Merry Christmas, Mima

25 Dec

For as long as I remember, on Christmas Eve morning my parents, my two siblings and I would pile into whatever car my dad happened to be driving at the time (except for when he and I went out car shopping together in which case we always returned home with some completely impractical 2-seat convertible, meaning we would have to take my mom’s Saab for the trip because my mom has basically always driven a Saab) and head up north to New Salem, New York to celebrate Christmas with the Wehren half of the family.  My dad would drive, my mom would be in the passenger seat, and my sister Lucy and I would take our turn at the dreaded middle seat.  (Aaron never had to sit in the middle because he was “older and taller,” whatever, so unfair.)  The trunk would be full of suitcases and neatly wrapped presents.  My mom is excellent at wrapping presents.  We’re talking crisp corners, multi-colored ribbons which were often times the ones that if you dragged the sharp edge of the scissor over they would end up all curly like a pig’s tail, and cool cards always signed, in my mom’s unique handwriting, Love; Mom and Dad although my Dad did none of the shopping and basically was just as surprised as we were by the contents of each of the boxes.  Inevitably, on the seemingly arduous ride up (it was only 2 1/2 hours, a walk in the park by my post-India travel adventures but seemed like forever when I was 8) we would stop at the Sloatsburg Travel Plaza off the New York Thruway for some Burger King and Sbarro.  My dad always got a stomach ache.  And then it was back on the road.

Once we got off the highway at our destination, we would wind our way through Voorheesville and New Salem.  For most of the time we went up there, the town only had one stop light so it was pretty much smooth sailing.  We would drive past the two houses where I have this vague memory of a story I was told about two teenage kids, some phone calls and a police visit; we would drive past the high school and the police station; past the Smitty’s and the middle school with it’s fancy wooden playground and then arrive at my grandma, Mima’s, little house behind a bigger house, about 6 houses down on the left.  (My uncle Pat used to live in the front house.  As a little kid I was pretty afraid of Pat and his house because he always wore army clothes, never smiled, and basically kept the lights in the house off at all times.)  Sometimes Mima would  hear us coming up the driveway and would meet us out front and sometimes not, but we knew she was home waiting.  As we got older we would grab what we could and make our way in, but as little kids we would barrel into the house always making sure to close the outer door before opening the inner one so as not to allow Something, Mima’s rather sassy cat, to escape.  The rest of the afternoon and evening was full of tree decorating, eating the candy Mima always kept around but couldn’t eat (she was diabetic) and lots of talking.  Lucy could usually be found in the corner reading a book.  We gave Mima a new ornament yearly, and we always, always, got to open one present on Christmas Eve.  When I was younger, I would pick one that looked like a book and leave the bigger and oddly shaped presents, the more exciting ones, for the next day.  I always loved those Christmas Eves.

After dinner the 5 of us would leave Mima and head back to the hotel for a good night sleep before we headed back to her house for a full day of Wehren-family fun.  When we got older, and after Uncle Pat passed away and my Aunt Vida moved into his house (she painted the walls colors and turned on the lights!) me, Aaron and Lucy would all sleep there, taking care to pack pajama layers because Vida basically doesn’t believe in turning the heat above 65 degrees.  Brr.  Christmas day was always full.  My cousin Jessica and I generally got matching sweaters.  I seem to remember one year we got matching red leggings and a sweater with a reindeer on it which we changed into immediately and wore around for the rest of the day.  We loved getting matching sweaters.  I think that stopped when we were about 11. There were gifts, there were stories, there were mashed potatoes, there was the inevitable argument among the Wehren siblings about religion, education and politics (they are all varying degrees of extremely liberal).  My dad always went back to the hotel to take a nap in the middle of the day.  I think it was all a little much for him.  The next morning we would all meet at a nearby diner for breakfast before we headed home to Jersey.  That was the typical Chirstmas.  But there were a few incidents that I will always remember.

There was the time when my cousin Jessica and I decided to go back to the hotel with my dad during his afternoon nap.  We wandered the halls, playing games, pretending someone was following us through the halls of the hotel.  We didn’t know what room he this mystery man was staying in but we knew he was after us.  At one point, riding the elevator from one floor to another, we got impatient and hit basically all the buttons.  We got stuck in the elevator for about ten minutes.  To this day elevators still make me uncomfortable.

Then there was the time, after Mima started getting sick so we moved Christmas dinner down the driveway to Vida’s house, when there was a lot of snow.  Like, a lot of snow.  So much snow that, when all the pipes froze due to the insane cold, we had to go outside and get snow to melt in order to wash the dishes.  Even though this was in the era when Lucy, Aaron and I normally stayed with Vida, my dad insisted we all stay in the hotel so he didn’t have to drive to pick us up in the morning and brave all the snow.  We headed out.  The snow was pretty deep and falling fast.  Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “I Like Big Butts” was playing on the radio.  My brother and I (I think this might have been the year Lucy was in Florence) were singing along at high volume.  My dad, deciding one road seemed to be a little more treacherous than he liked, decided to attempt a K-turn into a snow bank in the Saab.  Needless to say we got stuck.  Aaron and I kept singing.  My dad did not think it was funny.  I’m pretty sure my mom tried to stay neutral but was on our side.

The time (or was it times?) when Aaron would block my exit from the revolving door and I would go around and around and around, unable to enter the hotel if we were getting back, or leave the hotel if we were headed out.

Whether there was an event or not, it was always fun.  It got harder as we got older.  We all had our separate lives.  Aaron got married and started spending Christmas at my sister-in-law, Claire’s, house.  Lucy moved to Boston.  Mima got sick and could no longer really participate in conversations like she used to.  But it was always nice going up there.  Always nice to talk to Mima about what we had been up to.  I told her about my running, my studies, and my traveling.  She seemed to be proud and impressed no matter what I was up to which I find funny because Mima is basically one of the most impressive women ever.  Mima raised 6 kids by herself and managed to feed and clothe them all.  And keep a functioning house.  I don’t think Mima had very much fun but all the kids, in the end, turned out great.  Whenever I hear some politician comment on how single women are incapable of raising well-rounded children, I want to counter with the example of my grandmother.  The older I get, the more amazed by her I am.

This is my second Christmas staying in Brooklyn.  My second Christmas after Mima died.  And while it is nice to be home and avoid the holiday travel, I really do miss all five of us piling into that car, stopping unnecessarily on the way up, seeing the family we only got to see twice a year.  I miss decorating a tree with the same ornaments year after year.  I miss making fun of my dad for his Chirstmas afternoon nap.  I miss the matching sweaters.  Most of all, though, I miss Mima.  So, Mima, where ever you are, a very merry Christmas.  I miss you more today than the other 364.

