The stories of bad manners over at Jonniker’s post are apt to curl your hair. Rudeness abounds, apparently, particularly among our families-in-law and surrounding special occasions. The combination of the two – weddings! – is a powder keg, especially because it involves gift-giving and catering and lots and lots of money. Soliciting gifts! Proffering laxatives to encourage weight loss! Holocaust references! Reading those comments should have made me feel superior, right? I write thank-you notes. I get along with my mother-in-law. I strive not to tell people they look like concentration camp survivors. But as I read, I began to cringe. Because some of those stories could have been written about me.
Confessions:
-Before I had a kid, breastfeeding kind if icked me out, and I expressed disdain for the idea of nursing past a certain age.
-I once called a bride and asked if I could bring a date to her wedding, even though the invitation was addressed only to me.
-I did not make an effort to greet all the guests at my own wedding reception.
-I’ve made comments to a friend, favorably comparing the size of my home with the size of her smaller home.
-I’ve straight-out asked people about their ethnic backgrounds.
RUDE, RUDE, RUDE. I’ll admit it. I do strive toward good manners, but sometimes I fail. And all of the incidents above have context that might make them sound slightly less horrifying, but they probably really bothered someone who was around when they happened, maybe even the people involved, probably people who I love and would never want to offend. They all involve situations that make me uncomfortable. And so I avoid them (see: wedding reception) or over-compensate by trying to justify them (see: house conversation, breastfeeding conversation) or just plow ahead with the discussion, searching for a bright light and a point that everyone can agree upon. Never mind that I may have shocked everyone in the room.
I am not easily offended. I like to talk about what’s really going on, what I’m really thinking. I want to hear what you’re really thinking. Most of the time, unless it’s way over the top or a repeated problem (a family friend who never fails to make a sexist remark to me each time I see him comes to mind), I see rudeness as either a manifestation of nerves, a colorful personality, or laughable idiocy. I try not to take it personally. But I’ve finally learned that most people don’t really feel like that. (Well, except the Germans. And maybe the Dutch.) (See? Now I’ve offended some people. But probably not anyone who is really German or Dutch.)
And I find it all a bit exhausting. Hurt feelings are one thing – I do my best, and sometimes fail, not to be insensitive. But taking a circuitous route to asking a question or sharing an opinion just because culture dictates it annoys me. If a good friend who is known to be a bit spacey invites me to her wedding and doesn’t put my fiance’ on the invitation, I’m going to quietly ask if she would mind if he comes. (She said yes. She just forgot to put “and guest” on the envelope. Wouldn’t it have been a bummer if I’d gotten angry and felt slighted because of her perceived rudeness in excluding my date? Then again, maybe she still can’t believe I called and asked if he could come. I’ll never know.) If I have questions about nursing and how it feels and wonder why someone would want to extend it into toddlerhood, I’m going to ask, hopefully of someone who will answer me honestly and confidently, but I don’t know, sometimes I misjudge my audience. However, if living abroad taught me one thing, it’s that behavior is judged on a continuum. There are few objective standards of right and wrong, rude and polite, cruel and kind.
I’m sure I’ve horrified some of you with my behavior. But I’ll bet you have some confessions too. Here’s your chance. Any rudeness you’d like to share?
We spent last week in Los Angeles. Our vacation was well timed, taking into account the early summer doldrums of cloudy/rainy Oregon, the end of a busy work period, and the cabin fever that I begin to experience when my little nuclear family hasn’t been out of town together in almost a year.
Three days of Disneyland took it out of us. We ate breakfast with Minnie, we rode the Dumbos, we squealed at and got splashed by the pirates. There were churros and mouse ears and light sabers and more rides on the Buzz Lightyear AstroBlasters than the recommended daily allowance. After finally extricating ourselves from the Pixar Play Parade on the last day, we were undecided about what to with the rest of our time in the sunshine. San Diego with LegoLand and spectacular zoos almost won the day. But, in the ended we decided to stick around Los Angeles and see what we could see.
I love getting to know new cities. My ideal urban vacation begins with spending the first day traveling from one end of the city to another, absorbing the neighborhoods and snacking at the cool bakeries and eating street food and riding public transportation. I follow that up with a boutique and bookstore shopping day and a museum day punctuated with stops at restaurants I’ve read about in advance. I like to stay in a downtown hotel with a groovy bar in the lobby and a doorman.
