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The Dark Side of McMinnvillains

Posted by on May 15, 2012 21 Comments

Living in McMinnville has made me feel like I’m stuck in an alternate universe where people don’t behave the way you expect them to, especially the adults.  Hippies aren’t hippies here (peace loving liberal people) they have M16s and 40 children and live on compounds so that they don’t have to be part of the rest of us.  Don’t be fooled by beardiness or hippie-style clothes.  Having tattoos doesn’t mean you’re a rebel soul up here.  In fact, having tattoos says exactly nothing up here except that you were bored and had enough money to get another tattoo.  Everyone has tattoos here!  Libertarians in California are all for smaller government and their approach isn’t particularly extreme but here in Oregon the Libertarians are a scary group of paranoid people who I’m pretty sure are all in need of anti-psychotic meds but would never get them because medication is part of the government complex BRINGING US ALL DOWN and besides,  seeing regular western doctors leaves a paper trail.

Finding people I understand and can really be myself around has been a huge challenge.  Then there’s the townspeople in general.  Shopping at Winco is like getting my weekly circus entertainment.  Everywhere I go I am reminded that the greatest danger of living in a small community is to let it make you smaller in the head and heart.

I am going to list some of the things people have said and/or done to me and things I have observed that I need to place on one big pyre of outrage to be burnt and my hope is that when I’m gone the stars of these stories* will learn to stop being so small in the heart and head.

Stories and anecdotes for the burn pile:

  • I was chatting with a bank teller and mentioned that I’d gone to San Diego last year for a conference.  She said wistfully that she’d never traveled but would like to some day.  I mentioned that my favorite recent trip had been to New York.  She told me she’d be scared to go to New York.  I asked her why.  She said “Because of all the diversity.”
  • I was working at a holiday fair a few years ago and naturally got into conversation with the people there.  One lady asked me about my relationship with Jesus so I told her I wasn’t religious because I was raised by wolves.  The next morning she comes up to me with a very concerned look on her face and says she’s been thinking about my comment that I was raised by wolves and hoped I didn’t mind her asking if I was Native American.  Erm-uh-????**  Once I disclosed that by “wolves” I really meant “hippies”*** she decided I wasn’t exempt from her proselytizing and proceeded to pound me over the head with her club full of Jesus.
  • I was getting my hair cut the other day and mentioned that one of the things I’m going to miss about this area are the u-pick farms because Sonoma County doesn’t have any.  She said “You’d think with all those Mexicans in the fields down there that there would be plenty of them.”
  • I was told this story by a man who knows I send my child to public school “When my kids and I would drive by the public school I would tell them that that’s where all the children go whose parents don’t love them.”  I wanted to punch him for that one but he could snap my neck like a twig so I stuffed my feelings as far down into my body as I could and will probably get stomach cancer because of it.
  • Remember the time I had a yelling match WITH A REAL LIVE YOUNG CHAUVINIST?  It was when we discovered that we were going to go bankrupt and we told our tenants that the house they were living in was going to be foreclosed on and they could stay as long as they wanted, rent free, until the bank actually took it.  And remember how the tenant was someone I considered a friend and her boyfriend called me up and asked to talk to the man of the house?  Cause I will never forget that horrible phone call.  That young man refused to talk with me, a woman, about my own business because I’m a woman and he didn’t feel comfortable talking business with a woman.  I lost my shit with him big time and my “friend” completely defended his behavior calling him “old fashioned”.  We ceased to be friends that day.  Maybe that’s rash of me but if being friends with someone means having to be exposed to such ass-holery then I won’t do it.  She married him and lived happily ever after and I’m happy for her because she’s a good person.  You know what’s stupid though?  That house took two years to foreclose.  Those two people could have lived in a nice house for two years without paying any rent.  Too bad they were too angry with us for being financially ruined and making them move to realize we were trying to give them something to make things easier for them.  There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
  • So recently I heard a young person mention an incident involving the night and a black person being stupid for doing something at night because his skin is so dark.  Apparently only white people can get away with doing stupid stuff at night.  Racism in young people is alive and well!
  • Here, just like on Fox News, being a democrat is the same as being a socialist.  I was called a socialist by a Libertarian welder.  While he was not complimenting me, I thank him for helping me to realize that the form of democracy I believe in really IS socialism.  The Nordic Model, as I’ve mentioned before.  And I DO take it as a compliment.
  • One time I lost “something”**** that belonged to a friend.  That friend called me up and yelled at me and was pretty much freaking the fuck out as though I’d actually stolen said “thing” and sold it to the pawn shop for a dollar.  I apologized harder than I’ve ever apologized before and explained that I didn’t mean to “lose” this “thing” of hers and pretty much didn’t even realize it was in my possession to lose in the first place.  She was having none of it.  She said “If  _______ doesn’t turn up I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at your face again!”  Said thing did turn up again but we happily demoted each other from “friend” to “acquaintance” status from that day forward.  I admit that I’m still hurt at her reaction to something that was a genuine mistake that righted itself.  It was, however, very revealing of her character.
  • But that just reminds me of the other friendship I lost because I was tired of having my choice to send my child to public school be bashed.  Yeah, this is a different home schooler than the one mentioned above.  This one called my son cruel for making one of her girls cry and even her husband said she was way off the mark by calling him “cruel” and admitted he’d made a lot of girls cry when he was a kid and it’s called “being a boy”.  That’s what he said to me though I doubt he said that to his own wife.  This is the home schooling friend who said that sending kids to public school is abusing them, and she also believes being gay is a sin because of the bible.  The writing was on the wall very early on but I was lonely and she liked homesteading activities like I do.
  • The fallout from the above story is that another mutual friend unfriended me in solidarity.  We have since remained chilly acquaintances.  That wasn’t exactly surprising and honestly I was going to unfriend her if she didn’t do it first because I had had enough of seeing her and other mutual acquaintances exclude me from their circles out loud and in my face.  I felt much better when it was clear that we were really definitely NOT friends.  Pretending takes way too much effort.
  • Then there was the quietly religious acquaintance who cheated on her husband and then, I guess because he forgave her, she became obnoxiously loudly religious peppering every conversation with “hallelujah”s and “Thank you Jesus”s and Jesus this and Jesus that and the lord does this and that and the other thing until you’re so fucking blue in the face you know you’re going to die and Jesus isn’t going to save you because he’s too busy trying to get people to stop thanking him every two fucking seconds for shit he didn’t do.  Amen.
  • Max had a friend for a little while whose mom was really his young grandma who had all her teeth removed and fake ones put in because I suppose it was easier than getting the rot fixed.  She is one of those leathery women who have lived and partied hard and looks it.  So one day she tells me her daughter (a drug addict who keeps sending her children to their grandma to raise) is in surgery and I told her I hoped the surgery would go well.  She says “Well, I trust in the lord because he’s the real surgeon.”  ????
  • So the owner of Third Street books doesn’t like me and said shit to a mutual friend about me.  Shit that makes no sense.  I’ve never done anything but support her bookstore and what she said makes it sound like I’m a very untrustworthy person.  What the hell did I ever do to her?  I knew she didn’t like me but until I heard that I didn’t realize she actually saw me as a bad person.  I have tried hard not to buy anything from her store since but there have been a couple of gift emergencies.
  • At the downtown grocery store (often referred to as the “health food store” for lack of a more appropriate title) I met a person who didn’t know what eggplants are.  I also met a person who didn’t recognize basil when she saw it.  The eggplants I can maybe understand if I really really tried to imagine a world where people never learn what an eggplant looks like but to not recognize basil is unimaginable.  It is one of the most ubiquitous herbs in use in the United States.
  • Got stuck in a scary rickety van once for over a half and hour listening to two very conservative republicans tell me all about how much they LOVE Rush Limbaugh and even wrote a limerick to him about how he needs to stop dating that liberal chick he was dating and apparently they managed to get Rush to read it on his show.  I’ve never been tempted to jump out of a moving vehicle in my life until that moment.  Instead I interrupted them to announce that I’m a liberal democrat because it seems they mistook me for one of their own.  The older one broke out in laughter and said “Oh yeah, we’ve got a couple of liberals in our family.”  Like we’re lepers or clowns or something.
  • It still amazes me that my own kid got bullied in grade school by Christian kids because he doesn’t believe in God.  Know how to convert an atheist to the ways of God?  I don’t know but I know you can’t do it by BULLYING.  And haven’t you heard of that guy named Jesus who was totally against violence and mean behaviors?
  • I was hanging out in the lobby of the Kung Fu school I went to for two years and had to listen to a conversation between my Kung Fu teacher and the mom of some kid attending the school.  She was talking about all those people out there with “depression” who are popping pills because they’re too lazy to get off their asses and get a little exercise and eat better food.  My kung fu teacher could not have agreed with her more and they went on to say how people don’t really have “depression” and dissed everyone taking pills.  He knows I am a mentally ill person who takes medication.  How are people here so thoughtless of those around them and so fucking self righteous and ignorant?  I eventually quit the school because I was tired of paying more money than I could afford to be continually insulted and bludgeoned over the head about my choice to send my kid to public school, the fact that I take medications so I WON’T KILL MYSELF, and hearing Obama and all of government accused of unremitting EVIL.  It was so unhealthy for me to be exposed to so much hate and bashing and I took Max out of the school too because he was having huge anxiety issues every day that he had to go to Kung Fu class.  The severity of those problems cleared up almost immediately when he stopped going.
  • One time I was riding my bicycle and some teens shouted “Sexy” derisively from their car.  I know I’m fat and pretty ugly these days but that was just mean.
  • I’d like to say the yelling has been from teens only and only once but the truth is that I have been yelled at from passing cars in this town whether I’m walking, riding my bicycle, or riding my scooter more times than I can count on my two hands and it has been from adults more than from teens.  WTFF?!  I guess you can’t teach your teens manners if you don’t have any yourself.  I haven’t been yelled at from passing cars since I was a death rocker teen.