Tags: , , , , ,

Tip #2 on Being a Good Bar Customer

18 Dec

(You can read Tip #1 here.)

Never argue with your bartender about the price of your drink.  Especially when your bartender is not actually in charge of setting the prices, the management is, with a fair amount of input from the cost of the bottle or the keg itself.  Bars, the good, fair ones at least, do not just pull prices out of their asses.  They are calculated considering the number of shots, neat pours, or pints expected to come out of the given bottle or keg, taking a certain amount of waste into account.  Bars are businesses, after all.  Some bars have to charge more because of their location and the subsequent higher inputs to keep the bar running.  We do not have to do that which means you, the customer, are getting a completely fair price for whatever it is you ordered.  If you want to drink cheaper, drink at home.  Here’s a story.

I just arrived at work and the bar was a little busy following an office Christmas party earlier in the day for a big group of our regulars.  (Read:  everyone was trashed and being super loud.  But that’s okay because it’s a bar and that’s what people do there.)  I had come straight from the library and had a little bit of a headache but was trying my best — not sure how successful I was at this — to come across as a relatively pleasant person.  One of the veins in my right eye was super red and pulsating.  Transitioning into the bar was going to take a little bit of an adjustment period during which time I planned on smiling at people and getting them their drinks, saving all meaningful conversation for a little later.  One of my customers was being, as usual, extremely loud.  Like, crazy loud.  Like yelling to someone who was literally 2 feet away from him loud.  So I made a joke to one of his friends, in good fun, that went a little something like this:

He is talking to someone right in front of him, right?  He’s like one of those guys from those old 90’s commercials for hip-hop compilation CDs where the dude explaining the product is like SCREAMING and you’re all like, “why are you yelling?  I’m right here!”

It was a joke.  I made it obvious that it was a joke.  But I think it pissed off one of his other friends, who had had WAY too much to drink, who was not even the person I was telling the joke to.  Anyway, this guy, we’ll call him Steve, ordered a whisky.  The same whisky he has been drinking for like 3 years.  I poured him his drink, took his twenty, put 8 of it in the register because that is what this particular drink costs, and gave him his $12 change.  He gave me the stink eye.  Even before he looked at his correct change he gave me the stink eye.  Whatever.  He felt like picking a fight.  So then this interaction happened:

Steve:  Um.  A Bulleit Rye is $8 now?

Me:  A Bulleit Rye has always been 8.  It’s 7 during happy hour, which ends at 8 o’clock, so now it’s 8:30 and so the Bulleit is $8.

Steve:  That’s too expensive.

Me:  Well, I don’t see how it’s too expensive today but it was fine a week ago but, you know, I don’t set the prices.  So, if you have a problem with the price, you have to talk to the boss.  I have nothing to do with it.  I just charge what I am told to charge.

Steve:  I hope you know that I just paid barely twice as much as what you just charged me for 4 drinks.

Me:  I highly doubt that’s the truth.  But maybe you got one for free.  Also, it was happy hour so they were a buck cheaper.

At this point I am getting more than slightly irritated but trying hard to hold my temper.  Trying to give him a little drunk wiggle room to fix the way he was coming across.  He ignored the wiggle room.

Steve:  (In the rudest most condescending voice ever) Well, you need to learn how to take care of your regulars.

Okay.  I’m sorry.  What?  So, again, I refer you to Tip #1 during which I explained how it is not okay ever, under any circumstance, to ask for a buyback.  You know what that does?  It means that the bartender never wants to give you a buyback again.  And you know what?  That’s her prerogative (totally never knew there were two ‘r’s in that).  The buyback, as I believe I have mentioned before, is a privilege, not a rule.  It is me as a bartender, and my establishment as a bar, telling you we think you are awesome and want you to keep coming back all the time.  And you know what this interaction was?  Decidedly not awesome.

Me:  (Hands shaking with anger.  Also, at this point I have slid his $2 tip back towards him and told him I am not interested in his money)  So let me get this straight.  I just got here. I have now served you 1 drink and you want me to give it to you for free?

He wouldn’t look at me.  So I turned on my heal and huffed down the bar.  And then I decided I couldn’t let it go because, really, when can I?  So I got the price book, took out a red pen, highlighted the cost of the drink he was arguing with me over and shoved it under his nose.  (This, I admit, was overkill.  Sue me.)

Me:  See?  Eight dollars.  Deal with it.

I then restormed off down the bar and seethed.  But, as a bartender, I obviously couldn’t seethe for too long so, after a few choice comments to a friend of mine, I went about my business, deciding not to let Steve ruin my night or the night of any of my other customers. I would venture to say I was more smiley than usual, to prove a point.  Then Steve called me down to the end of the bar.  I didn’t expect an apology but I expected something along the lines of “blah blah blah, that got out of hand, are we cool?” which we wouldn’t have been but I’m about keeping the peace for the most part so I probably would have lied and said we were.  But no.  In his hand he had another 20 which he then shoved toward me and said, in a snide tone,

Take this.  It isn’t about the money.

Clearly it is about him, the righteous one, teaching me how to do my job.  It is him teaching me how to treat people. It is him informing me about the way that service industry people should treat their customers, without for a second giving thought to the obligation the one being served has to treat their bartender, waiter, barista, as a human being.  I, obviously, didn’t take it.  Not when he tried to give it to me, and not when he gave it to his friends to give to me.  That money was rude, condescending, asshole money.  Not interested in that kind of money.  I only like sparkling, happy, money.  I’m picky.  Also, it made me feel dirty.  Maybe I am analyzing something through a gendered lens inappropriately, but there is something about being a woman and having someone prove their point by shoving money at you that just feels…icky.  Maybe it’s the case for everyone.  Who knows.

So we’ll see what happens next time I see him.  But, for now, I leave you, friends, with this tasty nugget:  a few years ago this same Steve was arrested for pissing on the outside of a bar after he and his friend, who were behaving badly (surprise!) got kicked out of said bar.  So, there’s that.

Tags: , , , , ,

A Response to Newtown

17 Dec

I have really been trying to avoid writing about this because, honestly, what can I say about it that hasn’t already been said and thought about countless times over.  But after spending yet another hour in front of my computer, reading article upon article about the horrible tragedy that occurred in Connecticut this past Friday, I just can’t help myself.  Personally, I am not really sure how to deal with all the feelings I have been having over the past few days (including crying myself to sleep two nights in a row) so I figure I will work it out here.  You can either choose to go ahead and read or spare yourself…the latter would be beyond justified.

