JT: Leaders and Followers

I want to talk about a childhood friend of mine, let’s call him JT.  I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about him, and he doesn’t overlap with any of my other friends.  He didn’t live close by, we went to different schools, and I only knew him because our parents were friends; so I’m not sure any of my other friends ever even met him.

JT was probably the most redneck friend I’ve ever had.  His dad was a mechanic, and JT grew up around cars.  My parents went through an outdoorsy phase, joining a Jeep club and occasionally going camping, and JT’s parents were part of the same activities.  One time JT showed me how to catch crawdads in his creek and cook them on the grill.  So I have a tendency to associate JT with “manly” things, even though he was just as much a dork as I was.

He was a good guy, at least he was when I was around.  I like to think I was a good influence on him.  The problem was, he was like this blank slate with no strong opinions of his own.  He had this older stepbrother who was extremely misogynistic and racist.  JT didn’t actually live with his stepbrother, in fact he probably saw his stepbrother about as often as he saw me.  But I could always tell when he’d recently spent time around his stepbrother.

The first few hours of our visits together often felt like a deprogramming session.  It occurs to me now that his stepbrother probably felt the same way.  I remember one time talking about Scarlett from GI Joe, and he said, “You know that’s all wrong, right?  Women can’t actually do all that stuff.”

“All what stuff?”

“You know, all the running and jumping and firing guns and driving tanks and stuff.”

Now, GI Joe really wasn’t the most realistic cartoon in the world, and the characters probably did do a few things that were impossible in real life.  And at that age, I probably didn’t know the difference.  But I did tell him that he was wrong, and that women could do anything men could do. 

Looking back, I’m actually not sure why I was so enlightened at that age.  Not trying to toot my own horn or anything.  Seriously, I was wrong about a ton of other issues.  And I’m not saying I was a born feminist, either; believe me I had plenty of sexist opinions.  But I really did tell JT he was wrong on this one.

I’ve always thought of myself as wishy-washy and indecisive, and to some extent it’s true.  But the truth is, I really do have strong opinions on a lot of issues, and right or wrong, I’ve been that way my entire life.  Even today, I have some friends who only seem to parrot the opinions of whoever they’ve most recently spoken to, and other friends who are quite secure in their beliefs and opinions.  I’m definitely the latter, but I do wonder if that’s how others see me.

It's weird.  "They say" that people are either Leaders or Followers.  I am definitely not a leader.  I will never consider myself a leader.  But I also do my own thing. I rarely follow the same path the people around me.  I identify more with the Followers than the Leaders, but I don't really follow anybody.  I can't decide if I'm actually a Leader with no Followers, or a Follower without a Leader.

Murphy’s Law in Action

My first job was at a toy store.  One time, a coworker and I were adding up the checks for the day.  I came across a surname I thought was unusual, “Elfrink.”  I showed the name to my coworker, mocking it a little.  She replied, “Hey!  That was my maiden name!”  Whoops.

That was nearly thirty years ago.  In three decades, I have yet to see the name Elfrink anywhere else.  But that’s my point.  It would be my luck to make fun of a name, to someone who happens to have that name.  Even if it’s the only two instances of that name I encounter in my entire life.

It's probably better just not to make fun of anyone's name.

Grammar and Punctuation

If I could contribute a new punctuation mark to society, and force it into acceptance, it would be a quotation mark with a period directly beneath it.  I’m so sick of trying to decide whether it looks weirder to have the quotation mark before or after the period.  At this point I really only care about the look of it.  I don’t give a hoot about which one is technically correct.  Those rules evolve, and some of the world’s greatest books are full of misused punctuation.

People already complain that I put two spaces after a period.  But that’s how I was taught, and it’s too difficult to change that now.  If I ever publish an actual book, I will attempt to find software that removes the extra space, but I refuse to actually type differently.  It would take me months to unlearn that habit, at which point the Powers That Be would suddenly declare two spaces to be the official norm.  The people who think they’re in charge of grammar are a bunch of stuffed shirts, anyway, with no vision of the future.

If you’ve read a lot of my blogs, you may have noticed that I rarely indent paragraphs, and just put an extra space between them instead.  This is how I prefer to write, and for me it’s easier to read as well.  Before the invention of computers, the extra spaces probably would have been considered a waste of paper.  But now, when so many people are reading their books on tablets?  I honestly think this is the future of writing.

Anyway, hi.

This Is My Brain On Bills. Any Questions?

