October 23, 2015
I recently removed Jack and the Beanstalk, the pop-up version that we have, from the bookshelf. It’s now a chew toy for LB because what a terrible story! What are we teaching our kids??
Let’s see:
Dependence: Jack doesn’t do exactly as he’s told, exercising his judgment, and his mom throws the beans out instead of hearing him out.
Sneakery: When the beans grow and he goes exploring, he breaks into the giant’s home. Excuse me, just because you’re in a strange place doesn’t make breaking and entering OK!
Thievery: Then he decides to steal a goose that lays golden eggs. Child…
Destruction and Murder: Having nearly escaped with his ill gotten gains, he decides to deal with the righteous pursuing giant by cutting down the stalk and killing the giant!
They live happily ever after with the golden goose.
No, no, and no! These are not virtues that deserve to be rewarded with wealth!
Then again, I guess that would be a useful analogy to explaining much of Wall Street, wouldn’t it? Maybe I should rescue that book.
***
We’re big fans of If you give a mouse a cookie, not least because I am that mouse, so we were excited to pick up the other books in that series. I was excited there were other books in the series. Then we read them. And we read them again. And it occurred to us there was something not quite right about them.
I started to think that these particular stories are just cautionary tales about the kinds of friends who you don’t want to have. One day I heard PiC mutter: Did the author just have a bunch of freeloading friends that she was writing about, disguised as these animals?! GET YOUR OWN MUFFIN MIX, MOOSE!
Apparently if you give a moose a muffin, the great honkin jerk eats all your muffins! Then he wants more, but instead of offering to get them, you have to go to the store?? But he wants to come along, for kicks, I guess, so he has to borrow a sweater. And then proceeds to make a huge mess in the house that he barely helps to clean up.
The whole book sounds like that kid is being used and pushed around. At least when the mouse is getting a cookie, he’s asking for things that make sense and aren’t entirely gimme gimme gimme. You want to sweep up? Ok. Wash the floors? Have at it. He wants to draw a picture? Sure! Of course he needs Scotch tape to put it up, why not?
But that Moose, man. He eats all your food, then he makes a mess of the house, and then he asks for more muffins. But GUESS WHAT. You never went to the store did you, Moose? Because you were too busy freeloading!
And that pig…. Never mind, we’d be here forever. (But the number of pictures that pig takes, and the stamps she uses! Are you kidding me? Polaroids are expensive!)
***
We hope that LB learns that if your friends expect you to do All The Work, and provide All The Things, that’s an uneven relationship and they’re probably not the best friends to have. And saying No is not a bad thing.
Also, don’t give a moose any food ever. Have you seen those things? (Although really, I would just have pulled over and waited that moose out. From her perspective, you’re stalking them!)
October 30, 2012
Hat tip to Savvy Working Gal for sharing this link and story of people, Redditors in this case, behaving in poor form, posting an image of Balpreet Kaur, a Sikh woman, with an ambiguous message on Reddit without her knowledge and letting the forums speculate wildly, ranging from comments of disgust at her to railing at each other.
She responded calmly and gracefully:
“Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. I actually didn’t know about this until one of my friends told on facebook. If the OP wanted a picture, they could have just asked and I could have smiled 🙂
However, I’m not embarrassed or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positive] that this picture is getting because, it’s who I am. Yes, I’m a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body – it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn’t reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. By crying ‘mine, mine’ and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating separateness between ourselves and the divinity within us.
By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn’t important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are. 🙂
So, if anyone sees me at OSU, please come up and say hello. I appreciate all of the comments here, both positive and less positive because I’ve gotten a better understanding of myself and others from this. Also, the yoga pants are quite comfortable and the Better Together t-shirt is actually from Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that focuses on storytelling and engagement between different faiths. 🙂
I hope this explains everything a bit more, and I apologize for causing such confusion and uttering anything that hurt anyone.”
While totally secular, early on, my dad communicated much the same message to me, possibly rather clumsily now that I think back on it, in his own way that nothing on the outside mattered so much as intelligence, common sense, and inner strength did.
Even while commenting on the successes of other people’s children and their spectacular or renowned looks, he’d always dismiss the superficial stuff: “But it doesn’t matter if you don’t look like her. As long as you make good decisions and you’re always learning, it doesn’t matter what you look like. You’ll always be set.”
Even if it felt like he compared me to others, (and I came off poorly in comparison!) I wasn’t any kind of a vain child to be hurt by it. The first hint was my asking him to comb my hair like his every morning; the second, my rough and tumble refusal to voluntarily wear dresses or anything without pockets. And because of that early emphasis on brains over looks, while I had a few minor gripes about my physical self, or bugs for correction when I got older (after all, I did have to buy clothes and get dressed every stinkin’ day) they were of the shrug and sigh variety.
Intelligence, strength, confidence in one’s abilities to be competent, giving, caring, and worthy were what were truly significant, not how solely ornamental you could make yourself. Even though I later figured out he did think my mom was a looker, it was always crystal clear it was her strength of mind and will, and hell, physical strength, that he admired. Oh, the stories we used to tell about my mama!
I always wondered if this was something I would know how to pass on to the next generation. Though, perhaps, with a little less slovenliness as my decided preference for pajamas and comfy tees became my mom’s despair. I don’t think that was part of the plan.
Things like ear piercings, make-up and nail polish were her domain and she introduced me to them when she felt it was appropriate. My attention lasted about as long as necessary to register and save it for later, much like rudimentary knitting, crocheting, sewing and cooking lessons. I couldn’t be distracted long enough from reading or playing outside to do much with those, though, and my skills sadly never progressed past a beginner’s.
It’s nice to look nice, I learned and later rather regretted not paying enough attention to master anything that would have adorned my professional life. What I lack was and still is slowly made up, piecemeal, by learning from a friend and the internet but that’s a slow and winding road made that much windier by indifference and spurts of interest.
That, I shall continue to reframe as transcendentalism, or balance in this teeter totter life, while I thank both my parents for gently teaching me confidence without ego, substance above superficiality. While I’m not sure I would have summoned the same calm and grace that Balpreet had in her response, I think the world could use more of the same strength of character, inside and out.
January 14, 2010
Daily exercise update: About 15-20 minutes of brisk walking, skipped the weights.
____________________________________________
Back in 1998, I sat down for a career chat with my history teacher. Thinking he’d have some insight, and privately perhaps even be flattered, I asked what he thought of my majoring in history.
He laughed.
It probably wasn’t that I was bad at the subject, though in hindsight, I certainly lacked that spark of brilliance you associate with the historians with a scent for the stories behind every door. It was that, as he baldly stated, unless I wanted to teach high school level or below, or was prepared to make very little money for the kind of education I’d need to pursue a Ph.D. and then have to fight and scrabble for years in academia for the scraps towards a tenured position — it’s not worth it.
As a Native American, he said, he had the benefit of the Indian scholarships for college and his graduate degree. Without that, he would have been deeply in debt and doubtlessly would have had to make more than a few compromises in terms of lifestyle and career choices. He wasn’t living in high style by any means, but he and his family were comfortable because his education had been paid for and he had more freedom to choose from good programs without concern about repaying undergraduate debt.
Nice circumstances that we can’t all replicate of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that that’s the first and only time I ever encountered a teacher specifically counseling for or against a particular course of action by taking into consideration the real life circumstances.
No generic platitudes or pie in the sky rationalizations that vaguely assure you that people will retire and hand over their cush jobs for me. Just the truth, thanks.
This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (via Moneyapolis) with its handy list of financial qualifications for pursuers of higher education in the humanities further supports my eventual decision not to take a Masters in English Literature or some other liberal arts program.
Personally, I’m grateful. At that point a reality check was no bad medicine because it got me thinking about practical things like making a living and sustainable professions. Not a bad seed to plant in a 16 year old’s mind.
Ten years later, everyone remembers him as the loud and mean history teacher, I remember him as the guy who reminded me that once you get out of school, you’re in the real world with consequences and bills.
September 25, 2008
After the pleasantly sub-$100 electric bills of the past few months, I thought we’d finally nailed down some of the basics in reducing our energy usage. This past month should have been even better than the summer months because we didn’t use the air con once all month, and we were down to two people in the house for half the month while Mom was away visiting family. That should have made for a stellar-ly low bill, not a 120% increase!
Perhaps this is something electric companies just do, perhaps it’s something that I’ve simply failed to notice and is considered “best business practices.” Whatever the case may be, I’m fairly, oh, not ok with it. Our electric company has deemed it acceptable to send me a bill for more than twice the amount of last month’s, based on an estimated usage. An estimated 40% greater usage. What the heck is that all about?
You know what? It doesn’t matter what they think that’s all about it, because that’s completely out of the question. I sent in a request for a meter re-read because if they think I’m just forking over nearly $200 because they think I used that many kilowatts when I know I didn’t …. !! Hmph. The nerve of some people.
As I scroll down my usage history of the past few years, I see that there’s a spike every September billing period, and wonder if I foolishly missed the part of the bill where it states “Estimated read” every year before. Then again, I do have bills from November of last year, and it couldn’t have been that hard to miss. I suppose it doesn’t matter now, it’s too late to go back to last year and 2006. For now, though, I’m going to make sure that darned meter is actually read.
Note: They initially refused to come out saying that it was “in line” was previous billing history and that a re-read was “not justified.” Uh-uh! A firm note telling them exactly what I’d do if they continued to balk convinced them of the error of their ways. Guess what? The re-read of the meter two days ago resulted in a total read of 100 kW LESS (halfway through the next month) than their estimated amount for the last billing month. See?? Jerks.
May 16, 2008
There’s a day I was going to be out on sick leave. I’d finally managed to coordinate three important appointments in a single day because dealing with piecemeal appointments is aggravating and being out of the office for personal business has become taboo due to disintegrating relationships. What happens? Naturally, BB wants his birthday celebration scheduled the very same day.
Of course.
He’s completely unaware of my appointments, as is his wont, but there’s no profit in pointing that out.
In the spirit of learning how to think about all the possible political ramifications of this conflict, I’m weighing the pros and cons of rescheduling all my appointments or refusing to accommodate BB’s whims.
Stand my ground because:
I don’t have to struggle to coordinate three departments’ schedules.
I win personally. Professionally, no win. They don’t care if I have to go through a lot of trouble or not.
I don’t look like a pushover.
I win personally. Professionally, possibly negative. They want me to be cooperative with them. I can stand my ground with other people, just not them.
My presence isn’t that important.
It’s not, but I don’t gain anything by proving it. However, my absence may be remarked upon and I would have no control over the commentary that might ensue.
Change the appointments because:
As above, it’s not my presence that’s as important as my absence would be.
Yes, other colleagues have been absent for other staff members’ birthdays, but this is the Big Boss. It’s different.
It’s not impossible and doesn’t cost me financially to reschedule.
Unless it was a prohibitively expensive trip or appointment, the trade-off would be an intangible benefit to a tangible cost.
LB is all about sacrifice.
And is demonstrably bitter about the appointments of various kinds and trips that he’s chosen to give up. Obviously, they were all choices on his part, but he’s definitely bitter about it, so it doesn’t matter that it was his choice to do so. As long as it looks like sacrifice to him …..
Ultimately, it seems that I have nothing to gain, but potentially could lose a chance to rebuild frayed relationships if I choose to retain my current appointments instead of taking the time to reschedule for a later date. Even if the effort turns out to be futile, ie: they change the date of the celebration, the effort to accommodate them was made. While it could be construed as overly accommodating, or even syncophantic behavior which I’m not noted for, it’s also a concession. And if I concede this battle, knowing what and why I’m conceding, I’ll be more prepared for other battles that may be more important to fight. (ie: Con. I’m not giving that up.)
Rusty though they are, I feel like I’m working out my political chops a bit.