What I want to know is how I can meet so many people in one small town who have so little respect for the feelings and beliefs of other people around them?  I disagree with so many people’s beliefs that I’ve met here but I have endeavored not to shit on their choices, to listen to what they have to say and consider it.  Even if you know you’re not going to change your mind – don’t other people deserve a little space to make their own choices about things and to disagree with you?  Yes, it can be hard to do, but never more so when that respect and space is not mutual.  Not everyone in McMinnville is this way, not everyone here has guns or is conservative or religious.  Not everyone here is mean or ignorant or racist.  But unfortunately I was not welcomed into the inner circles of the more liberal crowd.  I just didn’t fit in with anyone but the recluses and the outsiders and most of them moved away because THEY HATED IT HERE.

The few who have let me into their lives and LIKED me and wish I wasn’t moving are the only reason I stayed as long as I did and hoped endlessly to see the lighter side of McMinnvillains.  And to those few good friends I am deeply thankful because they made it possible for me to deal with all the above stories without going postal.  Those good friends here gave me a safe haven where I could be myself and not be bashed for it.

Now I have collected all the stories in one place that have been burning holes in my heart and head – let them burn to the ground and become something better.  I don’t know if I brought anything good to this town but I know that  living here in an environment that is so hostile to my beliefs has made me a better person in ways I didn’t know I needed to improve.  I was shown my own darker side and have been forced to address it.

How weak my religious tolerance was before I moved here!  It’s so easy to be open minded when your mind isn’t challenged to remain open by people who believe differently than you and are loud about it.  Now every time I am chafed by some religious person’s fervor and want to scream I remind myself how many religious people there are out there who are open minded enough to not care that I’m an atheist.

For every home schooling parent out there who thinks sending my child to public school is proof that I don’t love him enough there’s a home schooling parent who respects that our kids are all different and no educational choice is right for everyone.

I used to say I wasn’t much of a feminist.  I mean, I have never seen the world from the man-versus-woman perspective.  We’re in it together and I have been lucky enough to know mostly awesome men who see the women in their lives as equals and, where appropriate, partners.  Before I moved here I thought most chauvinism was only in the 50 year old and older crowd.  Encountering my first ever young chauvinist and being in a situation where I was refused as an equal I discovered, to my surprise, that I’m a raging feminist.  I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually had a screaming match with another adult.   I don’t scream at adults when I’m angry.  Unless they are refusing to discuss my own business with me because I’m a woman, apparently that wakes the beast.  I’m not proud that I screamed at this man but it did show me that I am as much of a feminist as I need to be depending on how I’m being treated.  And now that a whole set of politicians and their fans are attacking women’s rights all over again – I’ve never been more ready to fight this stupid shit.

Time to light a match to this pyre full of ugly.  Excuse me while I go look for some matches.

*If you recognize yourself in any of these stories and become flaming mad – I can’t help that.  I can’t undo your behaviors or change our interactions.  I can only go forward and to do that I have to let go and to let go I have to express my own anger and hurt.  If you need to “unfriend” me on facebook (if you haven’t already) I won’t mind at all.  That’s your dealio.  If you decide to retaliate by saying more mean and disrespectful shit about me to other people you will only be dirtying yourself.  Whatever you do, don’t bother talking to me personally about any of this because the time for that is past.  If I was mutually hurtful in our exchanges (as I definitely was in two instances for which I was genuinely ashamed of myself) I have already apologized to you for my unnecessary meanness.  Ask yourself this: have you apologized to me?  (Here’s a hint: the answer is NO.)  The end.

**Seriously?  I couldn’t look more white even if I wanted to.  Someone maybe needs stronger glasses?

***The real kind, not the fake Oregon kind.

****The details are being smudged in hopes that I don’t start a war with this story.  But it really hurt me and bothered me so much I had to put it on the fire with the rest of these stories.