Even pre-parenthood, my southern California experiences had been the opposite of that scenario. I’d either gone straight from airport to Disney to Knotts Berry Farm to airport, or I’d ridden around wearing a suit in the back of a rental car with a bunch of coworkers with a projector on my lap, traveling from conference hotel to conference hotel. I began to wonder if that image of LA as a wasteland of air conditioned malls and backed-up freeways were true. But in the end, I refused to believe it.
So our L.A. vacation landed somewhere in between a shoe-shopping, wine-swilling poolside retreat, and a traffic-bound dash from complimentary breakfast to theme park and back. We ate some great meals, including a magical Mexican dinner at Border Grill in Santa Monica. Jeff and I traded off sprawling on the sunny lawn watching Theo run barefoot across the grass and taking in the collection at the Getty Museum (a place I’d vaguely head of before, but one that is a must-see, especially if you like spectacular views and cool architecure or gardens). There was no bar in our hotel, but we had air conditioning and Froot Loops at the complimentary breakfast. We drove around Hollywood and Bel Air and Beverly Hills while Theo slept in his car seat. We went to the beach.
We had a great vacation. But it’s good to be back.
KENDRA with 17 correct picks out of 24. As she pointed out in comments, she came in near the bottom of the pack last year, so if you feel like you suck at this, never fear, a comeback could be nigh!
The final results:
Kendra – 17
Sandi – 15
Jeff – 13
Jennifer – 13
Gerry – 13
Daniela – 12
Kerri W – 12
Jennie – 12
Tom – 12
Monique – 11
Kristen – 10
Cody – 10
Britten – 10
Amy – 10
Dan – 9
Hollie – 9
Kathryn – 8
Anna – 8
Erin – 8
Emily – 8
Kerri Anne – 8
Kerri B – 7
Francie – 7
Erica – 6
This month, I’m going to write about my best moments of 2009. It was quite a year.
Best Trip:
Our life was all about travel for so long, we’d become experts at hotel sleeping and bag packing and hellos and goodbyes. So when we moved back to Portland, we plunked down our suitcases, heaved a sigh of relief, and pledged to settle down for a while. We took a couple of weekend trips and a quick Vegas getaway, but there wasn’t much glamor to speak of – nothing compared with Easter in Spain, or a villa in Tuscany, or an accidental trip to Hong Kong.
Whatever my twentieth high school class reunion lacked in glamor, however, it made up for in genuine fun and good will and laughter. It reminded me who I am and how I got here and made me proud of the people I started with, and who know me in a way that no one else does. (They also lived through the bad hair years with me. Never fear, you’ll get to see more of that this month too.)
Our little family of three does just fine with my new working mom gig as long as nothing disrupts the precarious timing balance we’ve so carefully constructed. As long as Jeff doesn’t have an early meeting, as long as Theo doesn’t wake up too early and disrupt my shower, as long as I don’t have to stay late at the office. But then I went on a business trip last week.
I got home late Sunday evening after starting my trip with a canceled flight (and an exchange with an airline employee that was really just unrivaled in its rudenes. And the rudness was not mine, for once). But I was happy to have made it home and fell into bed, got up and went to work, and just about collapsed in a heap at 10am when I realized it was only MONDAY and OMG THERE ARE FOUR MORE DAYS OF THIS.
When I’m in my little routine, I spend Sunday evenings getting my clothes ready (I almost typed “ironing my clothes” but who am I fooling), figuring out lunches and dinners for the week, and going over the day care pick-up and drop-off schedule with Jeff. So without that structural safety net I found myself eating BBQ potato chips and Twizzlers I found in my desk drawer at lunchtime while sweating through an inappropriately-wintry turtleneck. But the turtleneck was clean at least, because I chose clean over seasonal.
All three of us have some version of a cough/runny nose/day care pestilence, so I’ve also been contending with fearful looks from bystanders as I hack up a lung. I feel like I should hand out anti-bacterial wipes everywhere I go. I’ll admit, sometimes I cough right into my hand instead of into my elbow, and sometimes I don’t wash my hands immediately after wiping my nose. It’s hard when you’re sitting in the middle seat on an airplane. But I am sick and tired of and, well, getting downright pissed off about, people’s reactions to my condition. Let’s be clear here: I do not have a fever. I do not have chills. I am not oinking. I just have a cold and a cough and when I get a cough it tends to last for a long time. And I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do about that besides politely stuff my face into my elbow when I feel a cough coming on. Stay in my house for the six weeks it takes for me to stop coughing? Wear a surgical mask?