I found out about the event via a New York Times emergency update on my phone.  Pretty much nothing good ever comes from seeing that little script “T” appear on the top right hand side of my screen.  I opened it and read the headline and my immediate response was

What the fuck is wrong with people?!

I realized the carnage had happened in an elementary school.  I logically understood that many of the victims were children.  I just think my brain was literally incapable of understanding it.  My brain just rejected the information.  I ate lunch.  I drank some more coffee.  I took a shower.  I got the laundry together.  I went down to the Clean Rite to throw the pounds and pounds of dirty clothes, sheets and towels in the wash and was surrounded, literally surrounded, by televisions on different news stations – 2, 4, 5, 7 — all reporting on the events in Newtown.  My boyfriend was there and so, to avoid allowing the reality of it all to crash down on us, we chatted, joked, and divvied our laundry into three different washers.  While the clothes were washing, we ran some errands and then, while he showered, I went down to change the laundry into the dryers.  I couldn’t avoid listening to the news, the interviews with children as they left the scene, with parents who’s kids were spared, to newscasters who were literally unable to keep it together (and who can blame them?).  I got teared-up in the Clean Rite.  My eyes and my lower lip burned.  I kept it, at least right then, to a minimum of tears.  The rest of the evening, spent largely alone with my cats, was spent trying as hard as possible to avoid the news.  I knew what I would find there and I know myself.  I would spend all night, into the wee hours, scouring every news site in an effort to understand something, anything.  I did a relatively good job but still, lying in bed by myself, I couldn’t help but think about the parents who were missing children for the first night, families who were missing those who worked at the school.

I woke up the next morning and walked to work.  I wrote a message on the outside board about the need to discuss gun violence in wake of this most recent tragedy.  There were a few conversations about it during the day but I think, mostly, people just couldn’t deal.  I think they went to the bar to get away from the news and the wondering and the thoughts and the tears and I certainly wasn’t going to take that away from them.  When work ended and I arrived back home I, stupidly perhaps, turned my computer on and there was the New York Times website, my home page.  And there on the first page was an article that revealed that the shooter’s mother didn’t even work at the school.  I had been sad and confused about this event before but for some reason this made it all worse.

But why?

The result was the same.  The kids and the educators were dead.  I guess there was some part of my brain that had previously believed, taken some weird form of comfort in, the fact that maybe this guy went to kill his mother and got carried away.  That despite the incredible amount of fire power he brought with him that maybe he snapped in that moment, that people got in the way, that he got scared.  Something.  Anything.  I wanted to believe, even though I think logically I knew it wasn’t true, that it was an accident.  That he didn’t mean to kill all those kids.  To think that he killed his mother at home and then drove to an elementary school and opened fire on a group of mostly first graders just…I don’t know.  To think of walking into a school full of young people who are still more or less unaffected by horror and tragedy and to massacre them is just unfathomable.  To think that that was the point of his journey there.  The point was to go in and destroy the lives of countless people.  The point was to look at these little guys that weight 40?  50? pounds and rip their bodies apart with not 1, not 2, but up to 11 bullets.  The point was, what?   I doubt we’ll ever have an answer to that.

In the aftermath of all this I have seen a lot of people talking about gun control.  A lot of people talking about better care for the mentally ill.  A better infrastructure to identify and treat, or at least help, those who are risks to themselves and others.  I’ve seen people warn that by focusing on the mental state of this particular person risks further stigmatizing a group of people who, for the most part, are not violent.  I think these are all valid points.  I think we need to talk gun control.  I think we need to talk about not shutting mental illness up in a closet because it is too sensitive to talk about.  But I also think we need to address our culture’s ideas about masculinity and power and privilege.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that almost all of the mass shootings that have occurred recently, and in history, have been perpetrated by men.  And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that more often than not those men have been white.  I think we need to talk about how we raise our boys.  We need to talk about the way we advertize and how we define what makes a person “manly.”  We need to realize that the shifting demographics in this country not only make it increasingly difficult for any candidate to run on a ticket geared only to white men, but also represent a challenge to our carefully constructed reality.  We need to shift our norms.  We need to shift our values.  When we spend a good deal of our time – in television shows and movies, in commercials, in conversation, in classrooms – putting white men on a pedestal and then they go out in the world and their privilege is challenged and maybe their opinions don’t matter more than everyone else’s solely because they have a white penis, well, what do we expect?  As a woman, yea, society has told me that I am worth less, that I deserve less, that my body is not mine, that I am the cause of my own abuse.  But also as a woman I was taught to fight back, to answer these attacks with reason and truth, to join together with other women and allies, to not allow words and actions to define my worth.

I guess what I am saying is what if I expected everything?  What if I was born and the world was mine and, although life wasn’t easy, things were designed and created with me in mind?  How might I respond to others questioning my power?

I think our boys lack tools to deal with adversity.  I think we, as a culture, build them up so much and at the same time infuse them with an unattainable, and oftentimes violent, idea of what manhood is.  It’s not sustainable.  It’s like a child whose given everything he asks for, and even things he doesn’t, and all of a sudden hears the word “no” only rather than throwing some toys he shoots some guns.

I am certainly oversimplifying.  I will certainly think more about this in the coming days, weeks, months.  I guess the thing is that I don’t think it’s just access to guns, or lack of access to proper care, although those are certainly part of the problem.  I just really think we need to start talking about how we prepare our boys for the world.  Obviously not all of them go out shooting.  Not even most of them.  But it would be nice if none of them did and I strongly believe that an honest and open dialogue about cultural norms, power, privilege and masculinity is in order.  It might actually help more than a reevaluation of the second amendment or  better and more affordable mental health care.  We need to better prepare our boys for the changing world.  We need to teach them to respond to adversity not with anger and violence but with information.  Just a thought.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Day I Sneezed the Loudest Sneeze

13 Dec

This one is for my friends Dee and Elizabeth.

I woke up this past Monday morning with a sore throat.  It wasn’t scratchy, as if I had been talking too much or too loudly the night before.  It was more a feeling of tightness.  It felt a little smaller, a little more constricted, than usual.  The classic precursor to a cold.  I spent that day in my room, intermittently reading the news and watching “Grey’s Anatomy,” from the beginning.  (Sometimes when I am sick, or think I might be getting sick, I try to torture the sickness out of me by watching marathons of some of the cheesier shows available.  A few years ago it was “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”  I will never be the same.)  The day went along and my overall feeling of sickness stayed relatively the same.  I felt a little bit tired with that kind of naggingly tight throat and a very tickly, but not runny, nose.  Maybe this was it.  A lamb of a cold.