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Currently on my mind: quackgrass, packing, and the word “scrotum”

Posted by on May 10, 2012 2 Comments

I am overwhelmed.  Philip moves to California on Sunday.  Without us.  I will be single parenting for almost two months.  He’s taking a truck so he can move some of our stuff down and take all the things he’ll need to be living a bachelor life for two months.  So I’m trying to organize all that and my head is buzzing.

Next Monday he has a job interview with a company he really wants to work for that’s located in Petaluma.  If he were to get it he would have an easy commute and have benefits and also get paid considerably more than he is now.  BENEFITS!  He was told that dependents are not covered 100%.  Who cares?  The main thing is that if we get insurance through a job we can’t be pre-screened and refused coverage.  Please send him good thoughts on Monday.

Max was sick for 10 days.  Really sick.  So sick he missed a whole week of school.  And exhausted his mother.  Now he just has a lingering cough but is otherwise recovered.

I’m amazed at his resiliency in some areas and rigidity in others.  His food issues remain challenging and you’d think a person who can stubbornly cling to resentment over things like the doctor who told him the nose cauterization wouldn’t hurt – three years later and he’s still steaming mad any time the subject comes up.  When we told him we were moving he was angry with us.  We were out to dinner and I told him before we got our food.  He lost his appetite for the rest of the evening.  But by the next day he wasn’t angry any more.  I asked him and he said “I’m not happy about moving but I’m not mad any more.”  Just like that, he let go.  He doesn’t want to move because he likes it here and naturally doesn’t want to leave his friends.  But he really only has three friends and he rarely hangs out with any of them any more.  He admitted that this is true.

Mostly he doesn’t want to move because he hates sunshine and warm weather like I do.  He likes the cooler climate of Oregon.  He likes rain.  And snow.  And cold weather.  Getting used to the weather in Santa Rosa will be a shared challenge between him and I.  We will buy really big fans.

I need to do some more packing for Philip.  I also need to go to the store to buy him clothes for his interview.  He’ll need them for other interviews too.

There is exactly one good thing about Philip being gone from us: I get the bed to myself.  But after a while the excitement of getting to spread out and not have someone sleeping in the MIDDLE of the bed will wear off.

My garden is completely covered in super tall quack grass.  I keep worrying about the yard because I have no time to do anything for it and no money to spend on someone else doing things like mowing it and cutting down blackberries and I know the city will come and give us a citation when we’re gone and all that grass gets taller.  I know my neighbors already hate me.  Plus, I feel bad for the house.  Who knows how long it will take this house to foreclose – the other one took TWO YEARS.  Finally it has passed out of purgatory into new hands.  Which is a relief.

I’m really worried about the yard.  I guess I’ll see if I can pay some landscaping company to mow and whack some things back in a quick and hacking way just to keep it under control.  I don’t know.

I just know that I keep concentrating my worries on the wild yard.

Time to get my act together.  It’s time to concentrate on what needs to be done now.  Like, right now.

Plus, I can’t get the word “scrotum” out of my head and I’m not even sure how it got there.

SCROTUM.

Enjoy your Thursday!

 

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10 Things I Love About Yamhill County

Posted by on May 8, 2012 5 Comments

Poor Max.  He can’t take his parents anywhere without them taking pictures of things like the ground.  Easter afternoon, Grand Island.

I’m feeling charitable this morning in spite of not having had any alcohol in six days and not sleeping much.  I would like to take this moment to list the things I have actually loved about living in Yamhill County.  These are the things that have actually gotten me through all the dark times here in McMinnville.

  1. The weather.  Yes!  I love the cooler wet climate here.  It is my number one favorite thing about Yamhill County and all of Oregon.  It’s not good for me in that it keeps me from getting outside as much as I need to for exercise (I loathe squishy wet shoes) but it’s very good for me emotionally.  4 out of 6 summers here were almost comfortable-ish.  I love that it does sometimes snow and I love the frequent long string of drizzly days.
  2. The sound of snow tires on the road.  A symbol of the possibility of snow.  It also amuses me because people here apparently don’t know about tire chains.  They trust in snow tires and then when it really does snow they still go sliding and crawling down the road like frightened kittens trying to get across a frozen lake.  Such a happy distinctive sound they make.
  3. The u-pick farms.  They are such a boon to canners.  Sonoma County doesn’t have many/any.  There are many n Yamhill County and the Willamette Valley and I’m not the only one who picks at them.  I absolutely love that so many people do tons of preserving and that they use the local farms as their main resource.  I also love that the u-pick prices are so affordable.  Picking food at farms and canning has been one of my favorite Oregon adventures.
  4. The peonies.  Peonies do not reliably come back every year in California.  But in northern Oregon they are reliable, huge, and breathtaking!  I have three favorites: Festiva Maxima, Sarah Bernhardt, and that deep fuscia one we had at our first house whose name I never discovered.
  5. The berries.  Especially the blueberries.  I’ve never had such delicious and cheap blueberries in my life!  The strawberries are amazing too (yes, better than Californian ones) and I love how much easier they are to grow (for me).  The blackberries!  All the berries that grow in the Willamette Valley deserve exclamation points.
  6. The foraging.  Elderberries and nettles are abundant in the woods and I don’t know where to find them in CA.  That will be a fresh adventure.  The Oregon woods are so beautiful and smell amazing.  Foraging is one of my favorite ways to enjoy it.
  7. Lilacs.  Lilacs don’t do as well in CA but they thrive here and are widely planted and make a huge show of themselves in early spring.  It’s wonderful to smell them in the air on sunny spring days and they brighten up the landscape on grey ones.  I love them all.  As long as they have fragrance, I love them.
  8. The frogs in my yard!!  I am going to miss that wonderful loud society of frogs that have settled and multiplied in my tiny creepy pond and who are so funny and charming and drown out human voices with their volume.  Pacific tree frogs.
  9. Piontek bread.  Best sandwich bread I’ve ever had in my life.  Even better than I’ve ever been able to make myself.  (Sandwich bread is, for me, kind of tricky)  All other bread is inferior to home made but this one.  No preservatives.  No crap.  It’s the only bread Max likes.  Whole wheat.  Perfect size.  Perfect texture.  Perfect sandwich bread.
  10. Cauliflowers and cabbages the size of my head.

Now that I look at the list I can see that most of what I like about Yamhill County is the weather, the flora, and the fauna.

What I keep wanting to say is that the best thing about Yamhill County is Portland.*

*Not in Yamhill County.

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Unsolicited Advice: put the little zealot back in your pants

Posted by on May 6, 2012 2 Comments

I have a quality about me that brings the zealots out to play.  It seems that my innate curiosity about the world, my open way of asking questions (50% of which are rhetorical) inspires “teachable moments” in evangelists of all kinds of faiths, diets, lifestyles, and medical alternatives.  This is especially true of my facebook interactions.*  I realize that many people on facebook have never met me in person or spent any time reading my blogs which might provide more clarity about who I am and how I communicate.  I’m not perfect, but I AM PREDICTABLE.

How to have pleasurable conversations with Angelina (and other people trying not to take everything too seriously):

If it is possible to insert levity in a serious discussion, I will do it.

