The Most "Humane" Award

STORY 1: Years ago, when I was in college, a kind acquaintance in my neighborhood often complimented me on my hair. One day while walking across campus he realized that I was walking a little way ahead of him—or rather, he thought that I was walking a little way ahead of him. So, he hurried to catch up and when he had, and could see that I was indeed who he thought I was, he greeted me with “I thought that was you, Jenny.” Um…not Jenny. Likely, he really did know who I was and had simply said the wrong name, but it was possible that he hardly knew “Jenny,” just like he hardly knew me, and actually thought that he was talking to someone else. My plan was to correct him (which I figured was the kindest way to handle either scenario in the long run) when he added, “I’d recognize that hair anywhere,” followed by, “It’s gorgeous.” These remarks changed everything. If, in fact, there exists a Jenny whom he thought he was complimenting (scenario 2), I was not her and correcting him not only would have embarrassed him, but also me—the “not Jenny.” Better try to masquerade as Jenny till the encounter ends—as quickly as possible. Or, assuming that he knew all along who I was and simply had had a slip of the tongue (scenario 1), correcting/embarrassing him right after his compliment would seem extremely harsh. So, I thanked him and we headed separate ways. Awkward encounter ended. He never used the wrong name to address me again; in fact, soon after this experience he moved away from the neighborhood. TO BE CONTINUED…
STORY 2: We attended an “engagement party” on Saturday night for a couple who will be marrying in another state. We had purchased them a gift off their registry, namely, a blender. The next day after church I was waiting for B to get out of a meeting when the groom-to-be saw me and came over to thank me. Being a VERY “people-oriented” sort of person, he began the following conversation:
HIM: Thanks so much for being there last night!
ME: Of course!
HIM: And thanks for the GIFT!
ME: Oh, you’re welcome. We’ve gotten a lot of use out of ours.
HIM: You know, of all the things we registered for, the one thing I really hoped someone would get us was the waffle iron!
Um…not a waffle iron. What is one supposed to do in these situations? I don’t think there would have been any reason to correct him even WITHOUT the added bit about the waffle iron being the only thing he really wanted. After all, people get a lot of presents, who really cares if he got it wrong. But I think correcting him might have been possible (if one were so inclined) had he not rhapsodized about the desirability of the gift he incorrectly thought we had given them. So, I owned up to the waffle iron by simply saying:
ME: We were given a waffle iron for our wedding too. Actually, it was from a really good friend of mine and I was quite happy to receive it as well.
TO BE CONTINUED…
STORY 1 [CONTINUED]:
Three years later (yes, I was still in school), my roommate mentioned that the guy she had met at a conference in New Orleans (and hoped to begin dating) knew me. I didn’t recognize him by name, but a couple weeks later he came over, and I recognized him immediately as the old acquaintance who used to like my hair (and Jenny’s?). They did start dating (two years later they’re still dating). The funny thing is that my roommate happens to be named “Jenny.” Her hair? Black, and straight as a board.
STORY 2 [CONTINUED]:
I changed the topic of the conversation to ask where they would be living, as most places close to the bride-to-be’s school are located in a different ward. That part of the conversation ended with me offering to have them come over “anytime” to look at our apartment complex. They chose that very evening for their visit, and I forgot until it was almost too late to tell B that the groom-to-be believes we gave them a waffle iron and that I had let him believe it, thinking it would never come back to haunt me. Crisis narrowly averted. If he had walked in and begun thanking B profusely for the waffle iron, as he is wont to do, B would certainly have corrected him, making him embarrassed and me EQUALLY embarrassed for having done the humane thing in the first place. The only thing left to worry about was the bride-to-be. Would SHE remember who had really given them the waffle iron when her fiance began mistakenly thanking us?

"BEST WEDDING DRESS EVER"

Fewer and fewer things in my life seem to go according to plan. So, to bolster my spirits and convince myself that I still come up with good plans and that I continue to be in charge of my destiny the way I once was, I like to think about recent things—however small—that HAVE gone the way I intended them to as a result of my good decisions and planning. One of those was the successful sale of my wedding dress. I really don’t understand why more people don’t do it. Why wear something so costly once? Since I will never have the opportunity to recoup the full value of the dress by wearing it repeatedly (which, according to my rough calculations would take at least 1,323 wears), the entire cost of the dress is sunk. Plus, I don’t like to keep things longer than their use lasts. As for sentimentality, the dress really doesn’t matter—nor do the invitations, nor do the flowers, etc. The dress, which was optional to me in the first place, would have to go to make room for more useful things; and, if I sold it, I’d recover some of the cost too!
So, I did a little shopping. Surprisingly, although many of the dresses were “pretty,” I just wasn’t interested in wearing them for my wedding…until…I FOUND IT! THE ONE! It was exactly what I wanted—funny, because I hadn’t ever thought I wanted any particular things. Wedding over, the dress went on sale, and I felt just as good about it as I had when I thought the whole idea up—no, I felt even better; I had the smug satisfaction of knowing I had had the dress of my dreams [if my dreams had been of dresses]. Because I am no longer in Utah, where the dress is, the actual transaction and customer interaction was managed by T (for a nominal fee, naturally). After all, she IS an MBA…and a cutthroat. Who better qualified? Our business advertising strategy had two vehicles: 1. Craigslist [which proved to be the winning strategy]; 2. the BYU “board” [which did not generate any business despite catchy teases such as “HAPPILY MARRIED FOR ETERNITY—AND YOU???” and “NO ONE HAS TO KNOW IT ISN’T THE FIRST TIME” (courtesy of B—the think tank)]. Now the dress is gone. Someone else will get to wear it! Hooray! Then she can be as happy as I am when she thinks back on how lovely it looked and on how fortuitous it was that she found it...and that I sold it—that is, as happy as I am IF she sells it.

A Much Stronger Player

Sometimes I play chess. I’ve never been formally taught about strategies—or rules, actually. But I know how each piece may move and what the ultimate objective is. In my early days as a chess player, my strategy was to try to kill one of my opponent’s pieces with every turn. It didn’t matter which piece. There was no focus on the ultimate objective—just a steady whittling away of the opposition. Eventually, everyone will have been killed and I will be the winner. As I have matured in my playing ability, I have begun to construct more intricate plans involving forced choices for my oponent (who is usually running defense against my miriad of assassination attempts), and I have shifted my focus to the king.
I would wager that I outplay my worthy opponent a good 75% of all the time we spend playing. The trouble is that I don’t win 75% of the games we play. In fact, I don’t even win a disproportionate 50% of the games we play. The injustice of it all has caused extreme frustration and has led us to carefully consider whether I am emotionally “up” to the challenge before opening the game closet. A lost game will darken my mood for about an hour, and on one particularly bad day (which is never a good time for a game of chess) a defeat left me in tears. I enjoy playing most of the time, and knowing how “well” I play convinces me that I WILL win this time…I mean I should, after all. So the frustration continues—and grows.
When my mom called on Sunday, I had just completed a chess game in which I did not come off conqueror. I did not tell her this; just casually mentioned that we had been playing. She asked in her mom way, “Are you and Brett both good sports?” which is to say either “You had better both be good sports,” or “Are YOU being a good sport?” I wanted to answer, “Yes,” because by and large I do consider myself a good sport. I don’t believe I am one of those people who HAS to win any and all matches of each and every game. I will certainly try to win, and if I can win, I’ll do it. But I knew, as I considered the recent chess match, that I had not been a good sport on this occasion. Generally, when I don’t win at chess (which is generally) I am not a good sport. Of course, I maintain that if I could just win my fair share of games based on my cool moves, killing ability, and lack of stupid errors, or at least win an amount of games approaching my fair share, I am certain I would be a gracious loser. But clearly, in answer to Mom's question, I am not a good sport SOME of the time. I thought maybe I could tell her that I am a good sport when I win! That counts for something, right? But, I am not a good sport, even when I win. The match we had played two weeks earlier was a stunning victory for me, and I gloated about it for days. I stalled on the phone as I considered all of these things, “Umm….er….well….,” and finally, “Brett is a better sport.” Whew.
So, I’ve decided that something needs to change. I either need to change the way I react, or I need to change what is happening that is causing this reaction. In other words, I need to be content with whatever happens when we play, or I need to start winning more so that I AM content with what happens.
I have started reading up on chess moves.
Two CAN play at this game.

Ya' mean men are learnin' how to dance?

Seven months ago I enrolled us in a square dance class. I know from a semester of square dance instruction during my freshman year of college that it is not only really, really dorky, but also really, really fun! B, on the other hand, is opposed to dancing in any form, but I suspect that since we were newlyweds he agreed to join (not so much because he was THAT in love with me, but more because he probably didn’t know me well enough to know that if he gave me the go ahead, I really WOULD go through with finding a club and getting us all signed up [and purchasing the “belt buckle” he demanded before he would step foot in a dance hall]). Knowing that B is not a dancer, I felt that square dancing was our best shot, although the “dorkiness” factor makes the choice a little counterintuitive. All style judgments aside, B had the highest likelihood of success as a square dancer because he is an engineer—(ok, maybe even with the style judgments, depending on one’s opinion of engineers). This means he can count—very important in many forms of dancing but emphasized in square dancing with calls that include numbers and fractions in their names. A military affinity also helps, as square dancing requires the dancers to follow orders (thereby eliminating one anxiety-causing aspect of dancing: the dancer’s own creativity!). It looked a good deal like marching when we started, but now, we’ve really got some…flare! Finally, it’s lots of fun—including and especially spending time with our dancing friends. The average age of the dancers in our club is probably 72. Many have things like hearing aids and pace makers and “new” knees and strokes and 56th wedding anniversaries, and all are universally apologetic that we have to hang out with “a bunch of old people.” But really, the only thing we DON’T like is hearing them apologize that we have to spend time with them. They’re wonderful. They really do dote on us, and I suspect one or two have crushes on B. How could they not? He is precise in his timing and in the execution of moves (see? the counting thing again) and has more hair than most of the rest of the men in the group (on this point B is probably at least as pleased as the ladies!). We are looking forward to Friday’s graduation dance, and, yes, we’ll be wearing the outfits!

Gramma Nut

Months ago, a friend asked if I would edit his thesis. I said sure, and recently I edited it. I used to edit all the time back in the day, and it’s what I planned to be doing here in Atlanta, but we all know that didn’t pan out. Well, the friend kept insisting on paying me, which I insisted on refusing. As I explained, I DID get paid. By editing his thesis at work, instead of reading the gossip columns and looking at furniture on Craigslist, I was able to stay busy and to actually help someone at the same time. Oh, what fulfillment! And of course, someone was footing the bill. He was quite happy with the result and encouraged me to advertise at GT for other theses and dissertations. Why didn’t I think of this before? Wouldn’t that be nice, to have something to do at work and to be getting paid twice for it? I’d have my “real job,” which requires that I sit at a desk for 8 hours and compensates me by providing steady income and awesome insurance, and then I’d have my “second job” which comes and goes but is always a blessing because it brings in extra cash and, more importantly, provides me with actual WORK to do. Since GT is full of engineers and foreign students, there might be a market for my “professional editing service.” In any case, designing a flier has occupied several hours of my recent work days. Included in the flier is the picture above, which represents a grammar stickler and, in the context of advertising, will convey (with help from a thought bubble that I added to the picture) the idea that the thesis will be free of all errors!

Fast Food Frenzy

A tornado warning and torrential rain caused by a severe T-storm were not enough to keep diehard fans from the Braves vs. Mets game Friday night. Sadly, however, they proved to be enough to keep the players away. It was a crying shame. Opening game of the opening weekend against [what I’m told is] a great team and bitter rival. I even read online that this game would “set the tone” for the Eastern conference! Naturally, we were there, right? Well, on our way, anyway. The thing that kept us from being on hand to witness the opening pitch was not the nasty weather, but rather a burger joint: Checker Burgers. Because we stopped at Checker’s famed drive through restaurant, we were still a couple miles from the stadium at start time. Of course, nothing was starting at Turner Field, so when a friend phoned to say the game had been called on account of rain, we pulled over and enjoyed our to-go burger fix. Although we discovered Checker’s only a week or so ago, I fear we are already showing signs of an unhealthy habit, perhaps even an addiction. In addition to the story above, I add the following condemning piece of evidence. A week ago, we were on our way to GT for a workout followed by an hour of racquetball. Fearing I had not eaten enough to support so much activity, we stopped at “Checker Burgers.” In our inexperience, we attempted to enter the establishment, only to find that there is no dining area, just a big kitchen with drive-thrus on two sides. We each ordered a burger (DELISH!) and then successfully completed the drive to GT, the workout, and the racquetball game. After finishing these activities, we got in the car and drove straight back to Checker’s for two more burgers, two milkshakes, and an order of fries.

And you can hand it over. Right now.

In talking with coworkers about clothes, I observed that I had a lot of skirts and very few pairs of pants for work. I went so far as to postulate that I could wear a different skirt every day for a month and later decided it would be fun to try. But the month was February, and it was not fun. I did it though with skirts to spare. While in the middle of Skirt Month I, one of my coworkers decided she would to give it a try as well (minus “casual Fridays” on which she will wear pants), but not until the weather warmed up and not unless I would do it with her. April was the month selected for Skirt Month II. I'm actually quite happy about this. Not only do I prefer skirts, but I am also pleased to be a trendsetter—and a FASHION trendsetter at that! Who would have thought?

The coworker had not enjoyed her three days of skirt-wearing, but decided that one—no, two—pairs of shoes would make it more enjoyable. So, at lunch yesterday she went shoe shopping and came back with a cute black pair (today, a brown pair). This black pair, or how she got them, is the real subject of this entry. My coworker BARGAINED for them. I’ve heard from online money writers that “you can bargain for anything,” but I can’t believe that’s true. For most things I would find bargaining offensive. If I don’t want to pay the stated price, then I don’t get to have it and they don’t get to sell it. To ask someone to give it to me lower is rude and embarrassing. I would feel uncomfortable, and they might feel uncomfortable being put in a position of having to tell me “no.” I admit there are instances when bargaining is expected by the seller (cars, furniture, any sale in Mexico* [*this situation has the increased awkwardness of haggling with someone who is poor. You look like the evil rich white man {"finally in control"} trying to keep the poor craftsman in as awful a state as possible.]) and I am told that the initial price has been purposely inflated so that the actual intended selling price is later coincidentally agreed upon. The trouble is that I feel all listed prices (other than cars, furniture, and any sale in Mexico) ARE the actual intended selling price. Well, I am now inspired by my coworker’s intrepidness and I would like to add that it was the first time she had ever tried bargaining. I feel two points from her story were key to her success: 1. The shoes were on clearance, indicating that the store may have been worried that no one would buy the shoes (because no one had); 2. She happened to see what appeared to be (and was) the department manager talking to someone. This allowed her access to someone who had the ability to decide whether or not to lower the price. Someday I hope to bargain an actual intended selling price down. It's a life goal.

Phoenix Dark Dirk

I felt like a superhero on Monday night when, on my drive home (the part where I was not driving, but rather sitting in traffic at a stop light), an accident happened right before my eyes—and two feet before my car. In fact, having nearly set the whole thing up and having watched it as it happen has caused me to wonder if sounding my horn would have in some way prevented it. But my horn is a touchy instrument, sounding in only 1 out of 5 attempts (and usually quite late at that), so I don’t believe I really could have prevented it and I have let myself off the hook. I proceeded to wind down my window and offer to help or stick around (you know, as a “key witness”—in fact, for all I knew I was bound by law to stick around and set the record straight). Luckily, everyone appeared unhurt (conscious and unbloodied), but the girl driving one of the cars thanked me and said she would really appreciate it if I stayed. So, I parked my car and hung out for half an hour waiting for the cops. The best part is that the girl had an ADORABLE baby that I got to hold while the cop helped her move her vehicle to safety. I confess that it’s always been a sort of fantasy of mine to come upon an accident or crisis (preferably one where no one is hurt) and jump in and help out with small children while the adults sort things out. I didn’t think it was very likely to happen, but now it has!