On Tuesday I woke up feeling more or less the same.  I, once again, forewent my run in an attempt to stave off the sickness a little bit longer or, hopefully, to avoid it all together.  I ate an orange because, you know, vitamin c.  Then I headed into the city to meet my friend Dee at the study center at our school to do some work, me on my thesis, which I am paying to write, and her on a cool project that she is getting paid for because she is smart and awesome and on top of her shit.  Go Dee!

The study center is a quiet place.  There was a group of rather rowdy Parson’s students behind us (aren’t the loud ones always from Parson’s?) who Dee and I thought should have used a study room rather than the study center to work on a group project that involved multi-media images and things.  Dee kept giving them the best nasty looks I have seen in years.  It was pretty classic.  We were working for hours, drinking too much coffee, eating Haribo peaches.  Through the entire afternoon I kept having this annoying tickle in my right nostril.  I kept plugging my nose and looking up at the light, hoping to keep the sneeze from bursting forth.  Then, all of a sudden, I got a super intense tickle and ACHOO!  It was, literally, the loudest sneeze I have ever sneezed in my entire life.  It sounded, as determined with help from my friend Elizabeth, much like a cruise ship horn, if, rather than being a soothing, 5-10 second long sound it came out, all at once, in a huge burst.  I looked around the silent study room to see a number of startled faces looking back at me.  I frantically looked at the floor, acting as if I had dropped a pen in hopes that people wouldn’t credit me with the heart attack-inducing sneeze.  I had to go to the bathroom to blow my nose and wash my hands, but I feared that if I left my seat right away the few people who didn’t know the sneeze was mine would soon come to realize I was the culprit.  I looked up at Dee.  She had an expression that communicated to me both shock and amusement.

“Excuse me.”

I whispered.  Although at that point I might have been better off screaming it.  About 2 minutes later, after touching nothing in an effort to not spread my sneeze-germs everywhere, (it was a dry sneeze, by the way), I quickly and quietly made my way to the bathroom to blow my nose and wash my hands.  And that, my friends, is the story of the loudest sneeze I ever sneezed.

In other news, I read this in The New Yorker while waiting for the train Pre-Loudest Sneeze and it made me laugh. You might like it too.

“(Grover) Norquist attributed the Presidential result to the Obama campaign’s success in portraying Romney as ‘a poopy-head.'”

No, seriously. And…that is all.

Tags: , , , , ,

Tip #1 on Being a Good Bar Customer

10 Dec

Don’t ask for buybacks.  Under any circumstance.  Ever.  Buybacks are a privilege bestowed upon you by a bartender who thinks you are awesome and who thinks you are deserving of a free beverage.  (And, let it be said, also thinks you will tip them appropriately for the gesture, maybe even enough that they can put some of said tip into the register.)  The second you request that privilege, it disappears.  Poof!  Quite possibly never to be seen again.  Here, let me give you an example about how to get a buyback.

I have a customer who comes in often, does work on his computer, drinks some stuff, leaves.  Sometimes he feels like chatting, sometimes not so much.  I pretty much leave it up to him.  He is always polite.  I like him.  He’s nice.  I never have an overwhelming urge to roll my eyes when I see him walk through the door.  Generally, I give him his third drink on the house.  Sometimes he has a shot.  If I haven’t had a lot of long-staying customers that day I might give him the shot on the house, also.  (I usually allow myself a certain percentage of the ring in buybacks, and if I haven’t bought many people things that day, I throw a little extra the way of my regular customers, you know, to say “thanks, I think you’re great please never stop coming in because you’re nice and you help me pay my rent.”)  Sometimes he leaves me 10 bucks.  Sometimes even more.  Either way I am happy.  If I feel as though the tip it too generous, say 20 bucks, I might put 10 of it in the register.  Then the bar wins, I win and the customer wins.  Everyone is happy.  So now let me give you an example of how not to get a buyback.

I have this couple that comes in on Sundays.  They’re pleasant enough but just sort of irk me.  Especially the female half.  She has this entitlement thing about her and she thinks we’re best friends.  Also, sometimes she carries around this little plastic squirt bottle full of water and she randomly sprays her hair with it.  I guess she thinks it makes her hair look better.  I think it makes her hair, and her, look weird.  I usually buy her and her boyfriend back a drink or two not because I particularly like them, or because they are good tippers, but because they are pleasant enough and, although I do have an urge to roll my eyes when I see them coming through the door, the urge isn’t overwhelming and I think that says something.  Also, my boss likes them.  That’s the real reason.  It’s like a professional courtesy.  Anyway, so yesterday.

Yesterday I got to work and found the bar a complete mess.  Apparently, the plumbers were there to replace the toilet in the ladies room and to fix the pipes in the mens room, pipes that were threatening to spew yucky stuff everywhere at any moment.  I was annoyed with the mess but was happy with the fact that they had placed the old toilet from the ladies room on the curb, giving me hours of entertainment as I watched passersby (and my own customers) pose with the toilet and take photos.  Anything for a good laugh, I say.  Anyway, when they finished working they decided to stay and have a few beers.  Okay.  I figured I would get them a few rounds because (1) they had done work on the bathroom which was appreciated (2) they seemed to want to drink a lot and (3) they were responsible for the placement of the toilet on the street which, as just mentioned, was hilarious and great.  So, okay.  I decided to look past the occasional inappropriate comments being made by the older of the two plumbers.  I also decided to try not to be annoyed at having to refuse a drink about 15 times.  I just thought “okay, he just had his hands all over a toilet (ew!), I will cut him some slack and not really talk to him.”  So, as a mature person, I just decided to avoid his side of the bar entirely unless I saw he and his younger, more polite, friend was in need of a refill.  It went more or less okay.  Then he noticed the couple I was talking about before sitting on the other side of the bar.  Apparently, the male half had given the names of these plumbers to my boss, hence the job.  So, the plumbers bought the couple a few drinks and, eventually, made their way down to the end of the bar to hang out with them.  After all was said and done and the plumbers asked for their check, they had been there, drinking, for at least 3 hours and, with their beers combined with the ones they bought for the couple, they had amassed a sizeable tab, especially considering nothing anyone in the foursome drank was particularly pricey.  I added the tab all together.  It came to just under $100 and I was fairly certain I had forgotten to write down a few things.  I decided, after taking the above listed reasons into consideration, to charge them $72.  That’s called a deal.  I walked over to where they were sitting and said,

“Hey, I got you a few rounds.  Cheers.  Oh, and thanks for the toilet on the street.”

I then walked away to give them some time to sign their tab and do all that.  As I walked away I heard the female of the couple say,

“Wow, that’s a lot of money.  I bet she didn’t give you anything free.  You have to ask her.  That’s just too much.”

