Questions

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Listen, I Don’t Think There’s a Right or Wrong Here, I Just Want to Know What YOU Would Do

You know how sometimes you read/see/hear something that reminds you of something ELSE that you meant to bring up but you forgot to?

Well, Swistle’s post yesterday about Things That Symbolize Being Elderly triggered a memory that I wanted to discuss with you.

One of the things Swistle would like to maintain forever is “a general policy of not making things harder for the mothers by acting affronted when children exist in public.”

That made me think of my grad school graduation.

(You: Uhhh… what?

Me: Hold your horses, I’ll connect the dots.)

My graduate program was teeny.  Five people, I think. (Man, you’d think grad school would have made a bigger impression. I can remember all the people in my program – from the year before and my year and the year after. But I can’t for the life of me remember who was in which year.)

So the graduation ceremony was equally teeny.  Five people (I’m going with five) and their families, some of the other students in the program, a few professors, and maybe a few friends or so.

And the ceremony was all about the five of us who were graduating. I mean, obviously.

We had a nice luncheon with a buffet and tables set all prettily and our professors (both of them) and our program director each said something nice and we each got up and read a poem. And then there were a few awards.

There was a program for the ceremony, but it was very loose. And it became clear in the first 10 minutes that the ceremony was not adhering to any particular order, certainly not the order laid out in the program.

One of the guys in my program – let’s call him Chris, which is not his name – was married and had three kids – two toddler boys and a baby girl. Chris’s wife and parents and the three kids were all there.

The boys were hyped up on the cupcakes our program office manager made for the occasion and they were kind of… giddy.  But I would still say they were being GOOD, you know? They weren’t screaming or fighting or anything. They were just playing around with some trucks or something and with each other and talking at what I suspect is Normal Toddler Volume.

But my grandmother – a dear, kind woman who flew halfway across the country to see my graduation – was a little… vexed by the kids.

My grandmother is no longer with us, unfortunately, but I remember fondly that she was always very tolerant and kind to small children. However, she was a firm believer in Children Are Seen and Not Heard and also If Children Are Heard They Should Be Whisked from the Room with Great Haste. (I have no trouble with this philosophy. I was raised by people who share this view and I turned out okay.)

(In case you missed it, this is the Dots Connecting I promised earlier on. My elderly grandmother was – sort of, in her typical kindly, un-accusing way – acting as though these children being allowed out in public was an affront to her delicate sensibilities. Which is one of those Traits of the Elderly that Swistle – and I! – hopes to avoid in old age.)

(Okay, perhaps this is a LOOSE connection. But nonetheless, the connection exists in my head.)

Now, Chris’s wife wanted to be there to see her husband get an award. (And he DID get an award!) She was probably very proud of him and possibly (although I am projecting here) relieved that he was done with graduate school and could begin the work of making a living as a poet. (Ha! Poet joke!) (Allow me to explain the poet joke: I don’t know a single poet who makes a living as a poet.) (They MUST exist. But even the poets I know who are Renowned and have attained Critical Acclaim and are Otherwise Awesome, well, they earn a living as professors. I suppose I could be WRONG, of course. I don’t have access to their bank statements or anything. Maybe they are raking in the millions from their writing alone.)

To clamber back to my original topic: Chris’s wife had a right to be there, to support her husband and to see him get an award he’d been working toward for two years of graduate school and perhaps many years beyond that. And their kids, likewise, had a right to be there, since the ceremony was open to families (reasonable extrapolation: not closed to small children). And while I fully support parents who remove screaming children from church/movies/other public events, it seems to me that there’s a Big Difference between a child who’s lost his everloving head and a child who is merely Being a Child and rolling a Tonka Big Wheels merrily over his brother’s face as his brother laughs with glee.

But my dear grandmother felt like the kids were distracting from the ceremony. Which was, well, it was true. I mean, you had to strain a little bit to hear over the kids’ chatter.

She looked at me with her kind blue eyes and an expression of bewilderment and whispered, “Why doesn’t that mom take those children outside?”