For the Birds

On Good Friday, I took advantage of my day off and finally cashed in on my Christmas present! In some ways my 1-hour flight was everything I wanted: it was a cool, tiny plane…and I was flying it. In other ways it was a shocking disapointment. The entire experience began with a poor performance taxiing TO the runway. This led me to insist that the instructor “steer” down the runway during takeoff. I kept my eyes on the appropriate dial and pulled back on the stick and we were flying! Only…it didn’t feel like flying. It felt more like falling, flipping wing over wing, and crashing. It was terrifying. We were being thrown up and down and turned on our side. I thought that I was crashing the plane and doing everything wrong. Was the instructor concerned? Perhaps, but his greater concern was in documenting our impending demise on my camera in video mode. So, there I was, trying (or WANTING to try) to keep us airborne and if possible to stabilize the plane, but not knowing what to do. I would have just let go and had him fly, but he didn’t seem to be interested, and if I stopped flying then NO ONE would be flying (which likely would not have made any difference). So, I just held on to the stick with one hand and my seat with my other hand. Our exchanges went like this: (as we lifted off) “Stay over the runway! Stay over the runway!” “I CAN’T SEE THE RUNWAY!” and (pointing at the computer image he told me represents other planes in the sky, one of which has been slowly and steadily moving towards us and was finally just about on top of our icon) “Isn’t that a plane?” “I’m looking out for it.” After about 20 minutes I had become too queasy to go on, and my instructor (hoping to prevent some unpleasantness) took over and brought us back to the airport. 36 out of 60 minutes…

Several things could have made my experience better: 1. no crosswind; 2. a cooler day (the thermals were pretty strong—throwing us up and then dropping us); 3. having the instructor take-off and fly for the first 5 to 10 minutes (allowing me to see that flying in a little plane on a rough day is simply going to feel like you are crashing. This would have let me know that I WASN’T causing the trouble and that I COULDN’T control it even if I wanted to).

Yes, flying looks fun and exciting, which is why I wanted to do it so bad! B, however, knew what a bumpy day and a little plane REALLY are: nauseating and terrifying. He kept wondering why I wasn’t nervous at all pre-flight. Why would I be? I’ve always LOVED flying—never found it terrifying in the least—and I’ve never become sick even when others have. That’s me; the perfect flight school candidate. Needless to say, I am now shocked, confused, and disappointed by my performance and the experience generally. We’ve hit a proverbial road block, no, speed bump, no, air control tower in my pilot license plans. It seems I need to master the intro flight first, a feat which may require all the 40 hours I thought I’d be devoting to the license!

It's ALL about time.

Seven and a half months ago I found myself trying to fill 40 hours of each week with meaningful activities that could be done while chained to an uncomfortable office chair. In my continued [and continuing] quest to find ways to spend my time in a productive manner, I have on occasion asked people for suggestions. Two people recommended starting a blog, and one person suggested writing a personal history. Add those suggestions to my own desire to use some of this time to keep a journal, and that makes four endorsements, which, judging from the perfect strangers’ blogs I browsed in preparation for beginning my own, is far more motivation than I suspect many of them had. (On a side note: If any and all readers quickly see that the blogosphere was better off without me, lodge your complaints but don’t expect a quick cessation. It took 7 months from the time the suggestions were made for me to actually get around to starting the blog…)
Once the decision was made to begin, the real dilemma was finding a suitable blog name. I ran my working title by B because I had a small nagging notion that there may exist a person or two who would find it sacrilegious. As it turned out, B was one of such persons, declaring that it was INDEED inappropriate. So, to prevent the generation of such names, I solicited his help in a brainstorm effort, providing a single stipulation: the name should be witty. This stipulation produced the name “LYNDSEY’S ZONE”, and that contribution effectively ended B’s role in the brainstorming effort. Having no patience for a long search, I made a late night phone call to a hotbed of wittiness, selecting something tame and descriptive.