I was mad.  So I decided to avoid that side of the bar in order to not have to deal with what I knew was coming.  Also, what did she know about what, how much, and for how long the plumbers had been drinking.  She herself had racked up a $20 tab, most of which the plumbers were paying for!  So rude!  Eventually, the couple called me down to the end.  The plumber then looked at me and said

“Did you include the last round on here?”

I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  I thought to myself, self, maybe he is just making sure he is being charged for all the things he ordered.  Maybe he thought his tab was too low and wanted to make sure that I had put everything on there, that I wasn’t going to charge the couple for any of the drinks.

“Yup.  You told me to put the round on your card, so I did.”

The plumber looked at me, confused.  He then looked at his company, confused.  Then the lady, who I guess decided she would help fix the situation because she is so incredibly beloved by the staff of my bar and therefore so deserving of all the drinks for free, clarified for me.

“I think he meant did he get anything for free.  Like, did you buy us all some drinks.  You know, free drinks, because we had a lot.”

Commence deep breathing exercises and a whole-hearted attempt to keep my left eyebrow, which has a mind of its own, under control.  Pretty sure my face turned pink because my ears felt hot.  Deep inhale, and

“I already told you I got you some of your drinks.  And just so you know” at this point I looked around the group of them, stopping meaningfully on each one of them, a skill I learned from my uncle, “the more you ask for buybacks, the less you’re gonna get.”

I walked away.  I might have stormed.  Whatever, details.  As I walked away I heard the lady say,

“Well, the other bartenders here are really nice.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously?  First of all, as I believe I have said before, there is not a magical force field that separates the bartender from the patrons, although sometimes I wish there were.  I can hear you.  Second of all, I don’t even like you!  I don’t even want to give you buybacks ever!  You give me a headache!  You expect me to make you our $5 bloody marys with Stoli and charge you the same as if I made it with the well.  Why?  Because you’re a jerk!  And you don’t understand that the bar is a business.  Am I the nicest bartender in the world?  No.  Am I a little bit surly at times?  Yes.  Have I put up with your shit for the last 4 years?  Yes.  I think I deserve a medal.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Imagination Games Gone Sour

4 Dec

Disclaimer:  The blog to follow is in no way intended to belittle the tragedy that spawned the authoring of this particular post.  It is based on an actual fear that I have, however unlikely it is to come to fruition.  I choose to approach it semi-humorously because, in my experience, that’s usually a good way to approach things that are uncomfortable to talk about.  Also, I know that even though this fear sometimes comes true for some people and that is totally tragic and awful, it will likely not come true to me.  That, however, doesn’t mean that I (a) can’t still be worried about it and (b) can’t be sad for the people it actually happens to.  Disclaimer over.  Actual blog beginning.

Throughout this blog I have mentioned the imagination games that I play to pass the time.  I play them while I am running.  I play them when I think about winning the 550 million dollar Power Ball.  I play them pretty much all the time.  As I have gotten older, though, I have noticed that my imagination games have become slightly scarier, slightly more sinister.  They have become, as one of my old co-workers used to say, more akin to ill-fantasies than fun goals and aspirations.  Here’s an example.

When I used to play imagination games back in the day they always went like this.  I wrote this thing, said this thing, or did this thing that people thought was super great.  Then I became famous and people were talking about me enough that Ellen took notice and invited me on her show.  Then I would imagine whether or not I would have to pick my own clothes or Ellen’s dressing room people would help me think of something to wear because nothing, and I mean nothing in my closet is good enough to wear for an interview with Ellen.  Also, I don’t really know how to use make-up other than eye liner and mascara so I would wonder whether or not Ellen’s make-up people would help me with the other things that I might need to look good on camera.  You know, because in my imagination game I really would not want to have a shiny forehead.  Even though, for the record, shiny forehead is something I actually never worry about in real life.  OR!  I would write this thing or say this thing or do this thing that people thought was super great.  Then I would become famous and people would be talking about me enough that Larry King would notice and invite me on his show.  Then I wouldn’t worry about outfits or make-up or shiny forehead but would instead only wonder how much trouble I would get in if I were to lean over Larry’s desk thing and snap his suspenders.  It has been my dream to snap Larry King’s suspenders far longer than it has been my dream to be interviewed by Ellen.  But things have changed.

Now I have ill-fantasies as opposed to funny and neat fantasies.  One of my most reoccurring ill-fantasies is being pushed into the subway tracks by a stranger.  I don’t know exactly when this ill-fantasy started but it has been repeating itself for a few years now.  I will be waiting for the R train, looking down the tracks expectantly, seeing the progress of the train and all of a sudden

<BOOM!  ILL-FANTASY!>

A crazy person comes from behind me, shoves me on the back and I go tumbling onto the tracks.  In my ill-fantasy, that’s usually the end of the story although come to think of it sometimes I imagine the broken bones and the bleeding face but I always manage to scramble back out of the tracks before the train arrives.  In real life, as in the life that takes place outside of my mind, I look around the subway for crazies and slowly inch my way closer to the wall, safe from a random shove.

Now that I think back, I’m pretty sure it all started this one day when I was waiting for the R train and all of a sudden I saw this man in the darkness of the subway tracks.  He wasn’t on the tracks, he was to the side of the tracks, on the walkway set up for MTA employees.  He was thin, of average height, with a crazy head of blondish-brownish-grayish hair.  He came running down the side of the tracks, train horn blaring behind him as the conductor wondered whether the man would continue on the walkway or jump down onto the tracks without warning.  He ran and ran and then as he approached the divider between where straphangers wait and MTA employees walk he hurdled, like how Olympic athletes do, easily clearing the blockade and went running through the entire waiting area, with all the commuters taking a step back towards the wall to let him pass.  He then re-entered the walkway area on the other end of the subway station and continued on his way.  I’m pretty sure in those tense momenst as he made his way across the platform we were all thinking the same thing.  No one wanted to be shoved and if I were to imagine someone who was likely to shove someone randomly, it would be this man with the crazy hair and the vacant eyes that seemed as though they hadn’t seen the light of day in months.  Now on a weekly basis I have a moment of ill-fantasizing while waiting for the subway where I worry that I may or may not get shoved into the path of an oncoming train, or at least onto the empty tracks to be bruised, bloodied and bitten by rats.  Until yesterday I thought I was being crazy.  But then it happened to this guy.  And then!

I went online and I discovered that this is not the first time this has happened!  Last year I found out this other lady who is in the fashion industry in some capacity also got pushed onto the tracks!  Also by a stranger!  She broke some ribs and her lung got punctured and everything.  Not dead but I bet she doesn’t ride the subway anymore.  So, while I fully realize that the odds of me getting pushed down into the subway tracks are slightly better than me winning the 550 million dollar Power Ball, being interviewed by Ellen or snapping Larry King’s suspenders I am still nervous about it.

