We went out for lunch today at a quick casual restaurant. There were five of us. When we were finished ordering and wanted to pick a table, we had a difficult time. There were a lot of tables and booths available. They were all for three or four people. Every single five or six person table or booth was taken. All but one of those was taken by only one or two people. One was being used by a party of four. What makes a single person think that they should take up a six person table? It just would not occur to me.
Tag: public
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2hyp0cr1t1cal4m3
There is a website called 2smrt4u. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children joined together to fund a site to help teach safe and smart internet usage to teens.
They have some reasonable tips, such as:
DON’T- Post your cell phone number, address, or the name of your school
- Post your friends’ names, ages, phone numbers, school names, or addresses
- Add people as friends to your site unless you know them in person
- Communicate with people you don’t know
- Give out your password to anyone other than your parent or guardian
- Meet in person with anyone you first “met” on a social networking site
- Respond to harassing or rude comments posted on your profile
- Make or post plans and activities on your site
- Post photos with school names, locations, license plates, or signs
- Post photos with the name of your sports team
- Post sexually provocative photos
- Respond to threatening or negative emails or IMs
Not that I agree 100% with all of them, but it gives a better starting point than some kids have been given before.
However…
They also offer an IM ICON
, you know, so you can present yourself as a challenge and dare stalkers to try to find you.Best of all they are giving away a free ring. Really. It is free. All they want you to do is tell them your date of birth, your address and whether you are male or female. Don’t worry, they won’t ask for your address if you say you are under the age of 13.
So obviously, it is teaching excellent online habits.
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Yep, still typing
This year marks the 12th Christmas we have not celebrated. We talked about it. We thought about it. We determined it was not providing us with the purported joy. We agreed. We decided. We quit. We told the people we felt we needed to.
Our daughter is 11. She grew up not celebrating. While the concept of a child, and what I would teach them, was part of the decision, as a person she has been one of the difficult aspects of it. The feeling of being different, of not being normal, can be hard on a child. People like to poke at differences. They want to know why. They want the difference explained and defended, or *fixed*. They think they have the right to that.
One December when she was 5 we went to get her picture taken at some crappy in store photo place. She was cute when she was 5 though, so any photos would do and the cheaper was much better for the wallet. A few reasonable sized photos, plus 200 little useless throw away ones so they could advertise a large bundle, for $4.99. It’s a long way from art, but it made my grandmother happy. The button pushing salesmonkey asked her what she was doing for Christmas and she shrugged and responded that we didn’t celebrate Christmas. Salesmonkey freaked out. “What do you mean?! What do you do?!” Salesmonkey stares at me wondering why my child is retarded and lying, “You do celebrate Christmas, don’t you? Why is she saying that?!” I shook my head. “Why not?!!!” Salesmonkey wailed. The kid was traumatized.
A few weeks later, in January, we were at our favorite (at the time) sushi place. One of the chefs asked her what she had gotten for Christmas and she froze up. She did not want a repeat of the last scene. He asked again. She looked at me. He looked at me. Her behavior was quite odd. She was always extremely friendly with this chef and now it looked like she didn’t know how to speak. “We don’t celebrate Christmas,” I told him. He looked at her and smiled warmly, “Neither do I.” She beamed.
One of the things that catches attention from certain people about not celebrating is the “not Christian” aspect. Most of the Christians we run into are used to being in the comfortable majority in the country. They’ve heard of the other big religions, but we don’t *look* (Muslim, Jewish, or one of them there “eastern religions”). This means we might be something else, something worse. I’m already long comfortable with the fact that in pretty much every aspect of my life, I am something worse, but this is another area that is harder on the kid.
Like with most things, we couldn’t leave well enough alone, and we chose to homeschool. Now, most things about homeschooling are really wonderful, and we have some terrific friends who homeschool. However, there is a rather large sized portion of the homeschooling community who are not just “I was raised Christian, so I mark the Christian box” but are instead fervently Christian. We interact with these people at group events, classes, field trips, sports days and more. “What church do you go to?” is commonly asked within the first 5 sentences by many of these people. Now I cannot begin to give a rat’s ass about somebody who doesn’t want to talk to me anymore because I don’t go to church, I mean, really I am grateful if they are going to weed me out for that reason. Still a kid likes to have friends, and more than that. A kid does not like to be teased and bullied. Ever seen a 10 year old, and more than a foot taller, boy get physical with a 7 year old girl because when he asked if she believed in Jesus, she gave “In my family religion is personal and we don’t talk about it outside the home.”as her response? Well, I have.
Over the years we’ve learned little tricks. Stick her in a Harry Potter t-shirt when going to an event with a new group. It keeps a certain element from even starting to interact with her. Avoid events from Thanksgiving through mid January. I don’t enjoy being out and about then anyway. We won’t lie, but why invite trouble, when it always shows up of its own accord. Yet here I am writing it out on LJ and posting it public. I asked her. None of those kids should be reading my posts anyway, but somebody might. Does she care? She said to post. At 11 she is obviously a lot more immune to the reactions on this subject than she was at 5.
Things I have been called (not in jest) because I do not celebrate Christmas have included:
- Grinch
- Scrooge
- smart
- lucky
- heathen
- crazy
- child abuser
Yes, I’ve been told it is child abuse to not have her celebrate Christmas. Some people have cried actual tears upon hearing that we don’t celebrate.
One relative lets their kids think we are Jewish so they don’t have to explain something else.
My MIL quit giving us birthday gifts. Oh wait. She didn’t quit. She has become chronically late with them. She sends us gifts at Christmas, wrapped in Christmas paper and writes Happy Birthday on the cards. In case you are wondering, our birthdays are in July.
Mainly people want to know what we DO instead. We don’t do anything specific. We are glad to have a day when people don’t tend to call, and we often accomplish stuff around the house and catch up on to do list stuff. The only thing that makes it different from other days is the fact that other people are busy celebrating it. If we eat out, we don’t have many options, but we’ve learned that we can usually find a Chinese restaurant open.
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No Thanks
It’s just not that magic to me.
At 17 I got my first job in retail. Being trapped inside the mall for the entire holiday season, both the purchases and returns, was, let’s call it “unpleasant”. Working with the general public was not something I enjoyed on a normal day, but during the holiday season everything went to extra utter shit. The number of temper tantrums increased tenfold. There were people fighting with strangers over who was getting the last of some dumb piece of crap.
Even on sale, it is an ugly damn sweater ladies. If you don’t both stop yanking at it you are going to ruin it, It will then be my job to damage it out, and since I already have more than enough to do today cleaning up after you fucks, it is really not going to make me happy. Merry Christmas.
The closer it got to the big day, the longer my work hours and the shorter the shoppers’ tempers. Best of all, school was out for vacation so most shoppers were dragging along all form of snotty, fussing, writhing, complaining, demanding, brat with them.
People could talk all they wanted about the magic of the season, but I saw what they were really like, and the overwhelming majority were not swept up in tides of joy, nor did they feel goodwill toward mankind. They felt aggravated, rushed, pressured, frantic, crazed and entitled. It was just like the rest of the year, only amplified. In my book giving some canned peaches to the food drive does not even out treating everyone at the mall like shit.
Giftmas
It all comes down to the gifts. I’m not opposed to giving gifts and I am not opposed to receiving them. I am a firm believer in the saying “It’s the thought that counts”, but I don’t interpret it the same way most people do. I do not think that just any gift will do because at least it shows they thought of you for a second. That is what a card or a phone call or an email is for. A gift shows what they are thinking of you, and if that thought is “Oh shit! I forgot to get you something and I really think I should because it is X day tomorrow. I was already in line when I realized this, but here is a random piece of crap set near the register lines for exactly this purpose.” I honestly don’t want it. I also really don’t want to give gifts like that.
When I am out and about in the course of my life (or sitting on my ass surfing the web, as the case may be), and I stumble upon something that makes me think of a particular person, that is a gift worth considering. I don’t want to not buy it because there isn’t an X day until 9 months in the future. I don’t want to buy it and hide it in my cluttered closet for 10 months and find it after X day has passed.
My father was never much of a gift giver, so when I was a teen I began to do the Christmas shopping from US. My action + his money, both names on the card. I’d start early and put thought into each and every gift, but I was a teen and not overly in touch with a lot of people on our list, so I probably had more misses than hits. As the time grew closer and I’d remember the people we’d left of the list, I would scramble to get *something*. I understand how it happens. I just hated the way it felt. If I didn’t know somebody well enough to buy a gift for them that they would actually like… If they weren’t on my mind enough that I remembered them when I put together the list… Why exactly should I be buying a present for them anyway? Because they were going to buy one for me? This was only of benefit to the retailers.
This much is being spent on this person, so this much should be spent on that person. More expensive is *better*. They spent this much on me last year. The Christmas advertisements started at the beginning of November (they now start at the end of September is some stores). I was saturated with the commercialization of Christmas and I just wanted to wring it out. I did not feel holiday cheer, I felt holiday stress.
This was what I was going to raise our family on? Yes, children LOVE Christmas. Children are selfish creatures. Humans are selfish creatures and the young ones have learned to hide it less. People pile tons of presents on them and that makes it an enjoyable holiday to them, and they want more. It wasn’t exactly a traditional I felt gung ho about passing on.
If I am going to a person’s house for dinner, I bring along a bottle of wine or some other consumable I know they will actually use. If I am a house guest, I make sure to take them out to a nice meal. I am all for manners and thanking people by treating them to something. I’m just not that into providing a wrapped item because of a certain date on the calendar. I try to make sure the people I care about know it every day. If they need a certain amount of money spent on a certain date to know it, they probably don’t know me well enough that they should be expecting a gift from me anyhow. If I am going to attend a wedding or birthday party, then I will make a point of having a gift in time for the event, or I don’t attend. Like I said, I am not anti gift or anti manners. I just don’t want to be part of frenzied gift exchanges.
None of the memorable gifts I have gotten showed up on Christmas. Many of my favorites showed up out of the blue, just because somebody happened to be thinking of me. It might be the gift giving season, but please, nothing for me.
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Post 2 of The Things I Like Series
When I was in the third grade, I wrote, directed and acted in my first play. Yes, I was a control freak from the start. When I got older I remained involved with theatre, but gave up on the acting part. As part of our program in college, you had to get on stage, so you knew what it was like from that side. I hated it from that side.
From the other side, well it was quite a love/hate relationship. It continues to this day. At this moment I rarely do work, although I’ve had multiple people encouraging me to start volunteering at local theaters. It is tempting. I really love that line of work, except when I am hating it.
Lately, I mostly remain an audience member. Often I am disturbed by the audience behavior. Turn off your damn phones. Don’t bring children if they cannot sit still and shut up. Don’t come yourself if you cannot sit still and shut up. Do they comprehend that the people up on stage can hear them?
Some of the shows I watched in the past year were because I actively wanted a chance to see them. Others I saw based on the recommendations of friends. Others we attended because we knew somebody involved in the show. Sometimes I enjoy myself very little. Sometimes I enjoy myself immensely. Occasionally I can make it through an entire show without once thinking about how I would have done it differently. This year that actually happened multiple times, which was nice.
A year in theatre (somewhat in order):
“A Christmas Carol” (December 2005)
“A North Hollywood Canteen Holiday”
“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”
“The Argonauts”
“The Block”
“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”
“Don’t Dress for Dinner”
“Hairspray”
“Usher”
“Urinetown”
“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”
“The Real Inspector Hound”
“Black Comedy”
“Wicked”
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”
“Proof”
“Sluts! The Musical”
“Aesop’s Falables”
“A Christmas Carol” (December 2006)The most recent “A Christmas Carol” that we attended (and we still have one more version of it to see this year) was put on at a private Christian school. I only found out where we were going an hour before we needed to leave the house. Not that knowing would have changed my agreement to go, it just would have changed my expectations a bit earlier. I thought we were going to a public high school production. It was a nice production. They obviously had a solid amount of money for costumes and actually did some very nice things with the set. I have to say I was impressed with the set. They were selling expensive jewelry outside to benefit the program and having a silent auction in the lobby as well. I suppose that is how they afford the nice costumes. There was the fairly typical mixture of talent levels for a school show. There were several nice singing voices. Overall, the whole accent thing did not go well, and I do not think the director should have had them attempt it. The show was performed in the school chapel. I have not been in a chapel since I worked as a wedding photographer. The pews were padded which was nice, but every little thump and movement carried all the way down, so the guy at the end of the row was irritating the crap out of me with his constant fidgeting. One of the many problems with having a very bad back is being quite sensitive to having seats knocked and shook. All in all, it was solid for a school production. They did Christian it up a, Jesus was mentioned multiple times during the play and the ghosts were termed “Angelic Spirits” first and thereafter were always referred to as spirits, never ghosts. I guess ghosts is a negative.
When the play was finally over (this tale is one that I am extremely familiar with, and not one of my favorites to start, so it is no reflection on the show or anyone in it that I was happy to see it pass), I was thrilled because I was hungry for dinner, and more importantly I needed to find the restroom. I was unable to make a rapid exit because the lights immediately came up and the sermon and prayer session began. That hasn’t happened to me at a play before. I would seriously prefer it not happen again.