Too much McDonald's and Hand Sanitizer

As some of you know I have a phobia of cops. Not like a diagnosable phobia (although I am pretty sure I have those too, I just make sure I am never near those things – such as feet.) But this is a phobia where I am a law abiding citizen diligently checking that my parallel parked car is close enough to the curb and watching my speed and signaling and stopping at railroad crossings (this I would do anyway because it would be dumb to be run over by a train because you didn’t stop and check.) However, despite my law-abiding status I am sure that I will be arrested soon for something. Therefore every time I pass a police car my hands sweat and I usually have to narrowly avoid a collision because, instead of watching the road, I am watching if it is coming for me in the rear view mirror. It’s not just driving either. I can’t really even walk past them. I start gesturing wildly like I am telling a funny story and laughing a strange cackle of a laugh. It does seem to be working so far as I have yet to be arrested.

As we left our friends' house one evening, Amelia was in a talkative mood and we were discussing her poor taste in music.  It really is shocking. I had thought all the Five for Fighting and Bic Runga we played when she was a baby would have set her on the proper path to refined music taste. However, on most days we find we are in conflict over whether each song is having a negative impact on gender equality and exploitation of women and their bodies. Mostly they are.Anyway, we drove up to a road block where the police were checking for drunk drivers. So I was trying to change the look on my face from frightened bunny who just robbed a bank to cool hipster parent. (I wasn’t sure what this face looked like but I was trying.) I didn’t have anything to drink but I was sure that they were also checking for people who don’t wash their car enough and there is probably a new rule about this that I didn’t know about (yes, the car was dirty, it looks like a motel for spiders). Being that our daughter was in such a talkative mood, she asked about the process. So when we pulled up, in an I’m-so-relaxed voice, I counted to four out loud into a little device, like the kind officer asked. And then, as the little device blinked and beeped Al and I both used our very patronizing teachable-moment voice and said, "Watch Amelia, you'll see what it does.” And she did watch – it came up as a FAIL.

“Did you drink any alcohol tonight?” The officer said, still kind but with just enough hint of official to make me nearly pee my pants.‘No!’ I said in a slightly high pitched voice as Amelia made judgmental noises from the back seat. (Like ‘OOOOOOO. SHAME!’ These are actual quotes. I think she may have been trying to get me arrested for my comments about her music.) ‘Just so much McDonald's.’ I offered, first because I already felt a little guilty about eating the McDonald's and feeding it to my family. And I find it’s always best to admit your crimes up front. But also I was hoping there was some sort of fault with the device that made it so that if you eat too much McDonald's with your friends you sometimes get a false positive. Then he asked something I didn’t quite comprehend because, at that point, I was wondering if I was going to prison for eating McDonald's - only to be released when Amelia was twenty-three - because they finally worked out the flaw when prisons were being overrun by tired mothers who were bringing home McDonald's for dinner. I sensed movement beside me and then Al drapes himself over my lap and proceeds to hold the hand sanitizer out Vanna White style. Something the officer said had triggered Al’s memory about some copious use of hand cleaner. (He was so excited – he really wishes he was a cop or at least be a consultant - so much smiling and leaning over my lap to be helpful.) I expected the man to say, “Oh well of course you have used so much hand sanitizer that you set off our detection thingy (yeah, he would have said “thingy”). Instead I was directed out of the long line of traffic to the side of the road for secondary testing – where every person in the cars behind us nearly injured their necks watching our shame. (The shame of so much McDonald's - because I really had not had anything to drink besides a cup of coke that tasted like it had been sitting out on the counter all day. I did, however, feel shame about that.)

All I had to do was blow in this little straw but I couldn’t breathe already because I thought I was going to be executed soon. And I kept asking all these questions about how to do it. But I couldn’t really understand him because his words got lost in the flashing blue and red lights. So I didn’t suck in a big enough breath and thus ended up looking like I had no lung capacity - which then made me panic more because I was sure looking like you have decreased lung function also means you look drunk. I managed to force the last molecules of air from my lower lobes with a grunt. 
I passed the secondary test and drove on with my giddy husband and my judgmental daughter. I drove very slow all the way home.

Midlife crisis

You know that feeling when you're entering into a maze and all of the possibilities are equally good? You are well hydrated and well fed - because you are at a maze, which means you are probably on vacation; so you've recently had the most fantastic strawberry punch and eaten the most delicious piece of cheesecake – because you are allowed cheesecake on vacation – in fact, cheesecake is considered an essential food group when you are traveling anywhere. Anyway, you are well hydrated and full from your, delicious perfectly made, New York cheesecake. (You may or may not be in New York but most vacation spots have a New York cheesecake - stay with me.) You jump into the maze, not caring whether you go left or right, running around each curve, squealing when you hit a dead end and then skipping while retracing your steps. This is what it’s like for a good portion of your early adult life. Things are open, choices are made, and failures overcome. Possibility.

Then there's the point in the maze experience when you start to wonder if you will make it out alive. That maybe you have been lured here by a serial killer or that you are the dumbest person alive and you'll have to be airlifted from the entertainment structure by a rescue helicopter and you're the only person in the 100 year history of the maze that has ever had to be rescued from it. You start to wonder if you will ever be able to eat cheesecake again or if you will have to find a way to live off of the bushes that line the path. You think you've passed that same rock fifteen times now; and perhaps the people running the maze have gone home; and they have closed the entrance/exit and it looks like just another wall now – and you have actually found your way out but it's locked. Sometimes you sit down and pout. Sometimes you want to scream for help but you are too embarrassed. But most of the time you just keep running and rounding corners because that's what you have to do. This is what this portion of my adult life feels like. Decisions feel so final and failures seem unrecoverable.

Apparently my feelings are quite common and can be diagnosed as a Midlife crisis.

I wasn’t aware I was having one until I received an email telling me I was. I should have seen it coming because my email has been sending me things like: the five unknown signs of pancreatic cancer and You are probably only days away from death – you just didn’t know. And I know that it knows things about me. I hate that it knows and I don't know how it knows - but it knows. So, when my email has this sort of tone, it really shouldn’t have surprised me that they decided I was unaware I was having a midlife crisis and sent me a list of signs so I could recognize them.
Here are the signs:

1) When you start panicking about health issues - check

·         This was already true because the emails had started making me panic.

·         Plus I am already sick so I was already paranoid ever since I was 18.

2) When you start having more questions than answers, like ‘Is this all there is?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’

·         I can’t say that the first question stood out because I feel like I can’t keep up with “all there is”. There's a chance I have asked, "Can there be less?" I don't think that's what they meant though. 

·         I have been asking myself: “What am I doing here?” a lot. For instance: Wondering why I have my daughter and three children of unknown parentage buckled into my car for a road trip; trying to explain to them why I have to change the song because the music is sexist - they don't care because of the beat yet I keep trying to explain as my daughter sinks further into the passenger seat. Or when I find myself in an awkward silence with one of Amelia’s teachers – the conversation is finished and yet I'm still standing there staring - not sure where to go next; so I keep standing there and so does he. So now we are just two people, standing outside next to each other, staring off into the horizon with the heat and the heavy weight of silence making us sweat. Or when I decide to suddenly stop at an open home for a dilapidated house filled with creepy-clown wallpaper that's being sold for half a million dollars. Realizing that we are the proletariat who will never be able to afford an expensive, terrible, clown-haunted house, unless there's corruption and banks give out loans like candy again. But then I realize I don't want to spend half a million dollars even if the house wasn't haunted by clowns. But I also don't want to keep funding my Landlord's yearly three-month-long European luxury tour.  So then I consider living in a portable pod on our friend's lawn. 

3) When you start comparing yourself to younger co-workers and feeling regret

·         I can’t say this is an issue except today, one of my younger co-workers said my outfit was a "throwback to the nineties". I still didn’t really regret it, though, because the outfit had been sitting on my table, clean, for a few days. So, not only did I not have to put it away but I also got dressed in less than two minutes because I didn’t have to decide what to wear.

4) A crisis seems to come from exhaustion and the sudden acknowledgment of the passage of time.

·         This is real. This happens every time I go to the gym; I'm exhausted and then I'm stunned that the "passage of time" has been two minutes.

·         Also, this happens to me every morning when it takes me a while to remember what day it is and I can’t open my eyes to check. And then when I do get up I want to go back to bed an hour later. And I can fall mouth-open-drooling-asleep in the car at any soccer practice.

·         So I guess this one gets the big tick because this happens to me every day?

5) A sudden urge to lose weight

·         This isn’t true because it has never been sudden – it is a constant wish. In fact, I was just yelling at the guy at my gym that, his gym was broken. I am running and ellipticalling (see my dictionary for the definition) my way through the “passage of time” yet my weight remains the same. He asked me what I’m eating and I yelled at him saying, “I refuse to go on a diet! Because diets make me sad and there are too many sad things in the world. I only eat delicious food. If it's not good for me, I only have a little so sometimes I only eat a quarter of a sandwich. Also this happens quite a bit because there's always that chance that there will be chocolate cake soon and, if I had eaten already, I couldn’t have the chocolate cake. So I usually try not to eat very much in case there's cake or cookies or something.” And he said, “hmmm, can you think of food as fuel rather than delicious?” and I said, "sure" but with a little too much teenage angst and sarcasm and walked away to do hours of running – I ate brownies for dessert - my weight remains the same.

The rest of the signs/symptoms did not apply because they were about “sexying up” and having affairs.  And, as I have already said, I get excited when I can just throw on my nineties outfit and get one more day out of my dirty hair; and I'm way too tired to even go to the movies with my friend - who I always want to see and I always want to go to the movies with - so I definitely do not want to balance, like a pelican, on a bar stool - drinking drinks that I would not be able to "think of as fuel” - not getting hit on because I look like a hip grandma in my capri pants - and I have  recently developed a permanent scowl because I no longer tolerate stupid conversation  – and I currently assume every conversation with a stranger will end up being stupid. It's a new theory because I used to be nicer. This wasn't listed as a symptom but I think it must be. But I don't have time to test my theory because of "all there is" to life.

So I’m not sure what to think. It wasn’t really a score thing like, you have to say yes to more than five in order to be in crisis. So maybe I am just a tired, middle-aged woman who hates to shop? Or maybe its because I just had a birthday and I couldn't remember how old I was turning? But as a bright spot, I called my parents today and Dad had decided to give Facebook a try and said, "I think this Facebook thing is going to be really great!" So at least I am winning at Facebook?

Either way, the symptom checker didn't help. I still feel like I'm lost in a maze and now it's sort of a horror maze; like from those Young Adult books (that I read and REALLY enjoy so I can't be that old) but instead of the creepy robot-bugs that eat you - I have little things dressed as cancer jumping out around one corner, followed by scary clowns around the next, interspersed with real-estate agents holding clip boards and assessing my dirty hair poking out in all directions, with judgey eyes and pursed lips that say, "welcome," but really mean, "you have no business here, do you." So who knows, maybe the exit is just around the next corner or maybe my next blog will be written from a one-room pod plugged into my friends house. Watch this space!

Begging for Puppies

Something has been bugging me. Not like the anger that I feel when I have to go to the gym – that’s more of a percolating rage at the ridiculousness of the process of running and ellipticalling until time ceases to exist. That kind of rage can be bottled for an alternative source of energy. (Even if you don’t believe we are killing the planet, it would be great to have such a renewable source, right?) But this is different, I mean bugging me, as in, that twinge you get in your stomach when you think something is wrong but you can’t articulate it. (Or you can articulate lots of things that are wrong but you feel like there is one more that hasn't been addressed.) So I thought I would investigate what it is here - because that seems to be what these things are for. I have been hearing, for a few years, people angry and ranting at being forced to be “politically correct”. And when people rage against something, I tend to want to figure out why. They complain about how the government is trying to take their freedom of speech. But that is not “politically correct”; that is censorship and should be fiercely stood against.
        
      It is really important not to confuse the two concepts. They are similar, I will give you that, but different – and different enough that confusion of the two would be as bad as the years I wasted singing the wrong words in second verse of Adele's song Someone Like You. I thought the line was - We were born and raised in a summer haze bound by a piece of pie of our glory days. The line really is – bound by the surprise of our glory days. Not such a huge mistake, but one that implies that their glory days consisted of being tied up with pie. Pie is delicious but glory days tied up with pie insinuates that there were no glory days but some sort of horrible trauma related to pie – which would then make it not delicious. So I was belting something, quite opposite to the spirit of the song, at the top of my lungs in my car. Unfortunately, I feel like this belting about political correctness is a similar mistake but more insidious.

 So let’s define them. (Boring I know, but if we don’t know what we are talking about, we could be singing songs that celebrate horrible pie eating experiences and never really understand why.) Censorship is the government regulating what people can read, watch, learn or say. Politically Correct is a belief that offensive language should be eliminated. So one is an oppressive government deciding what should and should not be read and watched and the other is a culture of people deciding how they should conduct themselves. The key difference is: controlling “the dispersion of facts” verses belief.

So I am trying to get my head around this. What is making people so mad? No one is saying that free speech should be taken away. But words have power. It is what I love about them. Martin Luther King used word after beautiful word to change the world. And yet just before him Hitler used words to convince an entire nation that they should annihilate a specific group of people. He labeled them as less than human – as vermin. This made it possible for the killing and torture of millions of men, women and children. Have we really come so far that we don’t remember this?

The amazing thing is, we have the choice to say anything we want; our government made sure of it and so they should, but what we do with that freedom has consequences – culture defining consequences. I keep hearing people say, “I can’t worry about everything I say just because I might offend them! It is their problem if they get offended.” As Louie CK says, "That's like saying, 'yeah, I shot this guy in the face and then I guess he got himself murdered.'"

Why are we even bothering to teach our children to be nice if they can just grow up to say anything (or type anything) they like without thinking about other people. Just because you have the right to say anything you want doesn’t mean you should say it. I have a right to say to the guy who comes into the gym constantly pulling one leg of his shorts up over his hip (it’s like he hates one leg of his shorts being equal with the hem of his other leg. I’m not sure why he doesn’t just cut off one leg) and coughing at even intervals, without covering his mouth, while he runs, that he annoys me more than the constant high-pitched ring of a smoke alarm. But I keep my mouth shut because he is not murdering anyone. Is he disturbing me? Yes. Is he a narcissist that thinks the gym is there for his own personal use and none of the rest of us lab rats matter? Possibly. But he is not murdering anyone.

Now let’s say murder was involved. Let’s say that a completely different man who hiked one leg of their shorts up, so he looks like he's wearing half a speedo, and coughed at even intervals was murdering people in Texas. I can’t just start yelling at the guy in my gym that his short-hiking-cough-prone-bronchi makes him a murderer. I could consider his personal psychosis and rationally think if there is a link between coughing and short-leg-raising to susceptibility to murderous thoughts but I would have to dismiss it. Whatever happened to the advice, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”? At least as a first filter sentence to run through your head before speaking or typing. What could people possibly be scared of? It can’t be censorship because that is something else entirely.

So back to: “Hey that’s my opinion and I’m allowed to have any opinion I want. And why should I have to worry if I offend someone.”  Well, let’s say I was having a particularly annoying day at the gym and I decide that this guy with the shorts is actually beneath me – he is stupid.  So I go home and my daughter does something silly, like spill milk all over the counter. And I say, “Ha! You are such a shorts-hiker”. She is not offended and, in fact, because of my tone, we both laugh as we clean it up. (Let’s assume she knows this person and has also been annoyed at the shorts-hiking.) And let’s say I used the term every time she screwed up. Then the shorts-hiker becomes less than us – something to be better than. Now she is at college and the shorts-hiking thing has become quite popular and young men everywhere are grabbing their shorts and hiking them over their hip. It's all the rage.  Now she see’s all of them as stupid and less than she is, because they are associated with failure. It would be a short step for her to treat them as less than her – less than human even. If one of them pissed her off she might not have any issues with ripping those hiked shorts right off their bodies. (This is a hypothetical; my daughter is very kind - even to shorts-hikers.)
Words have power and, when something has power, caution should be exercised when using it. It is why we don’t let the five year old drive; and also why we say to the five year old, “think about what it would feel like if someone called you a shorts-hiker/cougher”. We need to stop worrying about whether being politically correct is violating our rights and start asking if the things we are typing online and saying out of our mouths have been carefully thought out and given the respect that powerful things deserve. By-the-way my daughter just learned how to light a match last night. We teach our children not to play with fire, because they tend to freak out and drop a still burning match on the carpet (which is what happened and why children need adult supervision when lighting fires).

Maybe we should all start thinking of our words as flames. They can be contained in a fire place that welcomes friends into a cozy environment  of respectful discussion – or they can spew out of our mouths under the guise of righteous rage: it burns the house down and you are left homeless and your guests are naked or standing in the street in shredded smoldering clothing.

Now I know that all of our world issues can’t be fixed with a slumber party but what if we all stopped putting little I’m-smarter-than-you-comments and meme’s on Facebook and started having real conversations – it might take a long time and, yes, in the mean time, someone crazy might set off a nuclear war head; but at least then we can all die knowing that before someone destroyed the world we had all started being nice to each other. I mean we tried the other way. We gave it a real go. We yelled at each other; we threatened everyone else from the safety of our social media fortresses that allowed us to use hate and then sign off to go watch TV, with our conscience clear, because what we said was true. How about we try it the other way for a while? I’m just sayin’, can we continue to discuss the REALLY important issues while still watching how we speak about each other. And when we are not discussing the real issue can there be a place you can go and just watch puppies until we are at peace again. Because there are a huge amount of real issues and if you don’t take a break a couple of times a day your head might explode or you will get tired and stop discussing and arguing about these really important issues. Because sometimes there are so many issues that you feel too overwhelmed and are not sure which issue to fight against. (I read a great blog about staying focused on certain issues so you don't get numb and eventually apathetic because it is all so overwhelming, but I can't remember who wrote it, sorry - especially to the author!) So can we go back to putting videos of puppies on Facebook – PLEASE! Because let’s face it - where will real change come from? From a meme? Or from people doing the hard work of figuring out who we want to be as a human race - in between decreasing cortisol levels by studying puppies?

So I will help kick things off. Here are a couple videos of us trying to get Percy to cross the footbridge. He was very scared…

After trying to get him to cross back over the bridge - he ran off with another family. It took quite a bit of encouragement to get him to live with us again.