I am pretty skilled at reading the subtext in conversations so there’s a good chance I know what you DIDN’T say.  Also, if I know you pretty well, I can fill in a lot of blanks from our personal history of conversations on any given comment.  You should be able to do the same with me.

No topic is so sacred that I won’t joke about it.

I have a lot of friends who are more clever than I am and I often don’t get their jokes.  But I do try because when I don’t get them I end up doing to them what people do to me – taking them up as though they were being completely serious.  So, clever friends, I’m working on learning when you’re telling really smart jokes so I stop making a fool of myself.

I’m a writer, I use colorful language and artful exaggerations to make my point

My attempts to avoid confrontation sometimes make things more difficult. In an effort to be polite I avoid saying things like “you are stressing me out with your comments” or “I already know your extremely extreme views on this subject and my ears will bleed if I have to hear you lecture me about it any more”.  But my tactics for avoiding confrontation haven’t been effective.  So I may be adopting a new confrontation avoidance method in which I respond to comments that make me uncomfortable by saying “Thank you for your thoughts on this.” which acknowledges a comment but allows me to not divulge the fact that someone is pissing me off or hurting my feelings or ignoring what they should already know about me but are too bone-headed to accept.  Coming soon to a discussion on home schooling near you!

Sometimes I’m an asshole when people push my buttons.  It’s a quality I don’t love about myself and am always working on.  If you feel I’ve just been an asshole to you and don’t understand what you did to bring it on, you probably pushed my buttons.

Put the little zealot back in your pants

Examine your conscience before you comment.  Are you tempted to comment only because you want to do battle with my viewpoints?  Are you open-minded enough to have an actual discussion about this viewpoint you want to challenge?  Are you willing to have your own viewpoints challenged?  More to the point: are you willing to change your viewpoints?  If not, take a Quaalude and chill the hell out**.  If you aren’t willing to have your mind changed by my perspective, then don’t try to change mine with yours.

Everyone exaggerates for effect, even if they don’t admit it

So if I don’t want you shoving your agenda into my conversations, why the hell bother to have conversations in the first place?  Conversations are a way we get to know each other and share our stories.  Sharing stories isn’t about trying to convert people to your groovy new lifestyle doing Tai Chi in the snow in your underwear, it’s about sharing that you’re mad enough to stand around for three hours in the snow doing Tai Chi in your skivvies.  The trick is to share your experience with zero agenda to convince others to do it.  It’s seriously about your intention.

So what if I mention that I have a rash and I can’t figure out what it is or how to treat it and I sound like I’m asking for input?  Fair enough.  I do that all the time and I do actually appreciate people’s input.  Mostly I’m interested to know if you have personally experienced such a thing yourself and what you did about it and how that worked out.  But if you know me at all then you should know that suggesting treatments that include changing my whole diet or lifestyle pushes my buttons.  If that actually worked for you personally, tell me your story.  But don’t tell me it works for everyone because you can’t possibly know that and most people into huge diet changes for health want to share “studies” or “reports” that are easily countered with other “studies” and “reports” that completely contradict them, and they want you to take everything they have to say as gospel.  Just knock it off.  I’m not a gullible idiot.  I want to hear your personal experience, don’t evangelize.

Goldenseal makes me burp for a minimum of 12 hours

I am much more likely to take the uneducated**** medical advice of a person who is equally open to both modern “western” medicine and naturopathic medicine than from someone who is strictly on one side or another.  If I happen to already know that you will only treat illness with herbs or acupuncture, then it will seriously push my button when you tell me that I just need to change my whole diet and take a shitload of wacky expensive supplements for the rest of my life.  Sometimes it’s not about your damn diet.  Likewise, if you’re a person who I know thinks all natural medicine is bogus and always suggest I should go for the surgery or go for the pills without exploration into all options, you will annoy the crap out of me and I won’t listen to anything you have to say on the topic.

I’ll take my Jesus with a side of salt

It’s the same with religion.  I am much more likely to actually hear what open minded Christians have to say than I am to really listen to those Christians who are against women’s and gay rights or who think being Muslim automatically makes you a terrorist.  The same goes for any other spiritual belief system.  If you hate atheists or those who don’t have religion I will smell it on you even if you don’t declare yourself and I will not be able to get past your hate to hear what you have to say.  I actually don’t think I’m very different from most people in this way.

This also applies to politics, education, lifestyle, gender, and virtually every topic you can come up with.  I can’t hear people above their agendas.  Can you?

Here’s a summary of everything I’ve said above:

The more you try to convince me of your extreme views the less open I am to hearing them.

Let’s both keep zealotry out of our casual conversations, okay?

 

*Want to join me on facebook?  Please do, but only after you read this post.  Okay?  Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/angelinawrites

**See that?  That was levity.  I wouldn’t seriously want you to take a Quaalude because that’s so last century.***

***I did it again!  I actually meant I wouldn’t want you to take a Quaalude because I wouldn’t ever actually suggest anyone take drugs.  But you should have already known that.

****Meaning you aren’t a trained professional doctor.

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Being Anti-firearms in a Mostly Pro-firearms County

Posted by on May 4, 2012 4 Comments

I think firearms and explosives are the worst things the human race has ever invented and the use of them is cowardly.  If you must kill another human being you should have to look them in the face when you do it: up close and personal.  You can, of course, kill people at close range with handguns, but generally speaking the point of guns is to put as much distance between yourself and your “opponent” as possible while still being able to inflict fatal damage.  That is what firearms were invented for.  They have one single purpose in their design and that’s TO KILL LIVING BEINGS.  It is most likely that if you kill someone at close range with a gun, the other person was not armed or you have disarmed them, in which case, you have killed an unarmed person which I think is wrong.

Before moving to Yamhill County the only two people I’ve ever been aware of having guns is my father in law (who I believe inherited them from his deceased brother) and a former friend who is mentally ill, unstable, and paranoid.  The only gun I’d ever seen in person was the one belonging to the former friend who shouldn’t have been allowed to have one in the first place (and for the life of me I can’t recall if hers was registered or not).  I liked that most people I knew didn’t have guns and those who had them never flaunted them, discussed them, or wore them on their person.

I hate firearms and though I’ve never voted for any legislation to remove the rights of people to own them, I am ashamed of the gun culture in my country.

After having lived in Yamhill County for six years I have seen a lot of guns, heard about a lot more guns than I saw, and I have even gone shooting twice myself.  In previous posts about this I have said that shooting is fun.  And it is.  There is something satisfying about hitting a target whether it’s with a bullet, an arrow, a rock, a fist, or a foot.  There’s no denying that being able to hit a target well with any weapon is fun.  I was glad to have the opportunity to handle some guns and shoot them for the sake of my writing.  I know what it feels like to discharge a 12 gauge shotgun with buckshot.  I know what it feels like to shoot a semi-automatic .22 handgun.  I know what it feels like to shoot an old fashioned 38 six shooter.  I know what handguns and rifles feel like to hold and I know something about how they work now.

