Lazy Is As Lazy Says

I hate the word “lazy.”

It’s just a pejorative. You see someone not doing something or not doing a good job at it – and you call them lazy. It’s something I overhear parents say to children all the time and it makes me so mad.

Call a child, or anyone, “lazy,” and what have you accomplished? You’ve labeled their behavior, sure, but all that label means is “shithead.” So, you’ve made them feel even worse about themselves than they already do – because doing what you are supposed to do is usually the least painful path – but you have done nothing to help and a lot to hurt.

It boggles my mind that people can look at a child who isn’t doing his schoolwork, is failing, and say, “Oh, he’s just lazy,” as if this kid could do the work but isn’t just cuz. How can you possibly think that a kid fails in a class, looking stupid in front of his peers, his teachers, his family, plus, now, he’s failing and that’s a big problem, because he wants to? Some parents even seem to think that the kid is doing it specifically to make them angry. That’s like saying that someone “chooses” to be gay to make his or her parents mad.

Sure, sometimes a kid who is failing will act the class clown or pretend that failing is cool, sometimes whole groups of them will do that, but that’s just a ruse. It’s a whole lot harder and more terrifying to publicly try your hardest and risk failing than it is to not try at all and pretend that’s cool.

When someone isn’t flying right, it’s because there’s a reason – and frankly, the only one being lazy (not to mention, mean) is the one who calls them lazy.

Do You Know What Human Trafficking Is?

Just wrote an article about human trafficking in Houston. Many of the experts said people are often confused about what "human trafficking" means:

http://thebuzzmagazines.com/articles/2015/02/human-trafficking

Dear Abby's Hair and Me

Cover of The Best of Dear Abby"

When I was a kid, I used to read “Dear Abby.”

Who am I kidding? I still read it.

Back then, I would see Dear Abby’s swooping old-lady hair in her picture and I’d say to myself, “Self, don’t ever have, no matter how old you get, ‘Dear Abby’ hair.”

Well.

Dear Abby did her hair (or more likely, had her hairdresser do her hair in regular weekly appointments) in a bouffant. And that was old-fashioned … then.

But what’s old-fashioned now?

Jeans. Neither of my kids wear jeans. And I live in mine.

I can’t figure out how to work my own TV. (Granted, it has 5 frigging remotes.) I have to ask my son, who, as he’s turning it on and getting to the right “output,” always patiently shows me how to do it, but I have no intention of knowing how to do it next time either.

Phone calls. It absolutely never occurs to my kids to use their cell phones as phones. Text, text, text.

Printing things out on paper. Often, articles on websites and, especially, blogs aren’t even set up to be printed out on paper anymore. (If you aren’t careful, that cute little article will print out as 27 pages of gibberish.)

My kids, teenagers, use “snail mail” so rarely they still have to ask which side, left or right, the stamp goes on.

Checks. I am NOT the old lady paying for groceries in the supermarket line by check. However, I still do pay most bills that way, except for the ones that insist on being paid online. Are my payments like one of three that the companies get by paper check?

Lord, I’ll have spidery handwriting and be peering over my steering wheel before I know it.

I'm getting old, aren't I?

Impossible Things That Happen In Movies All The Time

You know cartoon physics? That’s when impossible things happen in cartoons cuz it’s funnier that way, like a character grabs the string to a single helium balloon and flies away or is perfectly fine after falling off a cliff or getting hit in the head with an anvil.

Well, there’s such a thing in movies too. There are certain stereotypical things that happen in movies all the time that never happen in real life …

People are always able to grab onto something as they fall, like a ledge.

They can then hang from said ledge forever by their fingertips.

And then, they can pull themselves up. Are you kidding? 99% of all Americans, me included, couldn’t do a single pull-up if their lives depended on it.

No one in movies can hit the broad side of a barn with a gun. A huge gun fight, dozens of people firing every which way, and no one gets hit, which is good since …

People in movies hide behind car doors from bullets. That doesn’t work in real life.

People constantly knock each other out cold in movies … and then the knocked-out person gets up and is fine.

When someone gets shot or stabbed, they keel over immediately, dead, OR they have time to give a long, eloquent speech before dying gracefully. No unsightly blood, shit or cries of agony.

Wonderful sex in shower or tub, often surrounded by hundreds of candles. (Who lit those?)

People have sex in movies with the blankets over their heads.

Also, they fall out of bed – and keep going.

No talk of contraception, ever.

