What are your "Rules for Life?"

I've always loved that - I learned it as "Your failure to plan is not my emergency."

 

You can order lobster at a steak house but never order steak at a lobster shack.

If things are tight and both the rent and car payment are due, make the car payment. You can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.

 

A guy at work told me about some entity selling ribeye steaks out of truck (20 for $40) at a nearby mall. I told him there are two things I won't buy from the back of a truck, meat and jewelry.

 

Apologies for the listicle. I'm low energy for a number or reasons.

1.) I didn't say you were.
2.) I didn't think I was being dismissive. The operative word here is think. My perception of my post could be wrong.
3.) I'm glad and honestly, I figured that was closer to ho you were and are.

Finally: A friend once interviewed the late Doug Marlette as part of a series about southern cartoonists. In the interest of disclosure, I loved his editorial cartoons and loathed Kudzu. I found out my buddy felt the same way.

During the conversation he had with Marlette, he asked him if he'd ever been contacted by anyone who saw themselves in his strip. At first, he said no, then he walked it back and said he'd heard from a couple of Verandas (the toothsome, dishy object of his teen lead's romantic fascination.) Had he heard from the real Ida Mae Wombat or those who saw their younger selves reflected in her.

Bud later told me he was left with the impression that Marlette fancied himself a satirical sharp-shooter and truth-teller. Both of us have respect for people who can do that and do it well. Lewis Grizzard, Roy Bount, and few other people were and are masters of the art of taking the piss out of Dixie's sacred cows. Marlette just took mean swipes that reinforced negative stereotypes about women, the clergy*, and anyone who wasn't male or (as Alma likes to say) "one of the cools."

After some thought, my friend decided to leave out any questions about women, his really awful takes on depression, and a few other things.

As I listened to the recording of the interview, one thing stuck out. He revisited Ida Mae Wombat a couple of times and insisted he never knew anyone like that and any woman who wanted to claim that was her had no place in the conversation.

This is not an isolated incident. And please understand I am speaking generally here. (Wasn't this supposed to be a short listicle? I lied.) Men can claim all manner of youthful disasters. Women have a harder time doing so because it's seen as fishing for compliments or declarations that it wasn't so or something like that.

I'm old enough to remember Square Pegs. It was the show nobody watched if you asked. On the ground, everyone made time for it. Okay, everyone here was everyone in the dorm and their best Gay boyfriends. It was relatively mild compared to, say, Pen15. People might talk about something they saw that was particularly funny, but you couldn't get anyone to admit to having experiences remotely similar to that if you held their pets at gunpoint.

The same applies even more so to Pen15, which is pretty close to brilliant. I watched the first episode with a friend and her fifteen-year-old niece. The plot revolved around one of the lead characters being elected as the ugliest girl in school. Friend had to excuse herself more than once. I finally went into the kitchen to find her seated at the table, doing deep breathing exercises to calm herself.

"That never happened." she said.

Why was she so upset?

Her niece came in and told her things like that happen at her school. There's more social pressure to make people be nicer now, but it still happens.

I answered for her. Yes, it did. I was a UGIS and DUFF officeholder grades 6 through 11. Those acronyms were not used, but you get the idea.

People get uncomfortable when someone speaks about stuff like this, especially if they are doing so when they were not in a position of power. I can speak of these labels dispassionately because they are not the sum of who I am, just the remnants of how I was cast in the more performative parts of adolescence and young adult life.

I was one of those girls, and I do have a part in this conversation.

*Will D. Campbell is a personal hero. Talk smack about him and I'll strip to the waist and beat you down in one of the many SBC-owned parking lots. What this wuz, wuz hah-perbole!

 

The “dismissive” was part of my lesson/advice to myself in my post and NOT intended to you; sorry.

 

This reminds me how when I was heavily involved in my kids” elementary school and the district there was the push to stop bullying and respect all kids, etc. Banners, assemblies, at every school and I still saw the ugly behavior by kids on overnight school trips and everywhere. I thought “this should not be for the kids, they need to send adult videos to parents.” Until parents change, kids won’t.

 

Growing up in a northern suburban enclave decades ago, I never once saw the kind of organized school-wide bullying against one person described here. When in college I read how Janis Joplin was chosen best-looking man in her HS, I was genuinely shocked. There was typical bullying on a mostly individual scale, but maybe I was just lucky to grow up around mostly decent people and their parents.

 

In the 70’s if you’re weren’t a strapping WASP good luck, only the strong survived.

 

I think it might be a (mostly) southern thing or at least it's something in those areas that share cultural traits with the southeast.

This is going to sound like bragging and it really isn't. When I was in second or third grade, there were some classmates who would come up to me and say things like, "I'm gonna slap the ugly right offa you." or "You make me want to knock ten pounds of you." Then they would laugh like it was the funniest thing ever uttered. The reason I remember this was my first response was, "You're not smart enough to come up with that. Did your Mama say it?" This lead to threats from adults in the school pickup line and angry conferences between their parents, my parents, and the administrators.

Decades later, I caught my students doing the same thing WITH their mothers. (I was the on-call to teach science at a middle school for a while. I loved the kids. The parents wore me out.) I walked up to one SUV and used my scary voice to ask mom and Dotter (who had been one of my favorite students and a delight in the classroom) what they thought they were doing. They had to stop to hyperventilate, but at least they quit harassing the chubby, nerdy kid (who CLEPed his way through two years worth of classes at Georgia Tech and now works for NASA. Missed out on a keeper there, girlie!)

Yes, this nonsense went on/goes on.

 

People say Taylor Mali is too angry. No, he wasn't angry enough.

 

If offered a choice between water and beer, drink the beer.

 

Get away on Father's Day.