I got paid today.  As usual on payday, the first thing I did this morning was log onto my bank account to pay some bills.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had more money left over than I thought I would.  Then I went through my stack of paper bills to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.  My heart jumped when I found a plate renewal notice for my Mazda.  Apparently the plates had expired two weeks ago, at the end of September.

I remember receiving the notice back in early August.  At the time, my wife had a bonus coming up, and I remember thinking, “Well, I guess part of that bonus will have to go to the tags.”  I remember sticking the renewal notice on the shelf, and I don’t remember thinking it about it since.  But, it was morning, my brain was still fuzzy, and I couldn’t be 100% sure if I’d renewed it or not.  I decided to go outside and look at the plate, but I wasn’t dressed yet.  So I made a mental note to check the plate before I got in the car to drive it to work.

It didn’t occur to me that there were at least three ways to check it from the computer I using at the time.  I always keep the receipts from electronic renewals in a folder on my hard drive.  I also have a spreadsheet I use as a checkbook, that would have had the listing for the tags.  If all that fails, I could always log onto my bank account and look for the transaction there.  But no, my brain decided that the only way to know would be to look at the tags.

Except I didn’t.  I didn’t even think about it again until I was already driving, halfway to work.  So I told myself, “When you get to work, check the tags before you go inside.”  Of course, I could have waited until the next stop light, and grabbed the registration out of the glove compartment.  But my brain was still stuck on the idea that my only option was to look at the plate.

Aaaand once again, I forgot to look at the plate when I got to work.  I remembered as soon as I sat down at my desk.  I decided I would check the plate at lunch, and if it was expired, I would get my emissions tested on my lunch hour.  I even told my supervisor I might be a few minutes late getting back from lunch.

Lunch came around.  If you think I remembered to look at my plate before driving off, you haven’t been paying attention to this story.  I was halfway to the emissions place when I thought, “Wait a minute, I seriously can’t go there without checking first.”  I have a very close, personal relationship with Murphy’s Law, and it would be just my luck to pay for an emissions test and then find out I hadn’t needed to.

So I looked for a parking lot to stop in.  I’m oddly picky about that; you know, it can’t be a busy lot, it has to be on the right-hand side, it can’t be a business where the employees can see you through the window because I don’t want them to see me park without buying anything, and did I mention I’m neurotic?  I finally stopped at a bowling alley and got out of the car.  September 2020.  I couldn’t believe it; I honestly have no memory of getting the tags renewed.

Just to be sure, I checked the glove compartment for the registration.  Yep, it even told me when I renewed it, back on August 18^th.  To be fair, I do sort of remember renewing it.  It’s just that I renewed both cars within four months of each other, so the memories are kind of overlapping.  When you’re younger, four months is a long time, but I’ve hit the age where two similar events in that time span just sort of merge into one memory.

So the good news is that I have an extra $100 grocery money to get me through the next two weeks.  The bad news is, well, that they let people like me drive.

Pride of the Spankees

I saw this meme this morning: "As a child, I had two choices for dinner: Take it or Leave it."  I'm not sure I get the point of the meme.  Are they making fun of modern parents who give their children choices for dinner?  Do people really do that?  Is it a common thing?   Because I think it's kind of cool if you can manage it.

I mean, okay, it might be a little too far to actually give your kid a full menu every night, but if the kid truly hates meatloaf, I don't see the crime in offering to microwave them a hot dog.  My wife was forced to eat a lot of things she didn't like as a kid, and to this day she has some debilitating food issues because of it.  Seriously, ask her the pineapple story sometime.

I understand the point of making kids develop healthy eating habits, and I understand they should get a variety of foods early on so they can appreciate more foods later.  But some kids actually do hate certain foods to the point that it makes them nauseous, and parents often force them to eat it anyway.  This is how eating disorders start.  Don't be that parent.

"But we're training them to be adults here!  Adults don't always get choices."  Um... actually, adults do get to choose what they want for dinner, most of the time.  What the fuck kind of adult life do you live, where you think this teaches kids about life?  Are you training your children for a future in prison?

You know, it doesn't matter, that's not even the point of this blog.  Making your children eat "yucky" things isn't what's bothering me, it's being so proud of it that you made a meme.  I understand that sometimes parents have to be cruel to be kind, but this whole culture of "Ha, I'm a crueler parent than you are" is like some primitive dick-measuring contest.

