So Drumpf has COVID19. The most surprising thing about this is how long it took for him to get it. It was never a question of IF he was going to get it, it was a question of WHEN. He’s been ignoring scientists and doctors about taking precautions against the virus (masks, social distancing) for MONTHS, thereby causing the additional deaths of untold thousands of Americans that SHOULD be alive today had he done the right thing all along. It’s amazing that with all the contacts he’s had that more people in and around the White House haven’t been infected until now.
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AKA The Annual Gripe I hate receiving gifts. I really do. Every fucking year I go through this. I absolutely dread every birthday, every Christmas. Every. Single. Year. I hate getting gifts because most of them are, to put it bluntly, not worth the paper they’re wrapped in. Why is this? Am I such a hard person to buy for? No, actually. I’m a very practical person; gifts that I can use are the best, such as: GIFT CARDS. I am the easiest person in the world to buy for. Get me a gift card and I’m as happy as a clam! Provided that it’s not for a store I never go to. For example: I once got a gift card to Starbucks; I hate coffee. I don’t even like the smell. I used to live downwind from a coffee roaster, it was disgusting! Just walking into a Starbucks now is likely to make me gag. That was a bad gift. Number One on my Xmas Wish List this year: Amazon Gift Cards. Number Two on my Xmas Wish List: See number one. That’s IT! That’s ALL I asked for. Did ANYBODY pay attention to this? NO. Now, some people think gift cards are bad gifts to begin with because they’re “impersonal,” they “don’t speak to the uniqueness of the individual,” or “the giver was lazy,” etc. These are most likely the same people who don’t spend the time and effort to find truly personal, unique items. Unfortunately, most people just aren’t very good at this, for a variety of reasons. But the really bad ones glom onto one part of your life and think that speaks for the rest of it. What you liked when you were 13 does not automatically translate to your 40s. For example: I have a cat. I love cats, always have. When I was a kid I got a stuffed Pink Panther toy. Do I collect cat-themed items? NO. However, to this day, I routinely get cat-themed gifts, like t-shirts or ceramic figurines. What am I supposed to do with these? Seriously! I have more t-shirts than I need, I will never wear them all, they just sit in a drawer! And why would I want a fake cat that sits on the shelf and gathers dust when I have a real one I can cuddle with? These are also bad gifts. In fact, these are the truly impersonal gifts. They show an obvious lack of imagination, sincerity, and a serious lack of effort. I know what you might be thinking; it’s the thought that counts. I should be grateful they wanted to give me anything. Well, true enough. But let me ask you: If it is the thought that counts, then why was so little thought put into it? Just because this individual likes X does not mean they will also like Y. That is no thought, that is no effort; that is an assumption. Here’s the kicker: if you want to give a good gift, you CANNOT make assumptions. If they’re family or a good friend, you should know by now what they’d like. If you don’t know them that well, or really just have no clue, then go practical! Give them something they can use! It shows you care enough to give them a gift, but not something completely irrelevant. This is where gift cards come in. If you don’t like the generic Visa/MasterCard/American Express, then get a card for a store that you KNOW they will visit. Wawa, Rite Aid, grocery stores! Do they have a car? Then get a gift card to literally ANY major gas station. These are particularly good gifts for coworkers and people you only see a few times a year. They’re also perfect for people you DO know that are basically begging for simple, practical gifts. So what happens to those bad gifts I mentioned? Normally, it’s one of two things. They get re-gifted, or donated to a thrift store. On rare occasions they might get sold online; a Fitbit I won at the company party I ended up selling on eBay because it wasn't compatible with my phone. That Starbucks gift card went to a friend of mine who loves coffee; he was very appreciative and used it the next day. The cat stuff went to a thrift store. No way around that, I don't know anybody that collects cat stuff. This is what happens if you’re not very good at gift giving. The other side of this coin is that there are people that are really good at giving gifts. Surprise surprise; I am one of those people. I am the type of person who will pay close attention to what people say/do, all year long. I examine wish lists with a microscope, cross-check it with other sources, and buy stuff way too early and hold onto it for months. For example: my ex and his brother once talked (around Easter) about a game they used to play a lot when they were kids but no longer had and was out of print. I went online to research it, eventually found and bought a copy off eBay, and it sat in the closet for months until Christmas. They were so blown away that I’d found it that they insisted we play it right away. It was hilarious. Two men in their 40s going bonkers over a game about pigs! This is what I do. I am a generous person; I really do like to see the reaction to a gift that has been specifically tailored for maximum impact. I put major effort into this because I enjoy it. I go out of my way to find truly unique items, where the recipient looks at me, wide-eyed and incredulous, exclaiming “OMG!” or “where did you find this!?!?” On the outside I'll grin, shrug, and say "glad you like it" while on the inside I'm doing back flips in the end zone! This is the whole point; this is my way of expressing affection for my loved ones. I am the Gold Standard of Gift Giving. Having said that, let me state for the record: THIS IS NOT A CHALLENGE. Dear friends and family, PLEASE...know that you are not obligated to try to “beat” me in this; it is not a competition. If you do try, you are more likely to fail in your endeavor. Trying to outdo me in this is not a good idea. Going overboard with quantity is also not necessary. So please, for everyone’s sanity, if you MUST get a gift for someone that you don't know well (or can't compete with, LOL), make it a gift card. You’ll thank me for that later. Wanna play a game? I’ve got a really simple one, and it won’t take up too much of your time. I’m going to ask you some questions. That’s it, just some super-easy questions about your life, and all you have to do is answer Yes or No. You don’t get any points, but how you answer will show how privileged your life has been. I’d bet anything you’ve had it a lot better than you think you did. Ready? Okay, let’s play: 1) Did you, at any time in your childhood, live in anything other than a house? 