm avoiding the news as much as I can." I respond.

So, he keeps going:

"He had a blood clot! They gave him rat poison! He didn't die! So I guess I was wrong about him! hahahahahaha!"

I looked VERY COLDLY at him and quietly said: "my dad takes 'rat poison.' It's called Warfarin. It keeps him from dying."

Guy was totally unabashed by it. He's one of those "Everything's a big joke that I disagree with, and everything's deadly serious that I agree with" types. I mean, I like him as a person - but his politics and his tendency to think no joke is in poor enough taste when it involves a politician on the right just wears on me.

I don't appreciate the kind of constant mean humor. Look. I don't like Cheney that much - I wish he were retired instead of VP. But - to make a joke about his having a blood clot - that's just really in poor taste. (My mother's best friend, several years ago, died of a blood clot. They didn't give her the 'rat poison' fast enough, I guess.)

I'm still sort of sad and raw-feeling and I just want to withdraw into myself and work on stuff without talking to anyone for a few days.

I probably should have reamed the guy for his poor-taste joke, but I just don't have the energy for that kind of fight right now.

entitled people

First off: Dave, you're probably right. I grew up in a Northern state and so we had both Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. (I don't remember getting them off from school but I do remember "special topics" on those days related to the presidents).

The state I lived in prior to the one I live in now even had Casimir Pulaski Day. (Hah. I wonder how many people - even IN that state - under the age of, say, 30 [maybe 40] know who Pulaski was?)

(Perhaps that should be the condition for getting the day off: if you can name two important facts about the person whose day it is.)

****

I've been watching a little bit of the Jet Blue balls-up. I admit, I don't feel like I have the whole story here and doubtless someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what it looks like to me:

Big, bad storm, worse than expected. Airline had to cancel a lot of flights. Bad communication after the storm exacerbated the problem.

And you know? A lot of it is what we used to call "An act of God" before mentioning "God" got you marked as some kind of possibly-dangerous religious nutcase theocrat.

But I watched coverage of people...just random people in the airport...talking about it. And granted: probably a lot of them were tired. And a lot of them were fed up. And a lot of them were worried about getting to their destinations.

But: almost to a man, the people I saw interviewed seemed to have two components to their attitudes:

1. "This is the WORST THING EVER that could EVER HAPPEN!"
2. "Jet Blue is doing this SPECIFICALLY to thwart my desires and damage me!"

And there was a lot of talk about "never" using Jet Blue again, or about suing, or about how their offer to fly the person to their destination AND THEN GIVE THEM A FREE TICKET for their troubles wasn't good enough.

And just so you know: I have my share of bad travel stories. I've sat on planes that were "stranded" on the tarmac for many hours - in Hawaii, in midsummer. (And the airline started giving away free mai tais to people on board. And at the time I was still underage. And they didn't seem to be able to scare up a 7-up or something for me. But whatever. We eventually got underway). I have been on trains that were 12+ hours late, thanks to bad weather (ice storm) and a freight derailing ahead of them on the tracks. And yeah, it sucks to be stuck on a train for hours and hours and hours. But you know? It wasn't Amtrak's fault. If they could have magically made the problem go away and been on time, they would have done it. I still use Amtrak despite the occasional latenesses.

Bad stuff happens. You just have to live with it sometimes.

Now, if the engineer had stopped the train, and come walking through the cars, demanding that each and every person onboard pay him an additional $50 in order to get to their destination, then there'd be a problem. Then there'd be something worth calling Amtrak and complaining over. But not over a Union Pacific train going wheels-up on the track ahead of us. No one has control over that.

And you know, in my more pessimistic moments, I think about what may eventually bring this country down. And when I see behavior like this, I'm inclined to think that it won't be terrorists, or some crackpot dictator somewhere with a nuke, or someone unleashing smallpox or Ebola or bird flu, or even the rift between Red and Blue. No, we will die as a nation because we reach a critical mass of people who think that every single thing that goes wrong in their life is designed and done SPECIFICALLY to hurt them, and that they are deserving of MAJOR compensation for those hurts. That the only possible reason something bad could happen is because someone has it in for them.

I don't know. I have two responses to people like that:

1. Priorities, people! This is really and truly not THE WORST THING EVER. Most of the people interviewed were going to Cancun or Cozumel or somewhere like that. They weren't mostly flying home to see a dying relative. They weren't mostly on their way to Mayo Clinic with their sick child to try to find the right treatment. They were going on vacation.

And, I know: I hate the whole "my tragedy is worse than your tragedy so STHU*" game that some people like to play. I realize that we all have problems.