So for the foreseeable future, I will be the one hugging the wall of the subway station until the approaching train comes to a complete stop.

Tags: , , , , , ,

The day after I didn’t win the 550 million dollar Power Ball

29 Nov

So last night my boyfriend and I went to two different stores that “felt right” and bought $10 each worth of Power Ball numbers.  Each $10 purchase came with a free set of numbers.  That meant 12 chances in all.  Despite the fact that I was told I would be more likely to either get attacked by a shark or contract a flesh eating bacteria than win this particular Power Ball drawing, I was still fairly convinced I was going to win.  I started thinking about what I would do with the money.  Donations!  Real Estate!  Traveling to all the places!  A new pair of sunglasses since I broke the ones I found last year!  So, so many possibilities.  Needless to say I did not win $550 million.  After the shock wore off I went to sleep.  And now here I sit, at my computer, the day after I didn’t win the 550 million dollar Power Ball and you know what? Despite the huge shock and letdown of last night, I feel basically the same as always.  I will tell you about my morning.

First, I woke up in my normal bed with those comfortable flannel sheets and a $45 Bed, Bath and Beyond comforter that should have been replaced about 2 years ago.  There was no Egyptian silk. There was no expensive leather headboard.  Just the unadorned metal bed frame that I inherited from my sister-in-law in 2005.

Second, I looked down the bed to find my two cats lying there, sleeping.  The same old striped cats I’ve had for two years.  No fancy hairless cats.  No trained lion cubs.  Just Clark and Grete, snuggling with the free straw that came with a soda last week that they fell asleep playing with at 4am, approximately 5 hours after I didn’t win the 550 million dollar Power Ball.

Third, I poured myself a cup of coffee from my BRAUN coffee maker with the beans I bought last week.  No special Fair Trade beans flown in specifically for me from a farm in Honduras after paying a more than fair price to the farmer herself.  There was no fancy Italian espresso machine equipped with my very own Barista where my coffee maker used to be.

Fourth, I made myself a piece of toast and I ate it dry.  Dry toast.  No caviar.  No butter directly from the Hudson Valley.  No compote.  Just bread that I toasted too long so it was more like a dry rye-flavored cracker.  Again.

Fifth, I sat down at my computer and started reading the news.  I Googled myself just to make sure that the internet didn’t know something about my 550 million dollar win that I did not.  No such luck.   As usual the only person by my name that came up was the much-cooler-than-me designer of really crazy looking metal jewelry that looks more like torture devices than anything else.   I looked at pictures of lion cubs and thought about what could have been.  I read a depressing article about Courtney Stodden and felt happy I wasn’t her.  Then I started writing this blog post.

The following is what I did not do this morning because I did not win the 550 million dollar Power Ball:

1.  I did not pay off the mortgage on my parent’s house.
2.  I did not pay off all my school loans in full with a little note enclosed that said “if you thought you were going to charge me $20,000 in interest over 10 years you thought wrong.  SUCKERS!”
3.  I did not buy my friend Clayton an apartment complete with a private karate studio like I promised to do if I won the Power Ball.
4.   I did not buy new sunglasses to replace the ones that I found for free at the bar but which cracked in my bag last month.  I will just continue feeling thankful that I have dark brown eyes and therefore am not as sensitive to the sun as my blue or green-eyed brethren.
5.  I did not contact a travel agent to figure out exactly how I could travel to every single place.  Every.  Single.  One.
6.  I did not plan how to take 10 of my closest friends out to a really nice dinner instead of working my bar shift until 4am.
7.  I did not hire someone to write my thesis.

So, I guess today, the day I am still not a multi-millionaire is basically the same as every other day in which I am not a multi-millionaire.  I’m procrastinating, same as always.  I’m drinking too much coffee, same as always.  I’m playing imagination games, same as always.  I’m warm and happy and have all the things I need (except sun glasses) even if they are maybe a little bit rattier than I might ideally like, same as always.  So, I guess it’s not so bad.  Until the next time the Power Ball gets really big.  Next time I am totally going to win.  Next time I will write a blog post called “I totally won the Power Ball” with no content at all except maybe something that looks like this: skdjfblksdfhkhsfd!!!!! because that’s what it looks like in my brain when I get too excited to string words together into a sentence.  Just wait.  It’ll be totally fantastic.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A small ‘Thank You’ to some of my public school teachers

24 Nov

While “watching” the University of Michigan vs. Ohio State game on television because I am a good and dedicated girlfriend, I read an article in The New Yorker all about education policy and specifically what one woman, Diane Ravitch, sees as the unfortunate effects of No Child Left Behind.  I don’t know too much about this, although obviously I have my opinions, so without more independent research I really don’t want to go on a whole rant-like analysis of the goods and bads of No Child Left Behind and the rise of Charter Schools.  Perhaps I will leave that for another day.  I do, however, want to say one thing:  thank you.  As a product of public education in New Jersey, I would like to take this opportunity to thank a few of the teachers I had growing up who really left their mark.  So, here goes.

Thank you Mrs. Early, my third grade teacher, for showing me that learning can be fun.  Although you were demanding, you made everything interesting, teaching us the importance of art and science in every day life.  And I wrote my first published book, The Attack of the Friendly Aliens, under your tutelage.  It’s destined to be a classic.

Thank you Mrs. Murphy, my 5th grade teacher, for showing me to never judge a person by her reputation.  I was scared when I found out on my last day of the 4th grade that you were going to be my teacher, I even tried to switch out of your class, but I soon learned that being tough is not necessarily a bad thing.

Thank you Mr. Piza, my 7th grade social studies teacher, for teaching us about Africa.  Leading up to your class, and for many years after, the history and relevance of that entire continent was taught as an afterthought.  If it wasn’t for your desire to share with us your interest in African history and current events, I don’t know that I ever would have started thinking about what it said about us in the United States that Africa was not deemed relevant enough to be a focus of our education growing up.  I don’t know that I would have become interested in the things I am interested in today.

Thank you Dr. Jooma, my 9th grade English teacher, for showing me how amazing Shakespeare can really be when you take time to read it and really think about it.  And thank you for giving me a lifelong love of MacBeth.

Thank you Dr. Miron, my 11th grade Algebra II teacher for listening to me when I talked to you about the importance of having a lower level Algebra II class for those of us who just couldn’t keep up.  And thank you for letting me take the class pass/fail after seeing how hard I worked and understanding that without the option of a slower paced class I simply could not do well.  Thank you for your compassion.