2) Did you ever get hand-me-down clothes/toys from an older sibling? 3) Did you ever go shopping for clothes at a thrift store? 4) When you were in school, were you ever picked on, made fun of, or bullied in any way because of how you looked (clothes, hair, glasses, thin/fat, funny teeth, etc.)? 5) When you were in gym class, and the students were told to pick their teams, were you ever picked last? 6a) Did your parents get divorced? 6b) …did you watch (were you in the courtroom for the proceedings)? 7) Did you ever receive welfare/public assistance? 8) Did you ever go to a “free” clinic because you were sick, then not take the prescription they recommended because you couldn’t afford the $5 co-pay? 9a) Have you ever gone shopping for food with coupons? 9b) … with food stamps? 9c) … with both? 10) Have you ever subsisted on ONLY bread and water? 11) Did you ever REGULARLY drink powdered milk because normal milk was too expensive? 12) Did you buy most of your food from the generic aisle (now known as the dollar store)? 13) Have you ever NOT had access to at least one car? 14) Have you ever been evicted for not paying the rent? 15) Have you, or has anyone in your family, been homeless? 16a) Have you ever been called fag, dyke, queer (or similar)? 16b) …even if you are NOT homosexual? 17) Is anyone in your family gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender? 18a) Have you ever been discriminated against because of your sexual orientation? 18b) …your sex? 18c) …your looks? 18d) …your religion (or lack of)? 19a) Have you, or have any of your relatives, ever been arrested? 19b) …over the holidays? 20a) Has anyone in your family ever been the victim of a burglary or theft? 20b) …rape? 21) Has anyone in the family been assaulted – physically or verbally – by someone outside of the family? 22) Has anyone in the family been physically, mentally or psychologically abused, by another family member? 23) Has anyone in your family ever been diagnosed with a mental illness (including depression), or a learning disorder? 24) Has anyone in your family ever been hospitalized for a mental illness? 25a) Has anyone in your family ever talked about, threatened, attempted, or actually committed suicide? 25b) Have you ever considered suicide? How to determine your level of privilege: It’s very simple. - If you answered “NO” to *any* of these questions, your life has been easier than you think. - If you answered “NO” to *a lot* of these questions, you have no freaking clue how difficult life can be for those less fortunate, and my guess is you haven’t really struggled at all. You have no idea what true hardship really is, and I’d suggest thinking long and hard about how lucky you’ve been before you speak negatively about anyone on welfare or using food stamps. I came up with this questionnaire because a lot of people I know have had it way easier in life than I have, and they really don’t understand what it’s like to be less privileged. I wanted to give them at least a glimpse into the life of someone they think is just like them, but is not. I say that because I answered “YES” to every single one of these questions. Every. Single. One. If the situation didn’t apply to me directly, then they definitely applied to someone in my immediate family. To be fair, even I’ve not had it that bad - there are a lot more questions that could be asked that paint a much darker picture of modern American life than what I’ve experienced. I didn’t include them because they didn’t apply to my particular situation, and this was specifically designed to cater to the people I know, to give them a baseline comparison. Someone you know, someone very close to you, has been through a lot of crap that you’ve never had to experience. The very last question is my attempt to get others to realize that suicide isn’t what they think it is. Everyone is on their own journey, we all take different paths. If you’ve never considered suicide, then perhaps you should think about why you’ve never been down that road. If you’ve been lucky in the Life Lottery, kindly remember that many others are not. Many folks in the corporate world love to use the phrase “Fake it til you make it.” The idea behind it is that it’s a way to build your confidence; it’s supposed to help you mentally prepare for a task or job, even one that you may know little if anything about. Act like you know what you’re doing or saying, and eventually you will know. This is total bullshit. There are far too many people in the world that act like they know everything. The grunts in the office world know this all too well – there are waaaayy too many managers out there that haven’t got a friggin’ clue how their department works. Even when they admit they don’t know what they’re talking about, they still expect us to believe them. How is this good? Believing someone that has no experience at all on any given subject can have seriously bad repercussions. Let’s set up an example. Say John Doe, who has often said he loves animals, got into a conversation about what dogs eat, and said that chocolate is fine for them. However, John lives alone and actually knows nothing about dogs because he’s never had one, nor do any of his