I see tons of variations of, "In my house, if you talked back, you got the belt" or "More kids are criminals these days because their parents didn't spank them enough."  Look, I don't want to tell other people how to raise their kids.  I'm generally wary of spanking, but I understand that different children require different punishments.  Time-outs simply don't work for some parents.  So while I lean toward the anti-spanking crowd, it's not something I'm very vocal about.

But again, it's not about the spanking, it's being proud of it.  At its best, spanking is a necessary evil.  At its worst, it's child abuse.  This whole attitude of, "Yay, I got to spank my child today, I must brag about it on Facebook" strikes me as brutish and fetishist.  Can you imagine if people bragged about hitting their spouses as often as they do about hitting their children?

And it's not just parents who brag about it, sometimes the kids do too.  I know one guy who says, "When I was a kid, I was spanked every day whether I needed it or not, and I turned out fine."  Well, actually he grew up to be an asshole, but I'm not going to tell him that.  It's weird to me that so many people are proud of having been spanked, though.  Are you saying you're proud of your parents for being strict, or proud of yourself for being a rotten kid?  "Oh yeah?  You got spanked a lot?  Well, I went juvie for sexual assault.  Top that!"  But again I'm getting off track.

Or how about those "creative parenting" posts?  You know, where parents give their child a humiliating punishment, like holding a sign that says, "I stole a piece of candy from the drug store" in public?  Again, I'm not criticizing the parents for trying a different punishment, especially if all the other punishments failed.  I'm just annoyed that they were so goddamn happy they got to humiliate their child that they decided to upload it to Facebook as well.  It makes you wonder if it was really about teaching their child a lesson, or more about the attention they got from their Facebook friends.

My parents were pretty light on punishment, or maybe I just wasn't bad very often.  But whenever I went to a friend's house, I paid attention to how their parents punished them, and usually I was horrified.  The parents who had the harshest rules were the ones with kids who lashed out the most, but I make no claims on which was the cause and which was the effect.  Maybe the parents had to up the punishments because the kids kept getting worse.  Or maybe the kids were getting worse because they were starting to realize their parents were monsters.

Regardless, I will never forget this one time...  We were probably in the fourth grade.  My friend and his little brother kept fighting and calling each other rude names.  Their dad ignored it for as long as he could, until they got so loud that he couldn't hear his TV program.  That's another side note - I've rarely seen kids punished for actual sins.  They can punch and kick each other as long as they want, as long as they do it quietly.  They tipping point is always when they damage something or annoy the parents.

Anyway, my friend's dad reached that tipping point, and he went to get his belt.  But… I will never forget the gleam in his eye when we went to punish them.  That look was not “This will hurt me as much as it hurts you” or “I don’t like doing this, but it has to be done.”  It was just for a second, but his expression very clearly said, “They were bothering me and I will enjoy straightening them out.”  I sat in their living room and stared into space while I heard the loud thwacks and cries of pain from their bedroom. 

Afterwards, I went into my friend’s bedroom to comfort him.  My friend wasn’t thinking about what he’d done, or pondering how to be a better person.  He just talked about hating his little brother for getting him into trouble.  The assault had not put the fear of God into him, only the fear of Dad.  It was pointless pain, and the only outcome was that it widened the rift between all the family members involved.

Was there a better way?  Could he have resolved the issue without violence?  That’s not for me to judge.  He did give them a couple of verbal warnings before he stood up, so there’s that.  Maybe they wouldn’t have listened to anything but the belt.  That’s a debate for another time.  Today’s gripe isn’t about the action, but the attitude behind it.  The sociopathic egoism it takes to hurt someone out of so-called “love”, and then to feel proud of it.

Bill Cosby - you know, the rapist - had a whole bit about his children’s nightly beatings.  To be fair, that’s just a comedy routine, and I used to find it funny.  It might be based on actual experience, it might be exaggerated for comedic effect, or it might be made up from scratch.  But then, my point isn’t that he beat his kids, but that he thought the act was so funny it was worth describing it to an audience for laughs.  And isn’t it kind of interesting that the kind of person who made those jokes is the same kind of person who drugged women for sex?  No, I’m not saying everyone who spanks their child is a potential rapist, I’m just saying… it’s an interesting coincidence.

Look, I'm not a parent.  I know it's a tough gig, but I'll never know just how tough.  And the last thing I want to be is one of those judgy non-parents who criticizes parents for doing what works for them, without ever having had to deal with it myself.  But having to punish your child should upset you as much as the child.  It's not something to be proud of, it's just something you felt you had to do.  It's fine to commiserate with other parents about how tough it was, but spanking/beating is not something to joke or brag about.