There is a seemingly common belief amongst firearm owners that if you become educated about them, if you learn to use them, and learn enough statistics about them that you will respect them and not fear them or be against them.

This is not true, at least for me.  After six years of being literally surrounded by gun owners who are very vocal and proud of their firearm collections and prowess, I can say that I despise guns now more than I ever did before.

I once heard a story told by someone who, in the process of getting a certified for some wilderness job, shot a bear.  The bear, it seems, was brought out on a lead and then let “loose” and this person was very proud that she killed the bear (maybe with one shot?).  Her enthusiasm for killing a bear disgusted me.  The fact that she was not actually in any real danger, she didn’t even have to go looking for one, it was just brought out for her to kill – it made me ashamed of humankind.

But I suppose the main point for me is that the bear was killed just to certify that a human can hit a target.  Fuck that shit.  You can prove that on a range.  That was not valor.   That was not skill.  It was just killing.

I think the most horrifying thing to me is that many of the people who own firearms around here do not just own a handgun for protection, they own military grade rifles, both semi-and fully automatic.  Most of them don’t own just one.  It’s a “hobby” to collect them.  But most of the people I’ve met who own such weapons are extremely paranoid about the power of the government to take away their freedoms and this is obviously a way they are making themselves feel protected.  They want to make sure that if the government comes to get them they’ll be ready for full scale war.  While they’re scared of the government – I am more scared of them.  There is a very thin line between reasonable protection of self and making yourself into a military unit as a family.

That expectation of violence is what really truly gets under my skin.  It’s the whole arms race on a small scale.  It’s a never-ending escalation of fear of and expectation of and MUTUAL THREAT of violence.

They have a nuclear bomb so we need one.  They have two nuclear bombs so we need three.  They have a hundred thousand heat missiles, we need eight hundred thousand.  It doesn’t end.  My neighbor has a handgun so I’m going to get a bigger one.  My neighbor has an M16, so I need to get an AK47 or three.

When I went to pick up my laptop from the place that fixed it I got into a conversation with one of the tech guys about the book I wrote and then about how I learned to shoot so that I could write more realistically about it.  I mentioned how I’d never known so many gun-fanatics before moving to Yamhill County.  This guy, who’s supposed to be a tech nerd, whips out his phone and shows me a picture of himself holding his two macho M16s across his chest like a gangsta and he’s clearly proud of his weapons which obviously make him feel like a tough guy.

It was disappointing.  Yet another person in this county with a cultish love of firearms.  And yes, turns out he’s got paranoia issues too.  There are, of course, quite a few people here who don’t own guns, but they don’t make up for the ones that do as far as peace of mind goes.

Peace.  Quite a few of the firearm owners here claim to believe in “peace” and say they only own the weapons for “protection”.

Here’s something I’ve learned about owning firearms: you don’t own them unless you fully have the willingness to use them.*  Guns are made for one purpose only – to kill things.  Having one requires a will to kill.  Except in the case of people who only have guns specifically made for hunting game and who actually use them for hunting game, nearly everyone who owns firearms has a willingness to kill humans.

Those people who are constantly bringing up the untrustworthy evil government complex whose only purpose is to destroy our way of life believe that the only way to fight an oppressive government is to arm themselves for an uprising.  They believe this is the only way and they will argue you endlessly over their rights to arm themselves.

But I have never argued a person’s right to arm themselves.  Your right to collect as many automatic weapons as you like is not what I’m actually arguing.

I’m arguing that just because you have a right to have an arsenal in your basement doesn’t mean you should or that you need to.  The fact that you do makes you way scarier to me than the government and it also makes you just like them.

Gandhi brought down a nation of oppressors with no violence.  That is true bravery.  He never used a gun.  He never raised a goddamn stick.  People got hurt, of course.  Freedom, as the gunslingers love to say, isn’t free, but it also doesn’t have to be won by shedding your oppressor’s blood.  A willingness (and worse – a desire) to shed the blood of people oppressing you or doing you harm is ignoble.  Maybe human, but not a quality of humanity to be admired or emulated.  A willingness to fight for freedom without violence is true honor.  Gandhi was a man who truly believed in non-violence and lived what he preached.

Then he was killed by a resentful man with a gun.

A person with firearms only believes in peace until it no longer suits them.

I believe in peace, period.

I have thought about my belief in non-violence with regards to self defense and I’m not certain where I draw the line.  I know I don’t believe in killing, period.  PERIOD.  Disabling an attacker, yes.  Getting away, yes.  Disarming, yes.

Living in Yamhill County has strengthened my resolve not to allow firearms in my house under any circumstances.  I have allowed air-soft guns for fun because they can barely do any more damage than sting your skin or hurt your eye (which is why we use eye protection when playing with them).  That’s all I’ll allow.

I will encourage my kid to learn to shoot at a shooting range so that he can be familiar with how guns work, what they feel like to shoot, and so that they are not a forbidden mystery to him.  If he wants to have guns in his own home when he grows up, that’s his choice.  If he wants to own a gun while still living at home so he can routinely shoot at a range he will have to store it in a locker off of my property.

I will go a step further than that – I won’t allow any guests to bring their firearms into my house either.  If you carry, you can leave it in your car.  If you can’t come into my house without the protection of a gun then I don’t want you in my house.  We are on equal footing here.  We are peaceful.  We live with the unwillingness to kill in this house and if you can’t walk into my house with that same faith and good will and trust that we aren’t going to hurt you, then you don’t belong here.

Do I think people who own guns are bad?  No.  I’ve met many really good people who own them.  I love my father in law and he owns a few.  I’ve met people who own firearms whose company I enjoy and who I am able to respect in many ways.  Hating firearms is not the same as hating the people who love them and carry them and use them.

I would like to un-invent all firearms and explosives, but sadly I am not even capable of un-inventing meat glue.  So instead I will simply live my life making choices that support my principles and ideals and hope I don’t get shot.

Please note:

I am not offering this post up as a challenge to engage in debate or rage-ful arguments over firearm ownership or rights.  While here in gun country I have listened to what the gun owners have had to say about why they carry with an open mind and I’ve heard all their arguments about why the right to bear arms is so important and I have NOT poured hate or anger or dissidence on them.  I have done what I could to learn from them and consider their viewpoints.  I have not insulted them for their choices nor shoved my own beliefs into their faces or aired my differing beliefs into their homes when I’ve been invited kindly into them.  I am sharing my experiences and thoughts here on my own personal blog and you may comment as you like but if anyone gets disrespectful or mean IN WHAT IS MY ONLINE HOME I will either delete your comments or I will leave it for others but simply  not respond, as I see fit.  My  mind will not change with regards to firearms so if you are a fan of them and feel strongly about your right to have them and use them and are seeking to change other people’s minds about them – please direct your attention to people who have not yet made up their minds.  Thank you in advance for your respect and consideration for my right to not bear arms and my right to wish everyone else would choose not to with me.

*I suppose the only exception to this is inheriting them and being too lazy to get rid of them.