But. I got a phone call last night about a couple who are friends of mine. The man has been battling lung cancer. Well, he is back in the hospital, this time on oxygen, and they've called in the kids. (Meaning: he is most likely dying).

(*STHU = "Shut the Hell up." A slightly more polite version of a phrase that usually features an F)

It's hard for me to work up a lot of sympathy for someone who was thwarted in their plans to go lie on the beach in Cancun when I think of Mr. F. fighting for every breath.

I also have several days this week - yesterday was one - where I am involved somehow with work, volunteer work, or classes for 14 hours. I don't know about you but a 14 hour day is too long for me to be able to spend a lot of my energy feeling sorry about some guy stomping around an airport in New York.

The other thing is - and I've said this before: it bothers me to see people acting as if the sort of random junk that happens in life is PLANNED, that it is happening specifically to thwart their desires and happiness.

I work with someone who takes that attitude on occasion and it is simply a very draining thing to deal with. It's like: Do you live in an alternate reality from me?

And I realize: I am not perfect. There are times I fall into the trap of "poor me" or of feeling almost as if that jerk who pulled into the last parking place, coming around the wrong way, ahead of me, did it specifically to make me late for my meeting, unhappy, flustered, and angry. No. He did it because he saw a parking place. He did it maybe because he's a little bit rude and doesn't ascribe to the rule that if you see someone aiming for a parking place, you let them have it. But he didn't do it because it was ME in the other car.

I come to recognize that eventually. Or I make up stories to make myself feel better: that person who cut me off on the highway was on their way home from work because his wife just called and said their kid has a fever of 104*, and he's worried as hell, and he wasn't paying attention. Or the woman who pushed in front of me in line has less time than I do to get her groceries and by stepping back graciously, I'm doing a "mitzvah" somehow. For me, that's easier than getting angry over all the little slights of everyday life.

But I've seen an awful lot of people lately who seem to take the attitude that if something goes wrong - or even, if something's not 100% perfect according to their expectations - that they are gravely wronged, and they deserve some kind of compensation. I see this in students all the time: the lab took too much work. They had to use a calculator! A week isn't long enough to do a short homework assignment! The class is lecture and there's a shortage of movies and jokes and entertainment and breaks and the teacher doesn't bring donuts to class every day! The book doesn't have an index!

And on, and on.

And I don't know. I look at that kind of thing and I see a fundamental attitude of ingratitude. I see people taking all the good stuff they have for granted, and not seeing anything but the one tiny thing that's not to their liking. Rather like the Princess and the Pea, they can only fixate on the tiny tiny bump in the mattress and are NOT grateful for the fact that they are out of the rain, they have been fed, they are safe, and they have a bed.

I suppose I'm frustrated by that attitude because I was taught early on that there are simply some things in life that you kind of shrug over and deal with. That it's a mark of maturity to be able to let little petty crap slide off you.

(And I will admit: it makes me kind of mad that I let little petty crap slide, and then there are other people who get rewarded for complaining about the very same kind of little petty crap.)

I think, as a nation, we all need to re-learn the Serenity Prayer. (Though, I don't know - in this day and age, promoting anything called a "prayer" might be difficult).

You know it:

God grant me the courage to change the things I can
The serenity to accept the things I cannot
And the WISDOM to know the difference.

The key, I think, for us moderns is the knowing of the difference. Because I see far, far too many people who are insisting on a change when they should be accepting.

(And yeah - I know - it was originally written for dealing with more personal aspects of one's life than flights being cancelled. But I think it applies to those kind of situations too: Is there a real injustice being done? Then do something about it. Is it an "Act of God"? Let it slide.

Again: I think there are far too many people who take the kind of random bad stuff that happens in life as a personal slap in the face, and who get all injured and huffy when perhaps a more useful response is to shrug and say, "Sh*t happens." And maybe think of the things that COULD go wrong but that did not. And maybe be thankful that we live in a country where, for example, air travel is comparatively safe. Or where we have the freedom to travel. Or where we even have the freedom to sit around and bitch about things, even when they're kind of petty things)

And you know? About that "Sh*t happens"? Several years ago I saw a bumper sticker that I thought was a good response to that statement. (I am not a big fan of bumper stickers but I liked this one).

It said: "Blessings happen."

And perhaps, that's a juxtaposition of the two fundamental attitudes people can take: in life, you can look for the sh*t, or you can look for the blessings. And I'm afraid sometimes far too many people are ignoring the blessings and focusing on the sh*t.

(And yeah, yeah, I know the story about the optimist and the room full of manure. You don't need to remind me of it, if you're one of those "always looking for sh*t" types.)