Identical Strangers Explore Nature vs. Nurture.

This article fascinated and horrified me, for obvious reasons. Mothers of twins - Stacie and Alice, I’m looking at you! - how do your twins interact with each other?

“In charity, there is no excess.” ~ Sir Francis Bacon

“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.” ~ John D. Rockefeller

Yesterday I ran over to Whole Foods at lunch to pick up a few things I needed. Our Whole Foods shares a parking lot with several other stores, including a huge Barnes & Noble bookstore with a Starbucks inside. During the noon hour, the parking lot is reduced to utter chaos - drivers circle endlessly, becoming more belligerent by the second.

As I rounded yet another corner, my own belligerence was tightening my throat and furrowing my brow. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young man walking in my direction between two parked cars. I assumed he would walk on by, but instead he stopped directly in front of my car. “Ma’am,” he said, “Can you help me?”

After cursing myself for driving with the window down, I reluctantly asked him what he needed help with.

“Well, me and my sister were at the University of Michigan Hospital? Visiting my sick father? Well, we’re from out of town and we spent all our money driving here, and now we’re out of gas and we need to, like, get home? So, even if you, like, had a dollar or two, even so we could just get a gallon of gas? It would help a lot.”

There are soooo many problems with this story, including the not-exactly-nearby location of U of M Hospital, the insufficiency of just a gallon of gas, the absence of the sister, and, oh, I don’t know, perhaps the fact that I’VE HEARD THIS SAME STORY THREE OTHER TIMES IN THIS VERY PARKING LOT. And once in another grocery store parking lot.

Are there special classes where these people go to learn these stories? I picture a guy with a long shaggy beard and a tattered coat up at the front of your standard hotel conference room. “Okay - so here’s the basic framework: You say you were at U of M Hospital visiting your sick <fill in the blank>. Give the sad puppy dog eyes. Then say that you’re either out of gas/need money for the bus/left your purse in a cab, and then ask if the person can spare even a dollar. Do the eyes again. Shuffle your feet a little, look down at the ground, and then make sheepish eye contact. I’m telling you, you’ll score at least 80% of the time!”

I wanted to tell him to just be honest. Just admit you’re trying to scrape up enough to get your next hit of crystal meth. Tell me you can’t live another minute without at least an airline-sized bottle of tequila. Tell me you gambled yourself homeless. Tell me something that makes sense.

I didn’t say any of that. I sighed, and reached into my purse and pulled out a dollar. I handed it to him and he ran off to another car.

I thought about feeling good because I helped someone, but I didn’t help someone. My dollar helped someone to keep on living their same old desperate life. It occured to me that at least he wasn’t robbing or mugging people, so perhaps if the dollars keep rolling in from the primarily pacifist Democrat crowd that frequents Whole Foods, then at least we’re saving some other innocent people from the violent crimes he could be committing.

But that’s quite a stretch. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of helping others, but I don’t think handing out dollars at Whole Foods and at the end of the highway off ramp is the way to do it. I also don’t want to look past these people, pretending that they don’t exist, because denial isn’t the answer either. So what is it? Do I hand out information about shelters and help programs? (Want a dollar? Here’s a pamphlet instead. Hope you can read!”)

And as always, now, I wonder what I will teach my son about this issue, knowing that what I do or don’t do will speak louder than anything I say. So - what do YOU do when faced with a friendly dollar-seeking junkie?

Like many working moms - or really any mom - I feel guilty about a lot of things. But today, I feel guilty because I really like my job.

I recently got a new job, you see, with a fancy new title and a decent amount of additional dollars and a lot more responsibility than I have had previously. I agonized for a long time over taking this job. Largely because my last job was not unendurable - just boring, and going nowhere thanks to a toxic boss who was either bipolar, or just had the worst case of pathological paranoia I have ever seen outside One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The job did, however, have the advantage of a regular, predictable and undemanding schedule. I worked 7-4 and worked from home on Wednesdays, giving my son a pretty abbreviated amount of time in child care, compared to a lot of other kids. This new job is, to say the least, not a 7-4 job, or even an 8-5 job. On some days it may not even be an 8-8 job. But oh, the opportunities it presents for me, and for the future for my family. Despite that, after I was offered my new job, I stayed awake all night trying to weigh out the pros and cons of taking it. (Wouldn’t it be better for Kenneth for me to stay in the crap job so he can have a regular schedule? Is it fair to ask my son and my husband to adjust to me working longer hours so I can have a fulfilling job? Is it fair to me to be chained to a job that is slowly killing my soul just so I can have a steady schedule for my son?)