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The Truth About Our Retail Store

Posted by on May 3, 2012 4 Comments

I think a lot of people believe our retail shop closed because we failed to make it thrive.  The real reason we closed the store was because we got to a point where we either needed to put a lot more cash into it or we needed to close it.  We had a lot of equity in our home.  We could have refinanced and pulled plenty out to keep the store going long enough to reach the profit zone.  We could have done it but we didn’t because after a year of running a retail business we were exhausted and realized that’s not what we wanted for our life.  We didn’t enjoy running a retail store.  Our son was really angry with us all the time because of how much energy the store took from him.  From morning to night all we talked about was the store or we were working in the store or making things for the store or trying to market the store.  Even when we were supposed to be paying attention to Max we’d be talking over his head about the store.  Owning a retail store was unhealthy for our family life.

I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to discover how much I dislike owning and running a retail store, something I could never have done in California because it’s so cost prohibitive there.  I might never have had this opportunity if I hadn’t moved to McMinnville.  What satisfies me is knowing that, while I don’t want to be a store owner, at the time we closed our store we were seeing increases in sales every single month.  That’s a healthy sign for a new business.  So I have the satisfaction of knowing that if it had turned out to be my real dream in life, I could have made a success of it.

But there’s nothing like the appearance of failure to find out who your real friends are, to find out who actually gives a shit about you.  Other store owners were very friendly with us and mostly helpful and supportive while we owned a store too and once our shop was closed so was the inclusiveness and only those people who were forced to remain connected to us through other people remained friendly with us on a personal level.

The top 5 things I loved about running a retail shop:

  • Buying and dressing BBQ Bob and BBQ Sue, the store mannequins.
  • Setting the store up and learning to dress my store windows.
  • Getting to know people in town.
  • Going to trade shows in Seattle.
  • Designing my own products for the store.

The top 5 things I hated about running a retail shop:

  • The goddamn ridiculous politics.  The often petty, rudely competitive, and passive aggressive nature of store owners on Third street.*
  • The pressure to be part of the goddamn ridiculous politics of the Downtown Association and the chamber of commerce that never actually did my business any real favors.**
  • The pretend friendliness of people who imply they’re doing you great favors by giving you confidences that stab their other supposed friends in the backs and, not being stupid, knowing they’re doing the same to you.***
  • The goddamn bookkeeping.
  • The never ending work day into night.

I am grateful for the chance to have checked this dream off my list and if you think this is your dream I present you with some unsolicited advice:

  • Have a business plan with a realistic amount of money to back you up.  Depending on where you live you’ll most likely need upwards of a hundred thousand dollars to start.
  • Be prepared for stupid politics with other business owners and associations and if you don’t like the thought of that, be prepared to be an openly disliked dissident to the establishment.
  • Don’t underestimate the importance of a good location.  It’s worth the blood sucking cost.
  • Be prepared to be all things all the time every day and every hour unless you happen to be starting off with so much investment money you can hire others to do your bidding from the beginning.
  • Don’t be both manufacturer and store owner.  Pick one.  Having to work your store all day and sew and design long into the night is incompatible with the rest of your life.

*This will be almost universally denied by everyone on Third Street and I’m sure it will not be appreciated that I’ve said this.  Not acknowledging the reality doesn’t make it untrue.

**There was one notable business downtown who absolutely refused to participate with the Downtown Association or the Chamber of Commerce, they were not well liked for that.  In hindsight, I wish I’d followed their singular lead.

***I will never name names, and what’s the point?  Everyone down there is saying shit about everyone else down there.  And in an atmosphere like that you know that you’re having shit said about you too.  It was way worse than high school.

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The Real Reason We Left California

Posted by on May 1, 2012 8 Comments

This is MY house for always.  I know the deed says otherwise but it knows it and I know it even if the people living there don’t know it.  We restored it and loved it and made it better and painted it PINK.

My mother thinks we moved to Oregon because Philip couldn’t find work in California.  I don’t think she’s alone in that misconception.  I think quite a few people have come to believe we had to leave, that we had no choice, that we were broke and jobless and were seeking greener pastures.  Only one of those things is true.  Oregon really does have greener pastures than California and we thought it might be nice to live near them.

It’s true that the reason we had to sell our house is because Philip couldn’t find a job that paid enough soon enough to be able to keep it.  We refinanced our house after he lost his job so we could buy ourselves time but ultimately it was like chopping our feet off right before running a marathon.  Maybe things would have been different if I could have been looking for work too but I broke my hip two days after Philip was laid off.  And then right as we knew we were going to have to sell our house, Philip spectacularly broke his arm in such a way that he required surgery and a collection of titanium pins to put it back together.

This is all really old news.  What is apparently not well understood is that we sold our house at a really nice profit.  We cleared about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  It wasn’t quite enough to buy another house in our neighborhood (at least, not while we had no employment) but we could easily have afforded to rent a house for quite some time while Philip looked for work and there was never a doubt in my mind that he would eventually have found another good job.  We didn’t have to leave.  We could afford to stay until we straightened ourselves out.

So we came to Oregon with $150,000, completely solvent, and with A+ credit, and a whole lot of hope and the spirit of adventure.

We’re leaving Oregon bankrupt (though solvent), with two foreclosed homes behind us*, and destroyed credit, hope, and health.

So the real reason we left is because we were feeling bitter about things like not being able to get any health insurance in California and that whole Cobra scam is so expensive you practically have to be royalty to afford it.  We left because I couldn’t bear the thought of watching other people live in MY house.  I wouldn’t want to have lived in any other neighborhood in Santa Rosa, I loved where we were.  Throughout the years I had toyed with the idea of us eventually moving to a large piece of property where I could really get into homesteading.  I had toyed with the thought of moving to a small town.  Because that’s what I do.  I constantly think ahead and wonder how things might be in different scenarios but the truth is that I was wonderfully happy in my pink stucco Tudor style house.  I loved my garden full of roses and espaliered fruit trees.  I loved my gorgeous windows through which the sycamore trees looked magical in winter.  I loved my neighborhood full of walnut trees and gardens and people I enjoyed spending time with and I felt I belonged there.  I may have thought I wanted property eventually in an abstract way but I was not ready to let that house go when I had to let it go.  I don’t think I ever would have been ready to let it go.  I will always think of it as mine.  I don’t care that technically other people own it and live there.  It’s my house.

Philip decided that if we had to make such a big change as move from the house we loved he would rather make a really huge move and do something completely different and because I had always daydreamed about returning to Oregon before we settled in the J.C. neighborhood, he suggested we consider moving to Oregon.  And that felt like the better choice.  Housing prices were lower in Oregon so we could actually afford to buy a house there.  It felt like California was rejecting us, chewing us up and spitting us out, each time trying to push us farther and farther away.  So we took the cue and planned our bittersweet exit.