Normal people live in spacious apartments in Manhattan. No.

Just as he’s about to kill someone and get away, the bad guy stops to explain and gets caught.

It's OK To Not Be A Morning Person

In our family, the door leading from our house to the outside world is known as “The Magic Portal.”*

It got its name when our kids were small and getting out the door in the morning was a real bear. Everybody, parents included, would be dragging our feet, grumpy and cranky, possibly crying, but once we actually passed the threshold, we would be OK.

What’s up with that?

It isn’t just the kids. And it isn’t just a matter of packing lunches and laying out clothes the night before, the advice you see in articles aimed at parents about morning routines. Efficiency tips are great, but they don’t get to the crux of the matter, which is there is a psychological obstacle to leaving the house in the morning.

No, it isn’t just me. Just google “getting started in the morning.” Magazines ranging from Fitness and Women’s Health to Forbes and Inc. to Reader’s Digest  have tackled the subject.

I don’t have any better advice than what’s in those magazine articles. I just think it helps to recognize that it isn’t easy getting out the door in the morning and that’s normal. Also, once you do get going, things will seem better.

*Incidentally, when I googled “magic portal,” I discovered it’s the name of one of the first “brickfilm” movies ever made. Brickfilms are stop-action films made using Legos – and they have a whole culture and community built around them.  The LEGO Movie, made in 2014, contains an allusion to The Magic Portal.

And do you know why I now know this? Because I didn’t have to jump up and run out the door this morning. Just sayin’.

Where Do You Stand on Pajamas?

Plaid robe, check
striped flannel pants, check
patterned t-shirt, check
fuzzy socks with pom-poms, check

People have definite opinions.

Some take it as a sign of the end times that people now wear pajamas in public. Other people do wear them in public, like the woman I saw in my supermarket, wearing a union suit, hers fuzzy and with feet. (My thought: when you get through walking all over, you are never going to get those feet clean.)

I know someone who once told me she felt, if she went to the supermarket in sweatpants, that she should apologize to the people who have to see her that way. (Ah, no, in my opinion, the appropriate response here would be: “Yeah? What you looking at?”) But I also know someone who considers regular clothes a foreign and uncomfortable irritation in her life. She will, immediately upon arriving home, change into ratty clothes she would never go out in. (Too much work, in my opinion. Now you have to change every time you want to leave the house.)

I don’t go the supermarket in my pajamas. However, I do go in my gym clothes, which are pretty damn close.

I like to hang around in my pajamas in the morning. To have to get up and jump into clothes – and out the door, like the jogger I saw this morning huffing and puffing in the cold and the dark – is just wrong.

And while I realize you can buy fancy pajamas, all matchy-matchy, made of silk and whatnot, I like my motley collection of pajama pants and t-shirts. (And I don’t get “sexy” pajamas, or lingerie. How does dressing like a baby doll make you feel sexy and not, say, stupid?)

When I get up, I “layer” too, adding a robe, usually, my husband’s tartan-plaid one, and fuzzy slippers.

And life is good.

Empress Dowager Cixi

I picked up a book, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang, and I couldn't put it down.

I knew zip about Cixi, the last empress of China before the boy portrayed in the movie, The Last Emperor.

Controversy, apparently, swirls about her. She has long been described as having been ruthless and incompetent. Chang, using newly available historical documents, says Cixi's reputation was smeared because she was a woman.

It may be difficult to figure what Cixi did, since she had to rule through child emperors and even from behind a silk screen, to be invisible to men.

But if other historians vilified her more than was fair, Chang loves Cixi perhaps too much. She often appears to be making excuses for reprehensible behavior. She claims Cixi was humane, giving the example that, once, when she executed someone, she ordered, not “death by a thousand cuts,” which she did use on others, but by commanding the man to hang himself (by sending him a length of white silk, a message he obeyed). She also argues that while Cixi did have a eunuch throw a teenaged concubine down a well, she felt “contrite” about it afterwards. (OK, then?) At the end, Chang says Cixi's political killings "were no more than a few dozen."

BTW, eunuchs? Wow. And one father sends his daughter an empty food box, a message to starve herself, which she does.

Chang does convincingly quote many contemporaries, both European and Chinese, who were impressed by Cixi's leadership. They were also charmed by her sense of humor and thoughtfulness.

Maybe Cixi was both good and bad, both charming and ruthless. Which is fascinating, like when you meet someone with beautiful taste who’s nasty or learn the artist whose works touched you is actually a jerk.