Welcome to America. Now Show Me Some Papers

The bank's new building is slick and modern, at once open and strangely cavelike. I stepped under the lowered ceiling sheltering the counter, where the tellers sat in front of the soft blue glow of an LED illuminated backdrop. It looked eerily futuristic, and I halfway expected them to be dressed in the uniforms of the Starship Enterprise. Or to ask for my boarding pass and how many carry-ons I had with me.

I waited my turn, taking in the spacey modern decor, reflecting that no matter how progressive the surroundings become, the people still look pretty much the same, coming in with the same nondescript fashions, hairstyles, and often outdated and rigid ways of looking at the world.

As if in answer to my ruminations, I began eavesdropping on the customer just to the left of me. The teller was a lovely young woman, dark and exotic, probably of Indian descent. The man wore the uniform of middle America--pleated khaki pants and a striped, somewhat rumpled button-down. He had that heavy-browed, dull look through the eyes so coveted by Hollywood producers looking to portray a Southern stereotype, but judging by his dress seemed to have evolved a bit beyond that unfortunate image. A bit.

"Whur you from?" he asked, in not a particularly friendly way. The girl, avoiding much eye contact, went about her business, making his deposit or whatever it was that he had plopped up on the counter with no discernible instructions or greeting, and mumbled something about whatever her heritage was. "You like Amurica?" he persisted, in a tone which to him might have seemed casual but at least to my ears came across as mildly confrontational. She responded with something about having been born here, and having lived in several of the United States as well as London and at least one other international location. Answering him, as she had from her first words to this man, in an obviously native English speaker's accent. Finally, apparently satisfied that this fellow U.S. born citizen passed his approval to remain in this country, he left.

I listened intently to this exchange, mortified for the girl. Here she was, just trying to do her job and be friendly, having to endure being interrogated by this hayseed cretin who, in addition to being incapable of using basic English grammar, apparently assumes that everyone of non-white descent just stepped off a plane or boat and furthermore, must give account to all the "real" Americans like himself. I couldn't help making the assumption myself that he was no doubt a faithful church member, and probably a Baptist. Unfair, but his behavior did not leave me feeling charitable.

Had the bank not been so busy, I might have gone over and apologized to the girl, said something to assure her that not every small-town Southerner gets ticked off and threatened every time they encounter someone different from themselves, that we're not all stuck in 1934 in our thinking. But the next customer stepped up, as did I. I left the bank pondering how nice it would be if we could remodel people's attitudes as easily as we can a bank building.

What Not to Wear for Spring

Ahh, spring. A time of transition, defined by capricious weather as the dreariness of winter vainly holds out against the wondrous explosion of life and warmth that the new season promises. We start our mornings bundled against the chill, only to shed those layers later in the day as the temperature climbs into the 70s or even 80s. It's fairly simple really; all it requires is a light sweater or hoodie to get one through the day's changes. Thus, I was (a) bemused (b) horrified (c) somewhere between both when I received an enthusiastic email about the following product:








Yes, a short-sleeved sweatshirt. Of course, this item is relatively irrelevant here in the sweltering South, but I couldn't help but think that either it's cool enough for a sweatshirt or it's not. Why on earth would anyone need a short-sleeved one? The link in my email took me to the glowing copy: "Women's and Men's short-sleeved sweatshirt--all the comfort you'd expect minus that bulky, overheated feeling!" Of course, I'm imagining that the bulky, overheated feeling stems more from the personal attributes of the type of person who might actually wear this than an actual sweatshirt, but maybe that's just me.

I also suspect that each time you wear one of these, a little piece of your dignity dies. Some things are not meant to be tweaked from their natural form, and this is one of them.

A Plague on Both Our Houses

Let's just say things are much better around our house, as well as my sister's, after S., then A., then I., then yours truly, then J., and don't forget B., came down with the awfulest, nastiest virus we've seen in a while. Poor little S. even spent some time at the children's hospital. I'm still sanitizing every surface that won't be damaged by bleach or Lysol. . . and will update with something more interesting soon. . .

God-hating murderers are hiding under your car giving chemical burns to missing children with Magic Erasers while campaigning to ban Christianity!

It seems as though every time a new friend or old acquaintance obtains my email address, I am besieged by a new wave of alarmist, smarmy, undocumented, ridiculous or downright mean and nasty email forwards. In the years since I became semi-literate on the computer I have received messages about missing children, tricks used by crazed rapists to attack women, cheesy religious and moral stories, right-wing religious alarmist rants about how persecuted Christians are by the ACLU and others, warnings not to use certain popular cleaning products, eat at certain restaurants, shop at certain stores, erroneous health warnings, and of course, the recent shrill racist/fundamentalist attempt to smear Barack Obama as a radical anti-American Muslim.