We were Portland bound.  We even put an offer on a house there.  If we had stayed with our original plan I don’t think we’d be moving back to California now.  It was the curious question of a friend that veered us off course into the wilds.  She asked me “Why are you moving to another city?  Aren’t you always talking about wanting property or to move to a small town?  Why don’t you look at some of the small towns outside of Portland like Oregon City?”  She was right, of course, I had toyed with these ideas for a long time.  I had such fond memories of living in Ashland (Oregon) as a kid and was angry for a long time after my parents forced me to move back to California.  So I stopped focusing on Portland and instead did a bunch of online research about the small towns within what we naively considered “commuting distance”.

I didn’t have much time to figure out where we were going.  I didn’t want to rent a place first and then look for a house to buy.  I hate moving and just wanted to find the place to move to and be done with moving.  In hindsight I can see that this was stupid.  Finding a house to buy is something you should take your time with.  Finding a community to move to is something you should also take your time with.  Looks can be deceiving.  Communities can hide their true nature under a very different public face.  But I rushed and consequently, we paid.

I found McMinnville.

*The two foreclosures are related to each other – they are not two separate bad financial mistakes.  I just feel the need to point that out.  They were both covered by our bankruptcy because we owned them at the same time and it was not being able to sell the one because of the market crashing that CAUSED us to go bankrupt and losing the house we are living in was almost a certainty from the start of that whole financial falling out.

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The Long Road Home

Posted by on April 30, 2012 15 Comments

After six years of trying to settle in a strange and hostile territory, I’m going home.

At the beginning of July we are moving back to California.  The irony of making this decision right after (finally) getting our application for the HAMP loan modification approved does not escape my notice.  We made this decision two months ago and I hope that any of you that ever doubted my ability to keep my own secrets will doubt no more.  The timing was wrong to make such announcements but today I am finally able to set the truth (mostly) free.  I am deeply relieved that we will be leaving this community and heading back to one I feel welcome in, feel comfortable in, and understand.

If any of you were under the impression that I’ve been happy here that’s because I have worked hard to BE happy here.  I have continually tried to see the good in this weird town I managed to land us in.  Every time I have been disappointed or hurt I have worked hard to see the lessons, to find the truths, to make peace with the feeling that I will be trapped here for all eternity.  I have repressed so much of what I’ve felt.  When friendships have ended over issues I couldn’t believe were issues I have chosen to look to myself and work on my own tolerance issues instead of focusing on their intolerance.  I have chosen to counter the bad with the positive and to stuff my uncomfortable feelings far out of anyone’s reach.  Mostly because I didn’t think we could ever afford to leave and if you are trapped somewhere (anywhere) you either have to find a way to leave and not give up until you do OR you have to make the best of where you are.  I chose to make the best of my situation and repress my desire to get out of this hole.

But repressed feelings have a way of working themselves to the surface, worming a way into the light.  It’s a full time job to convince yourself that you can survive in a community that doesn’t embrace you and that, in the end, you can’t embrace either.

I hate it here.  I hate this town.  I’ve been slowly suffocating.  I have been so lonely, watching others publicly inviting everyone around me to participate in their private lives while leaving me out.  I’ve been trying to think how best to explain this and I don’t know – I can’t figure out how to make anyone understand that this is not a friendly town beneath the surface of things.  There are invisible fences around everyone.  People are artificially friendly.  I’ve been referred to as “family” by someone who has never once, and never will, invite me into his home.  If that’s how you treat family how the fuck do you treat your friends?  I once was trying to explain my experience of McMinnville to the girl at the video rental place (who grew up here) who was really surprised that I called this town unfriendly.  Another customer interrupted our conversation to say that she came here from Humboldt County and definitely thought McMinnville is an unfriendly town.

People are cliquish here.  This town is like one enormous high school.  While many incomers I’ve met have felt the same way as I do about it, there are definitely some who have had a totally different experience – they had the fortune of finding a clique that they were welcomed into.

In spite of it all I don’t believe it was a mistake for us to move here in the first place.  I believe our story would have been very different if we’d landed in Portland as originally intended and I think it’s a real possibility that I would not be returning home to California if we had.  But if we’d moved to Portland a lot of important things wouldn’t have happened and I can’t regret what I’ve learned from living in a community in which I don’t belong, in which I feel so far out of my comfort zone that I learned things about myself I couldn’t have learned otherwise, like how much less tolerant of religion and religious people I am when I’m the minority atheist in town.  I can’t regret the isolation that forced me to reach out online to find like minded people to create a community that have sustained me through hell and back even though I’ve met so few of you in person.  I can’t regret the few really close friends I have made here and though they have all either moved back to where they came from or are complete recluses, I can never wish the past six years didn’t happen because I treasure what warmth and love they have given me and I certainly would not have lasted a year here if it weren’t for them.

I have so much to say.  I have so many things I have to try to find the semi-politic way to say without compromising the truth.  I rarely look back at old posts of mine unless someone posts a fresh comment on them or unless someone brings one up specifically.  (Maybe once in a while I go through them late at night in a maudlin mood after a few beers.)  I will need to write a lot of posts to unload the tumor of emotion and thought that’s been amassing in the throat of my intention.  I am sure I will cover plenty of old territory, it’s inevitable.  I’m not going to go back and check to see if I’ve already said this or that.  If I need to say it today then it wasn’t enough to say it yesterday or five years ago.  I’m not going to apologize for telling old stories because my perspective has changed with my decision to return home.  Consider yourself warned and please don’t read anything you might find tedious.

Consider this my McMinnville debriefing period.  Before I can return home to Santa Rosa I have to be grilled by my conscience, by my heart, and by my memory to be sure I am truly ready to rejoin civilization.  It will be like Lucas being debriefed on MI-5 when he returns from a Russian prison but without all the torture, blood, and sweat.

 

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The Frustration of Having an Invisible Illness

Posted by on April 24, 2012 6 Comments

I think the hardest part of parenting a special needs kid is negotiating between him and the rest of the world.  Which mostly means between him and whatever school he’s going to and whoever he is tangling with or having trouble with or pissing off or frustrating or wearing down.  I sometimes wonder if it would all be easier if his issues were visible.  Like if his anxiety manifested itself in more obvious ways such as hiding under tables all day or if his issues were physical, like if he was in a wheelchair.  Mental disorders and illnesses that don’t present themselves in any physical way are invisible except in the form of behaviors and it’s very difficult to be patient with someone who has impulse control issues who lashes out at you verbally who looks 100% bona-fide normal.  The constant urge is to have normal expectations of that person.  Which means you won’t take that shit from them and you lash back and punish and consequently make a tough situation untenable because you are NOT dealing with an averagely functioning brain and nervous system.

In spite of the fact that Max is going to a school supposedly super experienced and prepared to educate kids like him, they seem to be having plenty of problems with him and him with them.  It’s been MUCH better at this school than at the last one but I’m surprised at how often the teachers behave almost as stubbornly as Max himself does.  I’m surprised how often their way of dealing with him is obviously the worst way to deal with him.  Flexibility is absolutely key with getting the best out of Max (and I would have thought ANY child, but adults love to be rigid and with most kids I suppose it’s relatively effective).  Giving Max choices in every possible situation works much better than simply laying down the law and telling him he will obey.