I had pre-negotiated a flexible schedule for this new job (abbreviated hours some days, comp time, days working from home, etc.), to begin after we make our way through a temporary period of crisis. In the short term, however, I’m going to be working a lot more, and will be home a lot less. I used to pick Kenneth up at 4, we’d come home and play for a couple of hours - read books, sing songs, build block towers, bang on his drums - before dinner, bath and bedtime. Tonight I got home barely in time to have dinner and then it was a whirlwind rush to get him ready for bed - no time to play, or hear the new words he learned today, or read our favorite picture book together.

Is that loss of time with him offset by the fact that I had a really, really good day at work today? Where I had fun with my coworkers and felt powerful and empowered and sharp and innovative? Where I understood, now, what I’ve been working all these years to accomplish for myself? No. But I do know that I feel so much more alive and invigorated and creative in my new job than I did in my old one. Ultimately, isn’t being happier in general going to make me a better mom? Surely it’s better to have a mom around who has some kind of enthusiasm for her day-to-day life than a mom who is trapped in torpor and inertia and dreads going to work in the morning.

It’s not that I don’t miss my son when I’m not with him. I do miss him. He’s a plucky little guy who’s a hell of a lot of fun. But I have to work. If I have to work, I don’t think it’s unfair to ask that I enjoy what I do. On a purely cerebral level, I get that. Now I wish I could tell my heart to stop feeling so damn guilty about not reading him his picture book.

Are we ready? Are you ready for the future?

Seen on a student’s T-shirt yesterday at the University of Michigan vs. Illinois football game:

 MUCK FICHIGAN

I tip my hat to that creatively T-shirted young man.  He has unwittingly provided me with a (technically) profanity-free phrase that I can use when I am once again stuck in bumper-to-bumper football traffic on an otherwise beautiful Saturday afternoon in Ann Arbor.  Muck Fichigan indeed.

It’s interesting that you all started posting about race; I had wanted to write a post about race, but wondered how I was going to smoothly go from Lysol-ing lady bits to a topic so very far removed from that particular chemical conundrum.

So here’s how it all went down. I took a few days off to hang out with Benjamin while my in-laws (our childcare providers) took a vacation. The two of us knocked around town each day, running various errands, one of which was getting the oil changed in my car.

Normally I go to a place that is staffed solely by a very specific minority group: Young African American Males. Let’s shorten it to YAAMs for ease of typing.

I’ve been going to this particular place for years, probably since college, and I can’t say much about it other than they do seem to change the oil. There is not usually conversation other than the least number of words necessary to complete the task. Smiles are not returned. Eye contact is fleeting, if at all. One time I was helped by a guy there who was really funny and friendly, but alas, I never saw him again. He was probably fired for being too friendly.

On Thursday, though, I went somewhere else to get my oil changed. I was greeted cheerfully by Steve and Edd and Emal. Edd handed me a sign-in form on which he’d magically already written my license plate number. The three of them buzzed around me as they started their tasks, asking me questions, furrowing their brows at my damaged wheel cover and laughing when I told them the ridiculous story of how it happened. Emal, in particular, had a warm friendliness, his chocolatey eyes crinkling merrily even while cursing Chrysler for the awkward placement of my air filter. They all waved goodbye as I pulled away.

I left there smiling, feeling good about humanity. I thought about Emal and Edd, who were clearly of Middle Eastern descent (as were several other employees there), and how lovely they were despite the fact that our President tells me they are surely part of an underground terrorist cell, filtering my money straight back to Osama Bin Laden. I decided I was done with the unfriendly YAAMs at the other place. And then, in my mind, I started lumping them together with the troublesome YAAMs at our old condo, and my mother-in-law’s surly paper boy, who I now say Hello to in part because it makes him uncomfortable, and I feel that he needs to learn to live in a world where people say Hello.

Ironically, when I got home, Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint were on Oprah talking about YAAMs. They said that 70% of them are born to single mothers. 50% drop out of school. 60% end up incarcerated. They just wrote a book called Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.

It was a great episode. And it got me thinking about what I had just done to those boys in my thoughts. I had created a folder in my mind, labeled it Undesirable, and then thrown all of those young men into it, never to be heard from again.

It is hard, though, given the facts about how many of the young men in this category are in fact engaging in criminal activity, to decide where reasonable wariness ends and prejudice begins. I hate to even say that. It pains me. I can’t believe I’m writing it for others to see. But mathematically, it is hard to deny. When I was a waitress, I knew that a table of elderly people was likely to leave a crappy tip. It was just statistically true, and known by all waitresses. But the challenge there was pretty much the same as the challenge at hand: Don’t let a person’s unknowable potential behavior affect the way you behave towards them. Serve them well. Smile. Let right action be your reward.

I guess that’s all. That was a lot! Next time I’ll post on something light and airy, like how I secretly hope Halle Berry gets big old stretch marks to prove that she’s human, or how Benjamin is getting an ingrown toenail and I can’t figure out how to get a 15-month-old to soak his foot in epsom salts. Until then, I’ll be eating my anti-Bush hummus and honing my charms, thanks to Alice’s post. I’m learning a lot here!

Casey’s “Open Mouth, Insert Foot” post (or, rather, the discussion that followed it) reminded me of this article. I’ll admit that I’m not qualified to talk about hierarchies in American black culture, being white, but I found it interesting that even within a group there are subsets and hierarchies that still need to be overcome.

Proof positive that book smarts do not equal intelligence.

This brings a topic to mind about how to teach kids about oppression and social justice. I just bought Matthew an Asian baby doll and I’m hoping just by the level of discourse Josh and I normally have about race* that he’ll learn and embrace diversity and practice it too. How, though, do you get beyond a very surface-level way of dealing with race that really matters - instead of glorifying it by going to a festival or having representative food?

http://humus101.com/EN/2007/09/29/voting-for-hummus/

This actually comes from a fantastic blog about…..  wait for it….  HUMMUS.  Yes, there is an entire blog devoted to the art of hummus & it’s cousins.  It’s actually a great blog.  I stumbled on it looking for a new recipe using dried chickpeas rather than canned.  Who knew hummus was so political.

“We must not overlook those certain charms and wiles to which practically all men are susceptible. If you will cultivate these you will be fairly sure of never being dateless and of eventually making the grade to the altar with the youth of your choice. These are:

THE COME-HITHER LOOK IN THE EYE. A sort of come-on look, if you get what I mean. A look that subtly indicates to a man that a girl regards him as a great big wonderful sheik and that she is having the time of her life when gazing worshipfully up into his eyes.

No boy is going to see a girl a second time who high-hats him. No boy is going to make love to a girl who is as unresponsive as a stone image. If there ever was a time when men ran after the women who flouted them it is out now. The modern man has to be lured into love. He doesn’t break in of his own accord.

PERSONALITY. Get a line. Have some individuality that will make you stand out from the crowd. Don’t copycat other girls. Be yourself. Be natural. Don’t pose. There is no other girl in the world less attractive to men than the affected one.

Remember that while some men like wild girls others prefer prim little Puritans; that while some men like chatterers others like the soft, silent, smiling Mona Lisa; and that while some men like girls who can mix cocktails most men want wives who can bake cakes like Mother used to make. So stick to your own line of attractions and put the loud pedal on that instead of trying to crab some other girl’s act.

THE FINE ART OF JOLLYING. Don’t feed men flattery in hunks, with a shovel. They resent this. But every man will eat out of your hand if it is filled with sugar. Don’t be a crude bungler and tell a man in so many words that he is God’s masterpiece. Get the idea across to him in other ways ~ by your air of adoration; by the awe with which you listen to his opinions; by the rapt expression on your face when you listen to him monologing along about himself.

Ask him why he has never gone into the pictures. Implore him to write to the President and tell him just how to settle the farm-relief problem and how to deal with the Japanese situation. No girl who is an A-1 incense burner ever lacks for dates.

ADAPTABILITY. Keep your mind as flexible as you do your waistline. A chameleon rampant, in the act of changing its colors, should be the heraldic device of every woman who wants to catch a husband and get along with him after she has got him. For in the adjusting of the sexes to each other it is a woman who must do the adjusting. Men can’t, or won’t, or don’t know how to do it.

So learn to be all things to all men. If a man is athletic play golf with him, no matter how your feet hurt you. If he is a radio hound hunt up new stations for him to tune in on. If he is bookish read up so you can discuss his favorite author with him. If he likes to eat cook him dainty dishes. Lend your ears to the man who likes to talk. Babble to the silent man who can never think of anything to say. Half of the time you will be bored to tears, but the other half of the time you will reap an exceedingly great reward.

EFFICIENCY. Learn how to do things. A girl may be as beautiful as a houri and a female Solomon in wisdom; she may have a heart of gold and a pocket full of money, and still she will be left high and dry socially if she has no parlor tricks. You have to be able to do what other people are doing and to fit into any picture in order to be invited to parties and to get any attention when you get there.

Men are selfish creatures and they will not ask you to step out with them unless you can work your passage by being entertaining. They will not ask you to dance if you step on their feet and have to be towed around like a barge. They will not play bridge with you if you trump their aces. They will not swim with you or play golf or tennis with you or bother with you at all unless you can take of yourself.

These are some of the ways to get your man. There are others, but these have the O.K. of thousands of successful husband-hunters.”

How to Win and Hold a Husband, Dorothy Dix, 1939.