Thank you Mr. Palladino, my 12th grade elective teacher, for putting an exclamation point on my interest in the world.  It was you who really taught me to question what I read in the news, to try and see all angles, to think about the possible reasons behind the actions.  It was you who taught me never to point a finger because things are always more complex than we know.

Thank you Mr. Fox for taking the time, even though you weren’t my teacher, to re-explain math concepts to me over and over again even though it probably seemed like I would never understand them.  I am still terrible at math but I know that with a patient instructor I can enjoy it, even if the answers never seem to be right.

I’m sure I missed a few along the way and as they come to mind I will add them to the list.  The point is that these are all people who I think of fondly, if not often.  People who did their jobs with passion, skill and a love of teaching.  People who listened to their students and learned from them.  I don’t know whether, with the new direction of public education, these teachers will be as appreciated in the future as they were in the past and that would be a damn shame.

And also, to all my friends who teach:  thank you for the time, the energy, the work.  I’m sure things are heard right now.  I’m sure it’s not fun being stuck in the middle of this national debate, as you see the federal money to your programs decreasing and people wondering why our students seem to be faring worse.  But if you love it, keep at it.  Who knows, maybe you will be the one to influence a student’s future.

And…cheesiness over.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Breast is Best Fundamentalism, Take 1

21 Nov

I read this article at work this past Saturday about a topic that has been bothering me on and off for the past 6 months or so:  the so-called “Breast is Best” movement.  I am going to treat this as the first of a series of posts on this topic with the hope that I come back to it on other occasions.  No promises.  Also, I get there, as usual, via a rather winding road so bear with me.  Okay, here goes.

In the article, titled “After Hurricane Sandy, Helping Hands Also Expose a New York Divide,” author Sarah Maslin Nir discusses the post-Sandy emergence (or really highlighting), of a racial and financial divide between those largely seeking help and those providing it.  In Nir’s own words,

Hurricane Sandy, the cliché of the moment goes, created a city of haves and have-nots; those New Yorkers with power and heat and the many other assurances of modern life, and those without. But the storm simply made plain the dividing lines in a city long fractured by class, race, ethnicity, geography and culture.

We are a diverse city.  We are a city that has come a very long way.  But we are no means existing in some utopia I have heard people describe as a “post-racial society.”  So here we are, a few weeks out of Sandy, looking at who needs help and who is in a position to provide it.  Help.  It’s an interesting conundrum and one worth thinking about.  I remember taking a class in high school that talked a lot about aid and charity and wondering why, if we have it we can’t just give it.  Why should donating my time and money be such a weighted issue?  Why can’t it just be easy?  As I got older I started thinking about all the different nuances of help.  What’s the difference — racially, culturally, geographically, financially, historically — between those who need and those who provide?  I started realizing that I have to put the idea of help into a much larger conversation, one about race and class, about access and opportunity, about history.  I also realized I had to start thinking about motives.  For some, donating time and money might just be about responding to the obvious.  It might be about acknowledging a need and addressing it.  For others, though, it’s all about what helping says about you, how it can help you, what you can gain from it.  For some, it’s about some sort of incredibly problematic curiosity.  Again, in Nir’s words:

Those coming to (the volunteers) for relief worry that their helpers are taking some voyeuristic interest in their plight, treating it as an exotic weekend outing, “like we’re in a zoo,” said one resident of a Rockaway project — echoing a complaint often heard in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina — as volunteers snapped iPhone photos of her as she waited in line for donated food and clothing.

I honestly can’t even talk about this paragraph.  Okay, I sort of will.  First of all, who does that?  And what do those people do, run back to their friends and show them pictures of those “poor, poor people?”  Then they talk about how, “oh, it was just so awful how those people are forced to live but I mean, look at the lines in her face?  Isn’t it also sort of beautiful?”  I just made myself throw up in my mouth a little.  Sometimes I think that in this world of technology and smart phones and Instagram and whatever else we all just think we are observers rather than active participants.  Or that when we are looking at our phone, when we are doing things in our personal internet space, that we are no longer visible to others, that our actions no longer impact those around us.  Well, I can tell you that just because you are looking at someone through the lens of your camera phone does not mean they cannot see you.  They see you and they think you are an asshole.  You’re there to supposedly help, not to help yourself to images of people’s lives.  Get a clue.

Anyway, I got off topic.  To the point! So, this:

As she gave out diapers and cases of infant formula to storm victims, Bethany Yarrow, 41, a folk singer from Williamsburg who has been volunteering with other parents from the private school her children attend, said she was shocked by the many poor mothers in the Arverne section of the Rockaways who did not breast feed. The group, she said, was working on bringing in a lactation consultant.

“So that it’s not just ‘Here are some diapers and then go back to your misery,’ ” she said. (Bold text mine.)

(Deep breathing exercises.)  I want to start by saying the following thing:  fuck you, Bethany Yarrow.  Seriously.  Bethany Yarrow, you have no idea what you are talking about.  How dare you presume to know anything about how the residents of the Rockaways live.  How dare you assume that, without your help and your “lactation consultant” that they live in “misery.”  That sort of thinking is exactly the problem.  Let me just travel down here in my big, fancy SUV and wave my magic milk wand and make your lives like mine, which is so wonderful and blessed.

So there are a few things.  Women, in general, are smart.  IQ smart or not, there is a desire, within most parents I would say, for their children to do well, to have all the possible opportunities available, to be happy and healthy.   Women care about their children and they want the best for them.  That means that they make the best decisions for them based off of their lives, their information, their opportunities.  To assume that poor women do not consider different options is simply incorrect.  But also, to assume they have the same abilities and constraints to come to the same conclusions as their financially wealthy peers is also incorrect, woefully so.  Bethany Yarrow is a folk singer.  I imagine that in her specific career, for the most part, she is able to make her own schedule, meaning the ability to be around to breast feed her children when they are hungry.  If she isn’t able to be around, I imagine that she is able to pump.  Good for Bethany Yarrow.  The conversation about breast feeding is contingent on other things than simply personal preference.  It exists within a bigger context.  (Let’s put aside the women who are unable to produce enough milk to sufficiently feed their children.)  A lot of women have to work in order to provide for their families.  A lot of jobs don’t provide maternity leave, pumping rooms, child care.  So is it your belief, Bethany Yarrow, that women should forgo their paycheck in order to breast feed their children?  That doesn’t seem like a particularly realistic solution.  Is your lactation consultant somehow going to change the perception of women in the workplace?  Not only is the system not set up for women generally, but it is not set up for poor women and it is certainly not set up for pregnant and nursing women.  Being the giver of life gets in the way of productivity and efficiency.