I don’t think she was WRONG to ask such a question. True, the children were being rambunctious and perhaps someone (the children’s mom or their one of their grandparents, who were also inattendance) should take them out of the room during the ceremony.

(Of course, one might also suggest that perhaps the kids shouldn’t have attended the ceremony at all, and should have remained at home with a babysitter. But what if Chris’s family didn’t have a babysitter in the budget? And what if Chris really wanted his kids there? And what if the ceremony was only an hour, tops, and it seemed unreasonable and silly to hire a sitter for such a short time? And what if they planned on taking the kids out of the room for the entire time EXCEPT for when Chris got his award, but that plan was thwarted by the poorly organized ceremony program?)

My grandmother beseeched me to say something to Chris’s wife, since I knew her. Or to Chris, since I knew him as well.

But I didn’t. I just… didn’t want to.

I felt like it would be met with guilt and upset and maybe even irritation and resentment. Plus, it wasn’t bothering ME that much – once I got used to the kids’ chattering, it was easy to sort of tune it out. So I just smiled understandingly at my grandmother and squeezed her hand tightly and, after the ceremony, listened to her gentle suggestion that, should I get married and have children someday, perhaps I would strongly consider hiring a babysitter for my kids? Or handing them off to a parent during such an event? Or having kids who are perfectly well-behaved at all times?

This happened years ago, Internet. I haven’t seen – or really even thought of – Chris since then. But I still wonder what the appropriate response was.

I kind of think my response was the appropriate one. But then again, I am a wholly non-confrontational person. So any response where I don’t have to confront people is the one I favor.

Plus, I try to remember that I don’t always know the whole situation.

I mean, maybe Chris’s wife asked Chris’s parents to stay home with the kids… and the parents got offended that THEY would have to miss the ceremony. And maybe Chris’s in-laws were never nice to Chris’s wife and never really approved of her marrying their son, so there was a lot of bad blood between them. So maybe Chris’s wife decided to drag the kids along and keep them in the ceremony the whole time on PRINCIPLE.

Or maybe Chris’s wife had a babysitter all set up and the in-laws scoffed at how RIDICULOUS it would be to pay for a sitter, or made a fuss about how the kids HAD to see their father graduate. So – in the interest of keeping the in-law waters smooth – Chris’s wife gritted her teeth and brought the kids along even though she was super embarrassed that they were being so noisy.

Or maybe Chris’s wife figured that she and Chris knew all the other graduates and that they would welcome the kids and overlook their boisterous chatter.

Or maybe they HAD hired a babysitter, but the sitter got sick/had a job interview/didn’t show or was otherwise unable to sit for the kids at the last minute, so Chris and his wife were forced to bring them even though they didn’t plan to.

Or maybe Chris’s wife was, like many people seem to be, truly oblivious to how her kids were behaving and how their behavior might impact others.

Or maybe she just figured that her little angels should be able to do whatever their little hearts’ desired.

In those last two cases, I would be mad. Because being an oblivious or overly permissive parent to the extent that it affects other people… well, I’m not a big fan of those things.

But in the other cases… You can really start to empathize with poor Chris’s wife, over-tired from being up with the baby and glad that all those years of reading poem drafts have come to something and stressed out from dealing with the in-laws and their demands and stuck in this room with some long-winded speakers, listening to five poems when she doesn’t really LIKE poetry and all she wants is to snap a photo of Chris getting his award and go home.

I just don’t think there’s a reason for me to make a fuss when I don’t know the full story and when all that’s happening is that I have to listen a little more carefully to what’s being said.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t get where my grandmother was coming from. I really believe that, had it been her, she would have a) left the kiddos at home, even if it meant staying home herself or b) sat at the very back of the room to limit the reach of their little voices or c) whisked them out the instant they made a peep, even if they did so in the middle of her husband’s acceptance. I really believe that. I think my own mother would have done the same.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that what I really want to know is:

What would YOU have done, if you were sitting there with Chris’s toddlers whooping it up behind you?

And what would you have WANTED the reaction to be, if you were Chris’s wife?

And, as long as we’re asking questions, what would YOU have done, in Chris’s wife’s case? Would you have brought your kids? Left them with a babysitter? Shoved them into the grandmother’s arms and said, “Here, YOU take them out of the room while I watch MY HUSBAND get his award?” Shrugged your shoulders and allowed your kids to be kids?

Would your answers change based on the situation? (I mean, a kid-friendly Christmas play is different from a graduation ceremony is different from a dinner at a nice restaurant and so on.)

If you recommend a friendly smile and a whispered, “Can you take the kids outside until they quiet down?” I can’t promise that’s what I’ll do in future, but I would like to know.

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I Need You to Tell Me Who’s Right(er) Here, Internet

So this is going to be one of those posts where I tell you about how my husband and I approach a situation differently, and you tell me which of us is right(er). (I would like to note that Temerity Jane writes posts of a similar-but-much-funnier-and-more-enjoyable-to-read nature, and you should read them, but don’t do so whilst eating because you will choke on a grape and be unable to breathe long enough to have visions of your husband arriving home later that night to see his wife dead on the floor wearing grey sweat pants and a faded Pizza My Heart: Capitola t-shirt with a big wine stain on the front of it, not because she was drinking during the day but because she felt the shirt she stained with wine the night before constituted acceptable work wear, and you don’t really want that to be your husband’s last vision of you, right? I mean, wouldn’t you rather be in that dress that hugs all your curves in just the right way and makes your eyes stand out so that he would be immediately struck by your beauty and what a loss the world has just suffered? No? You [and your husband] aren’t that shallow? Okay then. )

Anyway, before I get to The Situation that you need to help me with, I need to back up a little.

Well, a lot. I need to back up to around 1994. Which is when I got my own phone line.

Listen, Internet, there used to be a time, many years ago (um, 1994, in case you weren’t listening before) (and really, I don’t blame you), when I LOVED to talk on the phone. My whole life pretty much revolved around the telephone. I would talk to my girl friends about boys we liked and to my boy friends about girls they liked and even though that’s barely two topics, it was pretty much the center of my universe and it occupied HOURS of my time. I don’t like to think of all the days and possibly MONTHS of my life I used up on rehashing Some Boy’s behavior in Social Studies or What to Wear to the Co-Ed Dance on Friday OMG What If Some Boy Is There?!?!?!

Now, if you are a doctor who is on call a few times a week and your pre-teen daughter is tying up the phone line at all hours of the day and night with super important giggling, you probably find it quite trying to have to deal with nurses and emergency room physicians yelling at you for hiding behind a busy signal when someone is BLEEDING or BURSTING FORTH WITH CHILD and a slightly-hysterical pre-teen daughter who can’t abide spending even an hour engaged in non-phone activity.

(Wow, as we’ve already had about 40 run-on sentences so far in this post, I can’t in good conscience recommend you read any further.)

Anyway, to put a stop to all the doctorly/nursely yelling and pre-teenagery hysteria, my parents got me my very own phone line. And by “very own,” I mean that I shared it with my brother. But he is six years my junior, which meant he was THRILLED about having a “kids’ line” but wasn’t really at an age where he talked on the phone.  Six-year-olds aren’t really known for their deep existential discussions, you know?

(Thinking about this makes me realize that our hypothetical offspring will likely never know the joys of a kids’ line. Or a land line at all, for that matter.)

But this is all to say that there was a time when I was SO PUMPED when the phone rang. I’d hear my phone jingle upstairs in my bedroom and I’d leap out of my dinner chair or off the couch like some sort of Olympic athlete, tossing dinner plates and astonished-and-slightly-irritated cats off my lap to charge up the stairs three at a time and breathlessly hit “talk” before the caller hung up.  (My parents were surprisingly tolerant of this behavior, by the way. Although in hindsight, I suppose this had more to do with me being a loser dork loner quiet child than with them actually understanding my desire to talktalktalktalk on and on until all hours of the night.)

I LOVED talking on the phone. And that love endured for YEARS. Until, I think, I got married. I don’t think being married KILLED my love of phone-talk, mind you. It just sort of happened at the same time. To be sure, there are a few people with whom I still engage in looooong, drawn out conversations. But not many.

You know what? You probably could have skipped all that and still made a reasoned, thoughtful decision about this post. I want to give you all the credit you deserve, Internet. And yet, I typed it, so there it shall stay.

So, as I mentioned, just there, about five sentences ago, I still have a few people in my life who are Long Phone Talkers. Do you have any of these people in your life, Internet? You know, the people who – when you are about to call them – you take a pre-emptive bathroom break, just in case? I can think of four of them. And that’s just in my personal life – my professional life is a whole different ball game. If by “ball game” you understand that I mean “three-hour mandatory and inescapable phone calls wherein I rue the day Diet Coke was invented.”

We are now, finally, about to get to The Situation.

When one of these Long Phone Talkers (henceforth LPTs) calls, my husband and I have wildly different approaches to answering the phone.

You see, sometimes it is just not a convenient time to settle in for a 50-minute discussion. Perhaps you are just making dinner or sitting down to dinner or watching a particularly pounding-heart-inducing episode of Rescue Me. Or perhaps you have spent three hours on the phone already that day and are certain that you have a raging case of ear cancer from enduring such close proximity to your cellphone for so long and just can’t fathom spending another SECOND on the PHONE OMG FTLOG.

So what do you do in that case? Well, one of us deals with this situation in the right way. Or, at least, the rightER way. And the other, if not straight-out WRONG, is at least less right.

One of us feels that it’s important to answer the phone and say, politely, “We are just sitting down to dinner, can I call you back when we’re done?”

The other of us feels that a ringing phone is not a burning house and does not need to be addressed immediately, or at all.

One of us feels that the LPT knows that we’re there, and so it’s a deliberate slap in the face to ignore the call.

The other of us feels that, what the hell do you mean “a slap in the face”? Maybe the phone is in the car or maybe one of us is in the bathroom or SOMETHING. The LPTs are not able to see into our lives, hello, no one is a witch with a third eye or something.

One of us worries, sometimes, that maybe a ringing phone is code for EMERGENCY! SOMEONE IS DYING OR ON FIRE AT THIS VERY INSTANT ANSWER THE PHONE NOW!!!!!!

The other of us sighs, loudly, in a world-weary way, and calmly notes that even if there WERE an emergency, there’s nothing we can do at that moment, considering that none of the LPTs lives in our city or even in our state. And also, if it were a TRUE EMERGENCY, wouldn’t the LPT be better off calling the police or a fireman or an attorney or something?

One of us wonders, loudly and a little bit grouchily, how freaking hard is it really to answer the phone and say a quick, “I’ll call you back”?

The other of us starts listing times when an LPT either didn’t hear or misinterpreted the answer or didn’t care that we were sitting down to dinner at that instant and so one of us was stuck on the phone, trying to get a word in edgewise to end the conversation as the food grew colder and colder or Tommy Gavin’s image grew closer and closer to becoming indelibly burned into our television screen.

Or – even worse – the other continues, one of us didn’t stop at “Oh, we’re just sitting down to dinner,” but instead went on to say something like, “So how was your day?” or “what’s up?” or something indicating that dinner’s imminence is not nearly as important as conversing with the LPT right then and there.

One of us just feels bad, leaving that dearly loved LPT, whose only hope was to hear a friendly voice, to hear nothing but the repetitive ringing of the phone, followed by a tinny “Leave your number and I’ll call you back” voicemail message.

The other of us turns around to disguise a “you are clearly a narcissist” eye roll and points out that the LPT doesn’t always answer HER phone, you know.  And when that happens, YOU don’t collapse on the bed in a forlorn heap of tears.

And back and forth we go, every single time an LPT calls during an inopportune time.

Clearly one of us is righter than the other here, Internet. Yes?

What is proper phone-answering etiquette, when you aren’t able to talk but the phone is ringing anyway, and on the other end is a much-beloved person whose only fault is extending a phone call into a Count-of-Monte-Cristo-length epic conversation?

Please tell me, Internet. In exchange, I promise not to call you at dinner time.

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“Hypothetical” Questions

1. Let’s say that you enjoy walking outside. And that your apartment complex has a lovely ovular walking path that is conveniently one mile long. Let’s also say that seemingly every time you go for a walk, a specific spandex-clad girl is also walking. But she is walking in the opposite direction. So you pass her twice per mile.

What do you do every time you see her? Smile? Say hello? Pretend she is invisible? Start walking in the opposite direction?

 

2. If your apartment complex offers some really great amenities… Like a gym with TVs in all the cardio machines… And free WiFi… And a pool…

Do you complain if one (or multiple) of those things stops working? Is that being greedy? Or do you figure that part of your rent is paying for those things, so it’d be best if they were in working order?

 

3. If you enjoy working out in the gym of your afore-mentioned amenity-packed apartment complex… And the gym windows are always open in the summer… And there is no way to CLOSE those windows… And the apartment complex staff members enjoy smoking outside those windows, in such a fashion that the smoke wafts into the gym and into your rapidly-filling lungs… Seemingly no matter WHAT TIME you make it to the gym…

What would you do?

 

4a. Let’s say your husband were about to (hopefully) match into a fellowship program that would determine where you would live for three years… Let’s also say that the earliest he can find out where (if) he matched is noon, via the Internet… And that you will be at home, working, at noon while he will be in the hospital, also working, at noon…

Would you require want him to wait to check his match status online until such time as he could call you simultaneously?

 

4b. What if you were going to be out of town, with work colleagues whom you do not want to cry in front of (should he match at your bottom choice or not match at all), and didn’t get done with work until 6:00?

Would you require want him to wait to check his match status online until such time as you are able to get away from your coworkers and call him on the phone?

 

5. Is there such a thing as too many pairs of nude shoes? (And by “nude” I mean “neutral-colored,” not “shoes that you where whilst naked.”)

 

6. Let’s say you got wind of a great sale at Ann Taylor Loft and saw a shirt that you liked. That was only $15. Which you feel is a Real Deal even though you likely don’t actually know what a Real Deal is. How many of the same shirt – in different colors, of course – is it reasonable for one person to own?

 

7. If you bought a cute mesh-style hooded sweater from AnnTaylor during the afore-mentioned sale, even though it wasn’t on sale, just to make sure you were able to get free shipping…  And you could recall seeing folks of the Carrie Bradshaw and Kim Kardashian variety in similar shirts, wearing only a (clearly-visible) dark bra under the mesh…

What would you wear under the mesh sweater?

 

8. If your gym did NOT have a specific no-cellphone policy, would you nonetheless be annoyed by people who not only talk on their cellphones whilst treadmilling but do it at a volume loud enough to pierce through the sounds of your own labored breathing and Judge Judy in your headphones?

 

9. Let’s say that you open the freezer to get some ice. And you spot the box of Skinny Cow cookies-n-cream ice cream sandwiches sitting right next to the ice tray. And you forego any other sweet treats so that you can both eat a Skinny Cow cookies-n-cream ice cream sandwich AND still stay within that days’ self-imposed caloric boundaries. And you think about the creamy ice cream sandwiched gently between two chocolatey cookies ALL DAY. And then you go to retrieve your sandwich from the box and find that the box is empty…

What would be the appropriate response to the spouse who left the empty box in the freezer?

 

10. Let’s say you got invited to a wedding. In Dallas! In September! Let’s say the wedding is an early afternoon wedding on a Sunday… and that the reception is a “brunch” that goes until 5:30.

What would you wear? (Links welcome.)

 

All right, Internet. I would like any and all answers you have to these questions. And if you have any hypotheticals that need answering, have at it in the comments.

Work your magic!