For whatever reason, I recognize immediately how photo-shopped, fabricated, and simply stupid these forwards are. They unfailingly originate with someone who has a hateful, narrow agenda, and then take on a life of their own as they are passed around, all the original email recipients' addresses intact, to everyone each subsequent sender knows. Truly, they say much more about the senders than about the issues they purport to illuminate. As I take the time to check each one on Snopes, Truthminers, Mythbusters, and other helpful B.S. detecting sites, I can't help but make the observation that never have I received one of these pieces of electronic detritus from anyone among my more progressive friends and acquaintances. Imagine that. I always hit "reply," compose the written equivalent of smiling and responding through gritted teeth, and attach a link to the article that repudiates it. As a result, I'm sure many of the senders have come to view me as the crotchety bee-yotch that I am, but at least I don't get so many forwards anymore.

People of a certain age have an excuse, sort of. They grew up in an era when urban legends couldn't be so quickly researched and debunked, when people still believed there were actual African American children named Orangejello, Lemonjello and Shith'ead, and to them the whole world of the internets is just so darned wide open and new. And "netiquette?" What's that? Even so, they also came of age in an era when every journalist knew to check his or her sources before publishing something as truth.

I can forgive the well meaning, inspirational but unlikely accounts of children seeing angels or actual heartwarming stories of animals; jokes that are actually funny or funny/cute photos that are actually authentic, but I am always perplexed when I receive the truly shrieking, hyper-fundamentalist, spittle-spewing rants. Perplexed that these are the views of people whom I know on more than just a casual basis, and perplexed that they would ever imagine I welcomed this kind of soul-sucking ignorance and hatred. My sister tells me my personality is "closed;" that the personality I project on the surface doesn't always reflect what is going on inside. Evidently! So, in the name of "coming out," I must request: if you have any hateful, racist, right-wing, fundamentalist rants to forward, please, please, please, DON'T. Jokes demeaning to George Bush still accepted, however.

How Crazy People Spend Valentine's Day

To anyone still under the delusion that I am a laid back person, I submit my cookies. It all started innocently enough: I saw a Woman's Day magazine in my sister-in-law's bathroom, borrowed it, and thus began the odyssey that would require borrowing a friend's cookie cutter, two trips to Harris Teeter (one for powdered egg whites, another for 10-inch skewers), one trip to Hobby Lobby for red paste food coloring, one evening making dough, one night for chilling it, one afternoon for rolling/cutting/ baking, followed finally by several hours mixing icing/tinting icing/putting icing in four separate pastry bags/thinning remaining icing/frosting cookies/waiting two hours for icing to dry/piping reserved icing. All this, mind you, while my 7 year old kept getting in the middle of everything, being helpful, and my not-quite-four year old kept bumping into me to watch what I was doing. Patient and determined? Yes, when it comes to this sort of thing and I'm in project mode. Laid back? Yeah, in a perfectionistic Martha Stewart kind of laid back way.
My hands, along with my patience for J. tottering on a stool at my elbow, finally gave out and I left the remaining cookies for CA and CR to finish. After all, they are for their teachers. Now, to supervise the addressing of three classes' worth of Hot Wheels, Justice League, Star Wars, and Barbie valentines before bed. . .Happy Valentine's Day to all!

To see oursels as ithers see us

Lorri forwarded a link to the "Interactive Johari window," so anyone who knows me can choose up to six adjectives to describe me. Thank goodness you can only choose from the list! I've had a few responses so far, and I have to tell you guys, I'm a little wounded that only 42% of you put "intelligent" on the list. A. got 100%! What's even more surprising is how many chose "calm" and "patient." Are you guys SERIOUS? According to your choices, no one knows how uptight, high strung, and paranoid the real me can be! My evil plan must be working. . . Anyway, here's the LINK.

What's in your purse?

Found this idea on another blog and thought I'd try it out. Here's what I found:

Wallet
checkbook
flyer from today's blood drive
used Wal-Mart giftcard
2 pens
folding scissors
1 hand cream
1 moisturizing hand sanitizer
2 packs of Big Red
weird little brown fleece doll
cell phone
2 lip glosses, 5 lip balms, and 3 lipsticks
1 unidentified child's toothbrush
1 maxi pad, 1 pantyliner, and 2 tampons
6 raspberry hard candies
1 hot wheel
key ring with all the various store bonus cards on it
1 unwrapped SweeTart
powder compact
birth control pills
tube of calcium supplement
tube of squirt candy one of the kids picked out for the other
a Food Lion register coupon
a Sam's club receipt
94 cents in change floating around the bottom of the purse

So, now it's your turn. Grab whatever bag you're currently carrying, dump it (no editing!) and share it with the world: What's in YOUR purse?

Nerd, Geek, or Dork?

Okay, I just took the "Nerd, Geek, or Dork?" test and scored 86 % in the nerd category, making me a Pure Nerd. But is anyone really surprised? See how you do and share your results: take test
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