friends. He made this statement because he saw a person in a park give a dog a chocolate chip cookie, with apparently no ill effects. What do you think would happen if the person(s) he was talking to never questioned the truth of John’s statement, then went home and gave their dog a chocolate bar? The dog would probably get sick; possibly even die, depending on the size of the dog and the amount of chocolate they consumed. A chocolate chip cookie doesn't have a lot of chocolate in it, and if it was given to a large dog it might not affect them at all. However, if it was given to a small dog like a Chihuahua there could be problems, and giving them an actual chocolate bar would be even worse. If John knows nothing about dogs, why would he make such an irresponsible statement? Just to sound like he’s an expert on dogs? And how exactly is this going to help him become an expert? The short answer is it won’t. In fact, it would do exactly the opposite. Instead of giving good advice, he gave awful advice, which would at the very least seriously damage his reputation , make others think he’s not an expert at all, maybe even face charges for effectively killing someone’s dog. That kind of result would be his own fault; he’s not an expert and therefore shouldn't be acting like one. But….what if, in the course of the original conversation, he also said “I’m not a doctor” before saying chocolate was okay for dogs? He could easily flip the blame back onto the dog owner for believing his statement without verifying its accuracy first. What a total jerk. But why would he say something like that to begin with? Was he just trying to sound impressive? And again, how is this going to help him become an expert? Politicians are notorious for doing this kind of thing. An excellent example is the recent dust-up over climate change. Some try to claim ignorance by first saying “I’m not a scientist” but then make some statement against climate change that has no basis in fact whatsoever – such as scientists can’t agree on the subject. Really? Out of all the scientific research papers published about climate change, it was found that 97% of them agreed that humans play a role in causing it. But some politicians think, and continue to state to the public, that scientists can’t agree on the topic. How is deliberately misleading people going to help anyone? How can a problem be fixed if some of us can’t even admit there IS a problem? To be fair, these are extreme examples. Giving fake advice that could cause death or negatively affect anyone (let alone millions) is vastly different than saying you know how to operate a program such as Microsoft Access when you don’t actually know anything about it. This scenario is far more likely, but there could still be negative consequences. It may not affect millions, but it could definitely affect you. Screwing up an important report because you don’t know how to use the program could mess up your standing in the office big time. Here’s another example: You've said you know XYZ software to get a job, but on your first day they ask you to run a report using that very system; how do you get it done? Feign confusion? Say the printer isn't working? Lie to a coworker about your system access to get them to do it for you? This strategy simply won’t hold up over the long term. You either do it yourself (thus exposing your lack of knowledge) or cajole others into doing it for you. And by the way, manipulating people to do your work is not delegating. Eventually your boss is going to figure out you’re full of it, and then they’re going to wonder what else you’re hiding. How can they trust you when your behavior shows you to be insincere and a liar? You lied on the application, lied in the interview, and even lied to your co-worker about your system access. In some places, just lying on your application is immediate grounds for dismissal. Kind of puts the damper on your attempts at “making it”, doesn't it? Expertise is earned through hard work; it’s not absorbed by osmosis. But that’s not all! No, really. There can be some pretty serious ramifications from trying too hard to be something you’re not. Take any job that requires you to interact with the public. Managers always want you to be pleasant and cheerful to the customer, even if you don’t feel like it. This is understandable, and from a customer’s viewpoint it’s quite desirable. Nobody wants to interact with a bank teller or a cashier that’s in a really bad mood. The problem here is that for people that are not naturally cheery, this is really hard to do. Maintaining all this fake cheerfulness can create a lot of stress on the person doing it. Eventually you start to resent being forced to act nicely when you really don’t give a hoot. It becomes physically and emotionally draining, and can lead to complete burnout. It’s even worse if you fake financial security. Pretending you have more money than you actually do more often than not means you end up deep in debt, maybe even bankrupt. (Anyone remember what happened to Jules in St. Elmo's Fire?) The only way “fake it til you make it” actually works is if you lack self-confidence, fear speaking in public, or some other such psychological issue. That’s right – it’s a psychological thing, not a way to get ahead with no actual training. That’s when this credo becomes a form of therapy; where you face your fears head-on. Like immersion therapy – if you’re afraid of water, then you expose yourself to water a little bit at a time and eventually you won’t be scared of it anymore. But in the working world – and here’s the important part – before you can fake the confidence of presenting your idea(s), you have to have the nuts and bolts of expertise to back it up. If you have a kick-ass presentation that will change the world but are so afraid of speaking in public that you never get to present it, then it’ll never change the world. But … faking confidence to give a presentation isn't going to work if you don’t have the kick-ass presentation to begin with. John Doe will never become an expert on dogs by saying outright false information, even if he does say it with a ton of confidence. His statements are still untrue, which makes him a stupid yahoo with no expertise in dogs at all. Expertise is earned through hard work; it’s not absorbed by osmosis. The bottom line here is that people who “fake it,” only to appear more capable, are complete frauds. A couple of links for you to peruse:
Some info about "fake it til you make it" and why it's bad Some info about how they got the "97% of scientists agree" figure Recently I had the occasion to spend a few days with my relatives, and realized that I occupy a very weird spot in my family tree. Unique amongst the group, I seem to be the only one able to relate, on some level or another, to everybody. Don’t get me wrong, we have our disagreements, but even with the different viewpoints, experiences and priorities, we all get along pretty well. There are some very clear lines that divide us, which is normal. Cultural markers and age barriers do tend to pigeonhole us into specific categories within the larger group – parents are parents, kids are kids, etc. Yet somehow I am the only one able to bridge the generations fairly easily. I can chat with my dad about history and politics, commiserate with my sisters about the foibles of celebrities, and quote current movie lines with my nephews. But here’s the rub – when I say I can relate to every member, I really do mean every one of them. My parents, my siblings, my nephews. This bridging between generations is unusual. Even if everyone gets along great with each other, there is most definitely a divide between family groups. Take music, for example – every generation has their favorites, and parents usually can’t stand what their kids listen to, who in turn are baffled by what their kids enjoy. My folks listened to a lot of 60’s folk music, my siblings were fans of 70’s pop/rock, and my nephews liked Avril Levigne and Eminem. Me? I like them all. This makes me sound a lot more sophisticated than I actually am, but it underscores the ease in which I am able to flit from one group to the next. It’s just bizarre. How am I able to do this, to get along with such a varied group of people? Is it simply because they’re my relatives? I’d reject that idea right away – blood is not always thicker than water (unfortunately). Sometimes we have altercations where the bad feelings last for years. Obviously it isn’t all fluffy clouds and butterflies (nothing’s perfect), but eventually we do get past the bad stuff and can communicate again. I can understand some psychological reasons for our different behaviors, but I’m not a trained psychologist. I know all too well that my limited understanding of the brain doesn’t always work in other circumstances, with other people. There are people I work with whose attitudes and/or actions I sometimes have great difficulty comprehending. I’m sure they’d say the same about me. So clearly there’s a lot more going on than just understanding someone’s outlook. So how did I get this unusual ability? It cannot be understated that in my family I truly am the outsider. Part of that is because I don’t live anywhere near my relatives. Physical distance helps a great deal – if I had to deal with them on a more regular basis (like the folks I work with), we might annoy each other constantly. However, at the heart of this issue, is how I can move amongst all of them so easily. The core difference really is because I am the outsider. I simply don’t fit in with the rest. Seriously. I’m the oddball. The iconoclast, the true independent, the black sheep. Whatever you want to call us, we’re the ones who never quite fit in with the others. Like the cheese, I stand alone. But how is this possible? They are my relatives, after all. I should have some kind of common ground to start from. Other than DNA, a love of reading/writing, and sharing a liking for some variants of Star Trek, there’s not much else. Even with all these people around I never seemed to get really close to any one family member, with the only possible exception being my mother, as I take after her in more ways than I can count. However, lately I realized there really was a very good reason for this: my age. I know what you’re thinking: that explanation doesn’t make sense, but hear me out on this – I was actually born in a different generation than everyone else. My parents were what they call the Silent Generation (aka the Traditionalists). Most children from this group of people were called the Baby Boomers – those born after World War II. The next two generations are Generation X, and Generation Y, aka the Millennials. I am the youngest of four, and all my siblings are Boomers, but I am not. My brother, the closest in age to me, was born four years beforehand, so I am the only one of us firmly ensconced in Gen X territory. This isolates me because I have no familial contemporaries. Mother, father, step-parents: all Traditionalists. Siblings: all Boomers. Nieces/nephews: all Millennials. I am the only one from Generation X. The more I look into this, the more sense it makes. A quick Google search brings up lots of different articles, papers and slideshows that illustrate the differences between these four groups of people. And there really are a lot of differences. The way each of us thinks, our fears and desires, our motivations – they’re all different. Just a few years separate me from my siblings, but for all intents and purposes, I’m from a totally different world. Some of those articles I found I could have written, using information gleaned from just my family alone. For example, let’s look at work and careers. Traditionalists are loyalists; it was common for them to stay with one firm for their entire career. My dad is a classic Traditionalist. He was career military, and then spent 20+ years with the Department of Defense until he retired. Technically, he was a “government man” his whole adult life. None of the rest of us has had that experience. The Boomers, with their mistrust of authority (brought about by