I am going to make a maybe unpopular comparison.  When all of us talk about a woman’s right to choose in the abortion context we are operating under a certain set of assumptions.  We are assuming that women are capable of making important decisions.  We are assuming that women know what is best for them, their bodies, their families.  We are assuming that women have access to clinics, for the making of a decision to even be possible.  Those assumptions should hold true regardless the topic at hand across the board, no matter the color of skin, the god(s) worshiped or not believed in, the economic position.  That means that all women, yes, even poor women of color Bethany Yarrow, are capable of making a decision about whether they want to breast feed and, perhaps more importantly, whether it is even possible for them.  Maybe they, like women living in North Dakota with its lack of abortion clinics, aren’t in a position to even make a choice about their own bodies because the resources they need to make those choices are not available to them.  I just don’t see how women being condescending and forcing their own values on other women in the sphere of breast feeding is any different, on an intellectual level, from male politicians forcing their pro-life agenda on all of us.  It takes away control over our own lives and bodies and it ignores realities of the world.

So, Bethany Yarrow and friends, think before you decide to help.  Think before you assume that your lactation consultant is either welcome or appropriate.  Maybe use your “good intentions” to advance the conversation about requiring break rooms for breast feeding women, protecting the rights of women working in minimum and hourly-wage jobs, and listening to those around you.  Your approach to parenting might be the best for you, but it isn’t the best, or even possible, for everyone.  Look around yourself and figure it out.  Because, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Romney’s Logic, or lack thereof

15 Nov

I’m having a very hard time today.  Sometimes I feel like there is this thing called logic, and then all of a sudden something happens and I think that maybe my logic isn’t the right logic afterall because someone who is someone in the grand scheme of things, and not just in a little corner of the internet, says something that is so contrary to my logic that it’s like, wait, what?  Confused?  Let me explain.

I just read this article in the Times that has been going around in different forms about a conference call that Mitt Romney had with his donors and fund-raisers.  In this conference call he accused Obama of winning the election by giving “gifts” to different minority groups.  Okay, so when I see the word “gifts” I think Christmas, Channuka, birthdays!  Last year for my birthday I got this amazing new lamp shade* from Anthropologie (don’t mock me) and a great cherry red stock pot from Le Creuset.  So, did Obama run around giving people fancy new home accent pieces?  Perhaps some useful, and colorful!, kitchen items?  Maybe a sweet new pair of kicks?  No.  Here’s what Obama “gifted” the “minorities”** of this country:

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people.”

And then there’s this.  Romney was very concerned that the president used his healthcare plan as a tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters:

“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge,” Mr. Romney said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals,*** the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

So now I am going to think back to when Bush did that stimulus plan.  Remember that?  When all of a sudden we all got a check for some money that we were then supposed to spend out in the world to stimulate the economy?****  A lot of people thought that was  good idea.  A lot of people might have called that a gift.  Same goes, I think, for the money a family is “gifted” through access to healthcare.  All of a sudden here is this money not being spent on incredibly costly healthcare that can be repurposed.  It can go towards buying a car, saving to send a child to college, starting a business, or any other number of things.  Or! That family that now has been “gifted” healthcare has healthcare for the first time and is able to seek preemptive medical care rather than relying on emergency room visits or costly procedures to take care of something that could have been avoided.  Now people who previously had to suffer unnecessarily with treatable ailments can get the needed, and widely available, treatment.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

All sarcasm aside.  Here’s the thing about all of this.  I find Romney’s comments to be amazingly condescending and rude not only to the man that bested him in the election, but to all of us who voted for that man.  By using the word “gifts” Romney was intentionally playing into an understanding of the word within the political realm as equivalent to a bribe.  There were no bribes involved.  Romney lost the election because while he was yammering on about non-specifics concerning job creation, foreign policy and military strategy, Obama was listening to people and trying to figure out what would actually make this country a more reasonable place to live.  Lack of equal access to birth control and concerns about unwanted pregnancies?  Here, free contraception (not to mention a continuation of Roe v Wade).  Concerns about pre-existing conditions and sky-rocketing healthcare costs?  Here, the Affordable Care Act.  Children of undocumented immigrants not getting a fair shake at the American Dream?  Here, the Dream Act (co-written by Republican Orin Hatch, by the way).  What Obama did was present himself as a man capable of leading this country.  What he did was he listened to the people, and he came up with, or supported, feasible solutions.  That’s not called giving people gifts, Romney, it’s called governing.

So here’s maybe an idea, rather than trying to make up ludicrous, and inaccurate, excuses for why you lost the election, why don’t you look actually at why you lost.  You lost because you were non-specific about things that mattered.  You lost because you listened to the party establishment and aligned yourself with the uber-conservatives rather than the majority of the country.  You lost because you failed to realize that things have changed and you have to convince more than just the white men of your ability to lead.  You lost because you erroneously believed that the person who raised the most money would win the biggest prize.  You lost because you dismissed so many of us.  It sucks, Romney, because like John McCain pre-2008 I always thought you were one of the good guys.  One of the listening guys.  I don’t know, maybe my logic is all wrong.  To me, the logical thing to do would be to bow out gracefully and go back to the drawing board.  Rather than calling sound policy ideas gifts, why don’t you and your party think about how to answer the people’s needs using sound conservative principles.  The Republican party, as far as I know, isn’t about hanging people out to dry.  It’s about a much needed alternative to the Democratic approach to governing.  Although I am a lifelong liberal, I honestly believe that the only way to make this country work better is having a healthy debate.  It’s like an athlete.  An athlete uses the talent, drive and abilities of her biggest opponent in order to become better.  For the Democratic, or Republican, party to live up to expectations and possibilities, for this country to live up to expectations and possibilities, there needs to be drive.  The Democratic party can only be its best incarnation when it is striving to be a better alternative to the best incarnation of the Republican party.  The opposite is just as true.  Unless we have two (more would be better) healthy and functioning parties, we can not have the best governing strategy possible.  For this country to get on a better road, we need some good debate and some healthy competition, not a bunch of blamers and a party-wide abandonment of the needs of the majority of the country.  It’s called logic, Romney.  You should try using it.

*My lamp shade looks sort of like this only significantly more awesome.

**Sometimes use of the word minorities annoys me because it’s not accurate.  Rather than an explanation of numerical fact, it’s more like a forced state of being.  I, as a female, am not actually a member of a group that makes up a minority of the population but am still considered a minority.  Why don’t we call a spade a spade.  We “minorities” are not necessarily the “minority.”  We are the oppressed.  The overlooked.  The intentionally ignored.  The annoyance.

***I despise, I mean despise, the term “illegals.”

****This girl totally took that check and put it straight in her savings account.  Totally against the rules.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →