The “Crazy Old Lady” and the Fork in the Road

In 2010 I stood at a fork in the road, knowing it was “tine” to make a choice.  One direction was to give “happily ever after” one more chance. The other direction was to become the neighborhood “crazy old lady.” I’d had some experience on both those roads. First, a “happily ever after” marriage that ended badly after 16 years, left me a single mom to three teenagers. Until a few miles before the fork in the road, raising them had been my 24/7 devotion. Now, as they all had left the nest, I realized I had to step back a bit, leaving me some space to map out the rest of my life.

As far as becoming that “crazy old lady,” I tried that out not too long after the divorce, right after the kids and I moved into a “handyman special” house. Abandoned for a number of years, the house had to be dug out from accumulated leaf litter, overgrown shrubbery and trash. The landscaper I had helping me even ruined one of his machines running over some old pipes hidden under the leaves.

One day a crowd of beer-drinking young men and large dogs began gathering in front of my house. Concerned, but realizing they were on the sidewalk and not my yard, I silently kept an eye out. The dogs did not look friendly. The crowd grew larger. Occasionally, they glanced at my house, the car in the driveway and other signs of life. I started to wonder if something had been going on in my yard during its time of abandonment. Something like dog fighting.

Then, a beer bottle sailed through the air, and landed not far from my front door. “Oh no you didn’t!” I thought as I grabbed the nearest weapon, a broom. I burst through the screen door like Xena, the Warrior Princess, shrieking at the top of my lungs.

In my mind, I was shouting something akin to “People live here now!”  I am not sure that is what they heard, but the idea was clear. The crowd parted for me. The bottle throwing party was apologizing. I gestured to the bottle for him to pick it up. “Yes. Ma’am” he said. The air was full of the sound of slamming car doors and engines starting and then roaring away.  Finally, silence.

I went back into the house, triumphantly, expected accolades from my children. Instead they were all sprawled out on the floor with the dog. They, apparently were waiting for some sort of violent revenge from the dog-fighters. But they never returned. Today I like to think that if I had called the police or even tried to politely reason with them, that the results would have been different. Something about a “crazy old lady” was scarier than anything else.

So, in that respect, the "crazy old lady" road had been more successful for me. Yet, I reasoned that I had never really given “happily ever after” a real try after my divorce. After thinking long and hard, I decided to give love one more try, with “crazy old lady” being the default if nothing worked out. Quite possibly, either road could eventually land me in the same place, so I kept my broom handy. And set off to find the Love of My Life, if there was one.

Sneezing your head off?

Artist's rendition. Not actually me. :)

One of the most popular blog posts I ever wrote was my bronchitis-induced research about whether or not you could actually cough out a lung. The result was, technically you can't, however, there can be other injuries caused by coughing. But, mostly, the lungs stay where they belong.

As a follow-up to that is the question about sneezing one's head off. This comes to my mind as I suffer through my semi-annual January sinus/bronchitis/allergy cough and sneeze festival. I tried to stay home for most of it, doubled over by chest muscle pain every time I coughed. Sneezing was even more painful, leading to that question about the possibility of really sneezing my head off.

The answers to this are more scary than for coughing. Deaths have been attributed to sneezing. Heart attacks have been contributed to sneezing. An attempt to hold a sneeze in is especially dangerous. So apologies in advance to family, friends and office colleagues. You already know me for my high-pitched-Mariah-Carey-octave sneezes. Now, there will be no more attempts to suppress them. (You may think I have not been doing that all along.)

And if you think I am exaggerating about sneezing injuries, here is the latest one to make the news: 
Holding A Sneeze

 

A Happy New Year Song

(to the tune of Jingle Bells)


Frozen pipes, frozen pipes,
it's our New Year's gift,
If only we remembered
to let hot water drip,

Cold!

It's so cold, it's so cold
Here in New Jersey,
the furnace can't top 68
while the floor is 53!

Cold!

Outside there is snow
that hardened like a rock
the postman won't be ringing twice
he's skipping this frozen block!

We're snuggling on the couch
with blankets to our eyes
hibernating until spring
when we hope temperatures rise!

Cold!

(repeat)

As 2017 fades to black...

Joy and Happiness: Emotions for Humans Only?

This is an absolutely delightful photo from the 2017 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Do animals laugh? Do they feel joy and delight? Or, are we just anthropomorphizing them?

There are animals who laugh — rats tickle each other to elicit laughter — and animals who have behaviors that seem to serve no purpose other than having fun. 

Behavioral scientists have been experimenting with animals for years with the understanding that some animal reactions will be similar to human behaviors. For example, the experiment that stressed rat mothers to see how it affected their care of babies, with the conjecture that what was bad for rat mothers would be bad for human mothers.

Of course pet owners have always thought their companions express love, happiness, regret, shame and jealousy. But knowing if these are real emotions being felt, or just instinctual social behaviors evolved for self preservation is still being researched. When my dog chewed up the garbage and seemed so ashamed and embarrassed, was that because of a real sense of having done wrong? Was it just a reflex learned because of my previous reactions to such a mess? Considering the amount of shared genetic material between humans and the animal kingdom, and the perceived similarities in behavior, who can say if we are projecting emotions onto animals, or they are projecting them onto us?

In any event, photos like this one, that we so strongly identify with, can go a long way toward making humans think twice about destroying animal habitats and pushing populations to extinction. After all, wouldn't they suffer, just as humans suffer when displaced and robbed of their ability to survive? Considering what is going on in the world, are we just racing each other over the cliff?

Yes, we have much more in common with the animal kingdom, and each other, than laughter. But it is a good place to start. And sometimes, it takes a tiny mouse to remind us. We are all in this together.

Communicating with Clarity, and Humor

Funny, unless you are selling tools!

Mealtime was serious at my childhood house. Children were to eat, not speak. They were also to eat their vegetables before their meat, not drink their milk until done with everything else, and not dare to rise until they had been excused from the table.

“Please may I be excused from the table?” is a mouthful for a small kid. But, you mastered it, or you sat there. Mastering it meant not changing the words, either. “Can I be excused?” would be met by this answer: “I don’t know can you?”

Yes, my parents were grammar sticklers. Even the use of pronouns was a touchy subject. Innocently referring to my mother as “her” was disrespectful and grounds for some quick discipline. There was no tolerance of a Brooklyn accent in our Brooklyn home, and one of the biggest disagreements I ever had with my Mother was her constant reminder to me that warm-blooded animals were “mammals,” not “mamamals.”

I was a bit less strict with my own children, who started saying, “Please excuse the table?” as toddlers, and I couldn’t stop giggling about it. It persisted way longer than their realization about what they were really saying. So does “all of the sudden” which they still think is the way to say “all of a sudden.” (Sorry, Mom!)

As a writer and communicator, these stories come back to me, as my mother knew they would. Words are important. The right words, used and pronounced correctly. 

Today, dealing with tweets, sound bytes, 10-second elevator pitches and attention spans that get shorter every day should mean that we have all learned to communicate with clarity. Fewer words, more need for using the correct ones. But, how terribly poor clarity is today, is, well, pretty clear. Clear as the difference between asking “Can I?” or “May I?”

A friend taught me a French expression, “le mot juste,” which translates to the English equivalent of “the right word.” For communicators this means saying the right words in the right format to the right people at the right time. How hard could that be? So hard that some famous writers have been paralyzed into silence looking for them.

While you are at it, you may be expected to do it in a clever, and possibly humorous way. However, mayhem ensues when the humor comes first and the clarity becomes, well, less clear. Especially if the only humor you can come up with is using Comic Sans.

For those of you who still watch network television, and the commercials that come with that, you experience this all the time. A commercial plays utilizing a comical plot, a play on words or an absurd charachter or situation. It makes you laugh or groan, abut five minutes later you can’t remember the product. In fact, let me sit here in front of my TV and wait for an example. Oh, the silly grandfather trying to read "The Three Little Pigs" but he can't huff and puff. "Just like you, Grandpa," the kiddies say. They all laugh. What are they selling? Children's books? Cough drops? Life-saving medicine for a seriously ill person? I can't quite remember. But I can see that wheezy Big Bad Wolf.

How about people on Twitter trying emphatically to make a point, but their grammar or spelling or misuse of a word ruins their efforts. Or an imprisoned, dethroned prince sends you an email, desperately trying to share his inheritance, but you can’t get past his fractured syntax. Missed opportunities, all. 

The best humor that communicators use will make the target audience smile, but doesn’t break the connection to the message. Think of your message as a greeting card, serious, funny, nostalgic or sympathetic on the outside, but still says “Happy Birthday,” “Get Well,” or “Thinking of You” on the inside. You can "leave 'em laughing" as long as the humor reinforces the message, not overshadows it. If you can do this, you may be successful. (See what I did there? I am so my mother's daughter.)

Take that Oxford comma in my title and let it give you some time to pause before you add humor to your message. My mother would thank you.

Holiday Stress and Laughter

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