the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate), trusted their instincts when finding the best way to pay the bills. That means that if they found that their manager at ABC Company was untrustworthy in any fashion, even if they liked the work, they definitely wouldn’t stick around for 20+ years. Boomers also tended to find one area of expertise they could focus on, but worked at many different firms to do that one thing. One of my sisters exemplifies this trend: she started in the child care field even before graduating from high school, yet over the years she’s moved between several employers. Generation X and the Millennials have a totally different outlook about careers. While both are very comfortable with constantly changing technology, Gen X-ers are extremely resourceful and self-reliant. This has a lot to do with how they were often on their own as kids since both of their parents worked; no stay-at-home moms for them. Career-wise, that makes them more likely to work at a lot of different firms, way more than their elders. Essentially, Gen X has portable careers: they learn as much as they can and then take their skill set anywhere they want to go. They are more generalists than specialists. That’s pretty much been the story of my entire work life, as well as many of my peers; I must have three times the total number of employers that my siblings have had. Millennials grew up with a much higher rate of violence and gangs than the rest of us, and are thus highly concerned about personal safety. To alleviate that concern, they’re also extremely open and tolerant to different cultures and lifestyles, and education is key. This makes them much more comfortable having more than one option with regard to jobs, and are very open to having several parallel career paths. More than one set of job skills is sort of like a career safety net: if one doesn’t work out, they’ve got something else to fall back on. This seems to be the blueprint for all of my nieces/nephews; they’ve always got several things going in the pipeline. Also, one of them was so concerned about his personal safety he even invested in a bullet-proof vest! That seemed excessive to me at the time, but I understand it a lot better now. Which brings us back to this ability of mine to seemingly transcend generations. The unique spot I occupy in my family makes empathizing with each of them much easier than it might otherwise be. It also highlights my eccentric reputation: I’m the one that sends postcards and t-shirts from far-off places. I’m the one that sends silly, non-sequitur text messages, and I am the only one in the family over the age of 30 that regularly uses modern technology. Every. Single. Day. In my family, I am a Generation of One. I am a rock, I am an island. With age, so they say, comes wisdom. PFFT! No, it doesn’t. Getting older is not an automatic entry into “getting smarter.” There is no easy way to get smarts, and age does not have a nice, shiny, gaily-wrapped package called “wisdom” trotting along beside it, just waiting for you to reach the magic number so it can leap into your arms and all will be well. What age does bring, however, is perspective. We look at things differently when we’re older. For example: imagine you are walking down the street in the dead of winter, and you come across a huge section of sidewalk that is nothing but ice. If you’re a 10-year old, you’d think this is the greatest thing ever! You’d back up a bit, then run towards it and sliiiiiiiiiiiiiide all the way to the end! Woohoo! Then you’d do it again in the other direction! What FUN! If you’re a 60-year old, however, that patch of ice becomes the longest stretch of sidewalk you’ve ever seen. You’d look at that ice with total, uncompromising, full-blown fear in your heart! You’d then try to figure out what options you have to avoid it, and thereby avoid breaking your leg, hip, head….and go with the least-likely-to-fatally-maim-you option. So what if it takes an extra 10 minutes to walk across the street and then back. So what if your socks will have some snow in them from walking through the three-feet-high-drift-covered-grass instead. Big deal! Your bones will be intact, man! Age forces you to look at things in a totally new light. It forces you to! It doesn’t ask you politely “Say, what if this situation had a slightly different reasoning behind it than the one you’re familiar with?” No, Age doesn’t do that. Age is a total bully; it grabs you by the neck and stuffs your face into the toilet bowl, screaming: “See!? What did I tell you! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!? You gonna eat ice cream before dinner again, Ms. Lactose Intolerant?!? How are you liking it now, HUH!?!?” Even something as seemingly innocuous as beverages cannot escape the ravages of Age. When you’re young, for the most part, all beverages generally illicit a similar response – AAAAAHHHHHHH! It’s liquid refreshment; it’s designed to quench your thirst. But how does a young person THINK of the beverage, and how does an old person think of them? Allow me to illustrate: To the young person, sodas are either referred to by their brand name, or by a generic word such as “soda” or “pop”, which can vary greatly, depending on location. (Midwesterners call it “pop”, New Yorkers call it “soda”, Southerners call it “coke” even if it isn’t actually a cola). Coffee is referred to by a whole host of nicknames: java, cup-o-joe, Starbucks. Bottled water is generally referred to by the brand name; Evian, Dasani, etc. Beer….is beer, it doesn’t matter what brand. Unless you drink Guinness, which is Guinness. To the old person, however, these same beverages are no longer beverages. They are most definitely not cutesy nicknames or generic catch-alls. In fact, they cease to be considered liquid refreshment entirely, and are instead reduced to their constituent elements. At the very least, they are what the old person thinks they consist of. Coke, Coffee, Evian, Beer, Guinness…..to an old person they are Caffeine, Caffeine, Water, Piss Water, and Guinness. Now that’s perspective for you.
Not all women are alike. You’d think this point would be obvious, but apparently it bears repeating. For instance, I’ve never been what many consider to be a “normal” girl”. I’m feminine, as in I have breasts and occasionally wear skirts/dresses, but there are a lot of other things people just naturally assume all women do or like. This is not the case. Here is a list of ways in which I am not a traditional female, or a “girly” girl. 1. I do not like make-up. I don’t like the feel of it on my skin, the time it takes to put it on, and I especially don’t like the outrageous prices they charge for it! I also don’t like the insinuation that because I don’t have naturally perfect skin then I must use make-up to give the illusion of it (which never works, by the way – there’s no such thing as “invisible” makeup). I also don’t like being told I look good with it on. Please! Everybody who uses makeup looks good with it, that’s the whole point. That statement, however, makes it sound like I look like total crap without it – I’m no model, but come on! It really doesn’t make that much of a difference. 2. I rarely accessorize. Specifically, this means I am not a jewelry person, but it can also include belts, scarves, hats and purses. I have several necklaces in my jewelry box that I rarely touch, not because I don’t like them but because I just can’t be bothered to root through them every day, so I drag them out only for special occasions. I also have a bunch of earrings that I never wear, mainly because I only got one ear pierced. However, some years back when I worked at a bank (read: Conformity Central), they frowned on having only one ear pierced so I had to get the other one done, or go without. I went without, and the hole closed up. One of these days I’ll get it reopened but it’s not a high priority for me. 3. I am not fond of babies, so I’d very much appreciate it if you didn’t ask me if I want to hold your newborn. I don’t, so I won’t. Please don’t take this as a slight against you or your offspring, it just means I don’t want to hold your kid. Period. There’s nothing more to it than that. Babies hold no fascination for me at all, they never have. I don’t want to cuddle with them; I can do that with my cat. In fact, the whole parenting thing has never interested me, and I knew that even when I was a child. I didn’t play with dolls much as a kid, and I babysat the neighbors’ kids even less. To expound upon this a bit more, I do not want to have kids of my own. Just because I have a uterus does not mean I have to use it. Also, not having children does not mean I have less of a life than you, nor does it mean that you should pity me. Would you want me to pity your choice to have kids? “Oh, look at the parents! It’s so sad; they have no life of their own anymore!” See what I mean? 4. I do not like pink. Purple is fine, I have no problem with purple, but pink? Forget it. If pressed on choosing a favorite color I might say green, but I prefer black for pretty much everything. Most of my clothes are black. I have black plates, mugs, flatware, towels, sheets, blankets, even our shower curtain. Don’t like my choice of color? Too bad. It’s what I like, it’s what I prefer. I’m not buying anything in pink just to please you. 5. I don’t like cooking. I’m not bad at it, but I’m also not very good at it, either. I cook out of necessity, when I have to, and I try to add spices to make it more interesting, but I’m not a chef. As such, please don’t assume that I would jump at the chance to make you a meal, because that’s not going to happen. Dinner parties are not my forte, I’d rather order in. Here are the topics covered in my 7th grade Sexual Education class:
Here is the male genitalia – color drawings (no photos), scientific terms used. Every boy in the class turns bright scarlet, fidgets in his seat and tries unsuccessfully to surreptitiously cover his crotch. Nobody needs to see my stuff! Here are the female reproductive organs – again, color drawings (absolutely no photos), and scientific terms were used. Every girl in the class holds her head in her hands in abject embarrassment. That’s inside of me? Here’s how the two fit together (drawings), and how a baby is made, grown, and born (actual full-color photographs). Entire class: Eeewwww!!! These are contraceptives (mild interest shown), and these are all the HORRIBLE DISEASES YOU CAN GET from having unprotected sex (enlarged full-color graphic photos of pustules, sores and other gross symptoms of STD’s). Entire class: EEEEWWWWWWW!!! Boys and girls eye each other with mutual suspicion. You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t it? I mean, all the basics are there. Doesn’t that pretty much cover everything? Not likely. Here’s what they missed: 1) The breaking of the hymen. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t include this; in my opinion it’s a great way to prevent kids from having sex too early. This would especially give girls the power to say “no” more forcefully: “It’s going to hurt like hell AND bleed? Forget that!” 2) Cramps. The menstrual cycle was discussed, as were pads and tampons, but at no time did they say anything about cramps; it was as though they just didn’t exist. It might have been nice to know why I felt so nauseous when my period started. It might also have been nice to know how much cramps can vary in intensity! Plus, all the other period symptoms such as bloating, pimple breakouts, emotional roller coaster – yeah, that might have been nice to know, too. 3) Orgasms. Now this I can kind of understand why they didn’t mention it. Pointing out that sex can be really, really pleasurable to a classroom full of hormone-ridden preteens going through puberty is just asking for trouble. Still, I would have liked to have known what it was in a “safe” setting, as opposed to in the heat of the moment when I didn’t know what exactly was happening. 4) Menopause. Nowadays, this topic is all over the place, but in the late 70’s, even after the sexual revolution, it was still somewhat taboo. So taboo that it was never brought up in my class; the “m word” simply wasn’t mentioned. To explain the significance of this, allow me to clarify exactly what I did learn about the female reproductive system in that class: I understood that once your period started, you were sexually mature and could get pregnant. If you didn’t get pregnant, then you would deal with your period every single month. FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, even if you lived to be 100! I was never led to believe that there was a time limit on a woman’s ability to procreate; there certainly wasn’t one for men. It was never brought up! To add to this, I even had “evidence” to support this theory. My maternal grandmother was placed in a nursing home about a year or two after I took this class. My mother would go to her mom’s apartment to clean it out, and come home with various things weren’t needed anymore because the nursing home would provide them: furniture, food, toilet paper, etc. Anyway, my mom came home one night and handed me a bag of sanitary napkins, and some weird piece of really old elastic with plastic clips on it. I had no idea what the elastic was, but eventually I figured it out. It was an old napkin belt, and I completely freaked out and threw it in the trash. I mean, it was really old – have you ever seen old elastic? It gets crumbly and doesn’t spring back when you pull it – and this is what my grandmother used to wear with her napkins. Flashback to 7th grade: EEEEWWWWWW!! The creepiness of the belt aside, the napkins were what drew my real interest; they were unlike any I’d ever seen. They were considerably thicker, about three times the thickness of the standard pad of that time. Pads have gotten much thinner over the years, but if you put two classic iPods on top of one another, that’d be about the right thickness of these pads. They also had no adhesive on the backs of them. Now this was unprecedented – I’d never seen a pad without adhesive. Instead, they had extensions on each end of that linen-like fabric that covers the absorbent material. Once I figured out that those end pieces were what fitted into the clips on the belt, I was amazed; the human mind can be ingenious. I was especially impressed with whatever company it was that still made these kinds of pads, for those stubborn elderly customers that just didn’t like “new-fangled inventions”. I figured their customer base must constantly get smaller and smaller, but it was nice that they still produced a small amount of these just for older women. I came up with all this because these pads were NEW – I mean, they were in absolutely pristine condition. The original packaging was nowhere to be found, they were in a plastic grocery bag that must have been kept away from the elements for who knows how long; they were bone dry and in perfect shape. Acquiring these for me to use also fitted in nicely with the nursing home providing all matter of consumables for grandma; she wouldn’t have to go buy them anymore. It never once occurred to me that she’d bought them ages beforehand and just never finished out the last pack; I thought she still needed them. My own mother didn’t need pads any more as she’d had a hysterectomy after I was born, so there was nothing at home to contradict this nice little theory of mine. To make matters worse, I wasn’t even certain what the word “menopause” actually meant. The dictionary we had at the time was really old and incredibly vague on “sensitive” subjects. I knew menopause was something that affected only women, but exactly what I couldn’t say. For quite a while there I thought it was an STD, but couldn’t understand why only women got it! Fast forward another year (!!) and I read a story in my English class where the main character (a teenage boy) was pissed off at his aunt, because one summer she was a total bitch to him. When he mentioned this to his parents, their response was “oh that was the year she went through The Change.” Can you hear the capital letters in that phrase? The Change. It just sounds so final! I’d heard this phrase before, but that story seemed to indicate to me that this “change” was something ALL women went through. Hmmm. Interesting. Since that didn’t actually illuminate anything for me, I went to The Source: my mom. I walked up to her and asked her straight out: “Mom, what’s menopause?” She blinked, chortled a bit in surprise, and then said “that’s when your period ends.” Imagine my shock. For years I never understood the “biological time clock” phrase. For years I had thought your period didn’t end, that I was destined to bleed every friggin’ month until I died. Suddenly, that wasn’t the case. I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and, quivering with excitement, I asked her when it would end. Her response: “probably in your 50’s.” =heavy sigh= Great. From the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair, in two seconds flat. I was in my mid-teens at the time, so that meant I had another three decades (at least) of this crap to put up with. Wonderful. But, at least now I knew; the mystery had been solved! Still…it might have been nice to know about it ahead of time. The first time I saw the 1978 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the one with Donald Sutherland) I was completely creeped out by it. Especially chilling is the final scene. The whole idea of aliens taking over but looking just like people is wild all by itself, but being pointed to and screamed at with that wordless, moaning accusation….eeeuuugghh. It’s pretty clear what the aliens are doing with that wailing; they’re saying SHE’S-NOT-ONE-OF-US-GET-HER! ::shivers:: I’ve always been afraid of that happening. Not the bit about aliens taking over the earth, I mean the bit about the majority of the population covertly (yet systematically) weeding out the minority. YOU know…getting rid of the nonconformists. The people who dress how they like and don’t care what people say, that are unafraid of speaking out, that aren’t “normal”. The “normal” people don’t like individualists very much, especially before they’re old enough to enter high school. That’s when I first saw Body Snatchers, when I was dealing with puberty in “middle school” (sometimes called Junior High), or as Matt Groening called it: The Deepest Pit in Hell. All those raging hormones tend to have weird effects on your psyche, and to add to this toxic mind-mess I was also trying my hardest to fit in with the crowd at my school. Suffice it say I wasn’t very successful at it. I have never been able to truly “fit in” with the majority, and so I lived in perpetual fear about being exposed for what I really was – different. Body Snatchers intensified that fear. I kept imagining a classmate stopping me in the school hallway, pointing and then letting loose with that gaspy moaning while everybody nearby grabbed me. What they did with me afterwards was too gruesome to even contemplate – just the idea of getting grabbed by a mob was terrifying all by itself. The shame of being “outed" as not-normal in public was almost as bad, barely overshadowed by tortures-to-come that were left unspoken. I first became aware of the "normal" situation around the same time. I even remember the exact moment – I was in my seventh grade math class. The teacher was covering some algebraic topic that most of the class just couldn’t seem to understand, so he had to go over it again and again and again. I kept watching the confused looks on my classmates faces with a certain amount of confusion myself. You see, I understood the concept he was talking about, but it took a good 10 extra minutes of explaining and using multiple examples before light bulbs started going off in my classmates' heads. I “got it” from the first example he had given, but I was clearly the only one who did. Once I realized this, I looked at the other students in amazement – up until that moment in time I had always considered myself to be normal, existing as best I could, right alongside everyone else. Not anymore. Suddenly, I was out in front, waiting for the others to catch up. Surprised, I realized I was part of the minority. Even worse, it was in MATH! Math is a subject that few people have a real aptitude for; most kids I knew hated it. I’m no mathematical genius but I’m not bad at it, and Math and English were always my best courses in school. Some quick calculations done in my head underscored this fact: I knew there were about 20 students in that class. One person out of 20 is 5%. I also applied a little logic: if I was at one end of the spectrum, it was reasonable to assume that there’d be someone else at the other end; someone who would take even longer than average to understand any given topic. That was another 5%, but that still left 90% of the class. Ninety percent! I knew right away that if I ever pissed off the other 18 (possibly 19) kids in the class, I was in deep doo-doo. One against all of them equals I get my butt handed to me. The numbers were clearly on their side, not mine. Being rather shy and quiet, that fact was extremely frightening to me, which explains why I sat there terrified into silence. Even scarier was the realization that that class was not special. There was nothing in the area I grew up in that was extraordinary in any way, it was an average middle-class suburb. Those 18 kids were normal, a representative sample that could have been taken from anywhere in the country. I didn’t fit the "normal" mold. Over the years I’ve managed to learn a few tricks on how to get along with the “norms”, but I’ve accepted being part of the minority ever since. I’m still scared of pseudo-humans pointing and screaming at me, tho. Yahoo published an article recently on how to save a million dollars for retirement, and while in general the article gives pretty sound financial advice, it has one glaring error. It starts with an assumption that is way off-base: it assumes you have money to save. The writer (Fleur Bradley, Yahoo Finance) says that you should start as early as possible, which makes perfect sense – the longer you save, the more you’ll have. She says if the company you are working for does not have a 401(k) plan, then she suggests starting up a Roth IRA. This also is good advice, but she specifically says to start saving $200 a month, and then gradually increasing that amount as the years go by. I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Two hundred dollars a month, AT AGE TWENTY-FIVE??!!?? I didn’t know anybody when I was that age that could save that much every single month. If we saved that much in an entire year it was a major accomplishment. Most of us couldn’t afford to save anything! Hell, even in our 40’s we still have trouble saving anything, let alone two hundred. Nobody in my tax bracket can afford to save $200 a month; we’d have to make two or three times as much in income to do so. The problem here is the starting point. Ms. Bradley starts her unnamed saver off in the workplace at age 25, which assumes they have gone to college and graduated. Good for them. However, she mentions nothing about college loans that need repaying, and dollar amounts for those can vary wildly, from $30K up to over $100K. Then there are all the day-to-day bills we have to pay – rent/mortgage, car payment, utilities, insurance, food, gas, daycare, entertainment, clothing, etc. More importantly, people in their mid-twenties don’t normally make $60K a year or more. I only know of two or three people that make that amount, and they’re my age or older. For most entry-level jobs the pay is pathetic. Just because you have a Bachelor’s degree is no guarantee of a well-paying over-$50K-per-year job. In fact, a large percentage of average office clerks that have degrees do not get much over $40K, if they’re even close to that amount. Look at the want ads – the starting pay at an entry-level office job in this part of the country averages between $10/hour to $14/hour. That equals out to – MAXIMUM – a little over $29K a year. Let’s give our 25-year old the benefit of the doubt and figure they got the highest amount. How do they handle their regular bills? After all of those are taken care of, what’s going to be left? Diddly-squat. Don’t believe me? Let’s crunch the numbers (NOTE: some of these figures are conservative estimates): GROSS PAY: $14/hr X 40 hours a week = $560 Taxes, health insurance (25% of salary) = $140 TAKE HOME PAY: $420/wk X 4 wks = $1680/mo STARTING BALANCE: $1680 RENT (1BR in a half-way decent area) (600) CAR/TRANSPORTATION (includes gas) (300) INSURANCE (car/rental/life insurance) (100) UTILITIES ( 75) FOOD ($50/wk X 4 wks) (200) CLOTHING (100) ENTERTAINMENT ($50/wk X 4 wks) (200) REMAINING BALANCE $105 As we can see, this doesn’t leave enough left to save the amount Ms. Bradley has suggested. And, as I stated above, some of these are conservative estimates; the rent, car payment or utilities could easily be higher. They could also be lower, and some items could be reduced if our worker was a good bargain-hunter, but I didn’t include daycare costs or student loans, both of which by themselves would eat up the measly one hundred bucks that’s left, and then some. This means that our 25-year old would already be living beyond his means and is going further into debt. Add a couple of credit cards into the mix and it’s easy to see how so many people at the bottom end of the income spectrum have so much difficulty saving anything at all, let alone $200 a month. And $14 an hour is actually pretty good as a starting salary. Get anything less than that and it'd be even more difficult to save anything. Ms. Bradley’s article goes on to assume that the 25-year old continues to advance and do well in their chosen career, without any hiccups along the way to mess things up. How nice. I wish I had a life like that. Nowhere does it say anything in this article about what to do if you get laid off, have to move unexpectedly, get into an accident, survive a hurricane/tornado/flood/earthquake, cope with the death of a loved one (and all the associated funerary costs)…the list goes on and on. LIFE intervenes all the time, throwing monkey wrenches into even our best-laid plans. Sure, it’d be nice if we could afford to save enough money to be a millionaire at retirement. The truth, however, is that most of us can’t do it. Some can’t even start on this kind of program; we’re just trying to get by and hope nothing majorly bad happens. Winning the lottery aside, that’s the best we can do. |
AuthorDonna Davis Archives
December 2019
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