I am too lazy to expand this little rant into a well-constructed argument about the media and “news” and how the public has been not-subtly convinced to fear illness over the years and now we’re all judging one another for our germs. But you get my drift. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to health concerns, I have a freaking toddler for goodness’ sake. I have allergy-induced asthma. I know we have to take a health threat like H1N1 seriously.
But let’s just all calm down, please. Please. Deep breath.
I feel much better now.
And as long as I’m going on and on about whatever is on the top of my head, let me send you to a couple of things I’ve been enjoying lately:
Penelope Trunk is always interesting and I’m finding her latest series on Asperger’s Syndrome in the workplace really fascinating. She also just angered a whole lot of people, using 140 characters or less, and in a way that is sparking all kinds of conversations. Check her out.
Have you read The Unlikely Disciple? Speaking of controversy, it’s a book about religion and sex and Jerry Falwell and college. I’m only about 1/3 through and I can’t put it down.
I’ve been hanging out at the community center lately, near lunchtime when the local meals-on-wheels organization serves a meal to seniors in the dining room. They do food delivery too, but those clients who are able-bodied and socially inclined show up to eat and chat and pick up a sack of day-old bagels or a newspaper.
Before lunch, the center hosts exercise classes of the kind you imagine at senior centers – they sit on chairs and stretch their arms; they stand behind the chairs and stretch their legs; they bend from the waist to one side and then another. I like to watch them because they remind me of my grandparents, most of whom are gone. I lived within a half hour of all four of them when I was growing up, but when I moved away twenty years ago this summer, I saw them only a couple of times a year. I find myself imagining Grandma doing the slow-motion version of the hokey pokey at the senior center.
This week I was there a little earlier in the day, and instead of the swayers I was surprised by a whole different group. The ladies’ tap dance class was taking place on the stage at one end of the dining room and I swear I could have watched those women all day long. They were dancing to Rockin’ Robin (A Michael Jackson homage? Perhaps.) and man, could they tap. I took my share of tap-dance lessons and I never really mastered it; it’s all about ankle and knee control and I was better suited to stiff-legged ballet. The class of seven was led by a woman who must have learned tap dancing during World War II. She was serious, stopping the group when someone was clearly out of step and making them all start over again, and they were all way better than I had ever been, even at age ten with my young joints and brand new shoes.
I wonder what kind of class I’ll take at the senior center when I am seventy-five. Hip-hop? Maybe Macarena?
Last week, I was feeling like I spent most of my time in negotiations. I thought far in advance about how I could convince my son to wear socks each day. I talked up the thrills and delights of his tractor plate at dinnertime. I offered to race him upstairs when the bathtub beckoned. But, most of the time, he was having none of it. He whined and flailed and threw his cars. I despaired, wondering where my easygoing kid had disappeared to. I thought (hoped) it was his molars. I didn’t want to resign myself to the idea that he was just kind of a jerk, but the thought crossed my mind. He’d just turned two. This is how they act for a couple of years, I thought. Maybe I should hire a live-in massage therapist to reduce my stress, I thought.
I was ramping up to a business trip, and I was hosting my book group. I had a lot to do and plan and think about. And the more I had to do, the crankier Theo became. He spent the weekend alternating between angelic glee and freaked-out screeching. He’d even stopped sleeping well. He demanded attention at 3am, and then wanted books read and balls tossed and games played. All three of us were delightful to behold when it was time to get up.
Tuesday night, he woke up crying (again) and screaming. OUCHY OUCHY OUCHY he said. EAR he cried.
“That’s a pretty clear signal,” the doctor snorted when I told her the story the next morning. We gathered up our Amoxycillin and went on our merry way. He’s not a jerk, you see, he just has an ear infection.
All this made me feel a little bad that he’d obviously felt miserable for a while but I’m not embarrassed to tell you I was relieved. Because he’s gone through cranky periods before and I hoped and thought it was teething or illness and in the end he was just cranky. So this time, when the doctor handed me the prescription, it was good to have a solution that didn’t involve trying to have patience, trying to listen and talk and convince a toddler that screaming should be confined to emergency situations and the playground (and possibly those evenings when his mother just can’t take it any more).
(To those of you anticipating the Oscar pool results, I apologize for the delay. I promise to post the big news later this week. Thanks for your patience.)
Last year I worried that a five-minute video of Theo’s first year was too long. But this year I don’t care, and I made it over eight minutes long. Mostly because I suck at video editing and the software I was using made me want to cry. But also because my child is eight minutes’ worth of fascinating. I thought about ending it with a shot of myself pulling out my hair and hurling my laptop into a ravine in frustration, but then I remembered it’s not ALL about me.