That’s like waving your red cape dramatically in front of an agitated bull.

I’m frustrated and tired of it always being such an uphill climb negotiating between Max and the world.  Here at home things are pretty simple.  I know how to navigate the difficult moments and smooth over the frustrations we all have.  I know how to end a tough day on a good note.  I know how to reward Max for his awesomeness and talk to him calmly about his less than stellar behaviors.  I know how to avoid giving him the chance to dig his stubborn feet in over things.  Flexibility is king.  That’s also the main reason I’m still happily married after 19 years – flexibility is everything.

Last week Max had to watch “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” in school and it was horribly disturbing to him.  It made his stomach upset (his anxiety messes with his stomach just as it does with mine) and he came home early. He was depressed and also full of rage that he had to sit through a movie and then see the main character die.  It didn’t help that that same morning he heard a horrible story from another student about how his two cats were killed, one of them dismembered.  It was a bad day.  Anyway, I was shocked that such a movie (one that I myself had determined not to watch) was shown to sixth graders.  I did the only thing I could think of, I emailed the teacher and told her how disturbed by it Max was and asked her to tell me, in future, what films she’s planning to show the kids so I could either prepare him for them or excuse him from watching them.

This riled the teacher up.  She let me know that no one else had complained about the movie being disturbing and that it was absolutely appropriate for the curriculum of sixth graders.  Basically, she let me know that we’re precious fragile people who aren’t normal and everyone else is perfectly okay watching a movie about a kid who dies in a concentration camp.  YES, I KNOW THIS ALREADY.  I explained that I wasn’t criticizing her for her choices but merely saying they weren’t appropriate for MY KID.  (I should not have let her know I was surprised she let kids watch a movie I thought would be too disturbing for myself, that was a tactical error for which I was instantly sorry).

She let me know that they were going to be watching “Grave of the Fireflies” next.  A friend had already warned me about this one suggesting that if Max found “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” disturbing he should definitely not watch “Grave of the Fireflies”, a gorgeously animated film about two kids who die in Hiroshima.  The story starts with the death of one of them and is told by the ghost of the other.   I talked to several adults about this film and one of them was very surprised that a teacher would show this movie to children.  So I told the teacher that I didn’t want Max to watch this film after what happened with the last one.   I told her I would let Max decide for himself  on the condition that if I excused him from watching the teacher’s choice we would have to either do some reading about the bombing of Hiroshima at home or we’d have to watch a documentary.  Max chose to learn about that horrible event in the comfort of his own home with people he feels safe with.

We chose to watch the BBC documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima.  It’s a disturbing event in history no matter how it’s being told, but in documentary form there is a purpose of informing without the emotional manipulation of a movie.  What’s best is that the horrors we learned about were largely told by survivors.  Instead of hearing a story told by dead children it was told by old people who lived through it.  People who did not die in it.  That made a huge difference for us.

Yesterday morning was the morning his class was going to watch “Grave of the Fireflies” and I got a call from Max’s teacher.  She was angry at Max and at me.  Apparently it wasn’t enough that I told her in email that I didn’t want Max to watch that film but I would leave it up to him.  She expected a follow up official email excusing him from watching it.  I actually did send a hand written note with Max to school for this very purpose but Max forgot he had it.  So when he told the teacher he had permission from his mom not to watch the film, she said she hadn’t gotten an email from me excusing him so he’d have to watch.  Obviously he argued with her and made a scene because Max knew he had my permission, he KNEW he was right and dug his heels in.  The teacher getting mad apparently made him more belligerent.  This is typical of Max.  So the teacher called me to verify that he was excused, but not until she was mad and he was mad and everyone was mad.

How does this happen?  I made it very clear that I didn’t want him seeing the film.  With or without an official email excusing him I had already made my wishes VERY CLEAR.  Clear enough that she was not happy with me for questioning her choices in films.  And if she just happened to forget my very clear wishes, and didn’t believe Max either, why the hell did she not call me immediately?  Why did she wait until Max made a scene to call me?  The minute Max claimed he had my permission to skip the film and she claimed he didn’t is the minute she should have had the administrative assistant call me for verification of permission.

So now she’s mad at me because I sent an actual note and put the responsibility for remembering it on my child (she made a good point, that was another tactical error of mine) and apparently Max refusing to see the film made the other students want to know how come he got to get out of seeing the film and they all still had to see it?  She implied that I had created a lot of problems for her.  How hard can it be to explain to the other kids that Max parents don’t want him watching the film but their parents don’t mind if they do?

Would the teacher have been so put out if I had excused Max from those movies for religious reasons?  Or if his anxiety was more tangibly visible would she have felt so annoyed at me trying to protect him from more than he can handle?

If he spent most of his day hiding under tables I think she wouldn’t have felt defensive about my intervention.

My kid is academically gifted (when he applies himself, of course) but he’s  prone to depression and anxiety in a serious way.  Disturbing images and stories stick with him a lot longer and worry him and chew at his equilibrium, throwing it off-kilter.  He’s not a typical kid no matter how much he looks like one and mostly acts like one.  I feel like I have to spend an inordinate amount of time reminding people who should know better that he is a special needs kid and that means that he doesn’t always react to things the way other kids can be expected to and that if you are rigid he will be more rigid than you in response.

I don’t regret having spoken up about Max being disturbed by the film in school.  It’s unfortunate that it ruffled his teacher’s feathers but Philip and I are Max’s primary advocates and I take that role seriously.

It is through tough big decisions and a million seemingly insignificant ones Philip and I have made that have allowed Max to be the self confident kid he is right now.  The irony is that the better we do our job protecting our kid and treating his issues the more invisible those issues are to other people causing them to have unrealistic expectations of him.

When you have no legs there are tons of prosthetics to meet different missing leg scenarios.  Doctors fit your prosthetics to your body, they mold them just for you or they find the ones that work best.  Then when you have yourself fitted up no one asks you to run in a marathon.  If you do run in one you will be celebrated and held up as a hero for doing it but no one expects a person with prosthetic legs to run marathons.

Why do people expect those of us with brain disorders to just get over ourselves and be normal?  And why is it that when we are fitted with mental prosthetics (aka medications) we are judged as weak for not being able to function well without them?

How many people look at a person with prosthetic legs and think how weak they must be and ask how come they don’t just learn to crawl on their stumps and get over themselves?

Zero.  That’s how many.

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5 Tips for Yelling at Your Child Effectively

Posted by on April 20, 2012 2 Comments

When my kid was a toddler I discovered the surprising fact that I am not the calm patient person I’d been thinking I was my whole life.  I based this self image on the fact that I never got in yelling matches with people (excluding all the times I suddenly freaked out and started yelling at friends because they touched my stuff because repressed memories don’t count).  I yelled at my kid.  A lot.  I found myself losing my temper constantly.  It’s not a pretty thing, yelling at kids.  It’s demoralizing for you and frightening to them.

Unless you know how to do it the right way.  I have been mastering my yelling skills for many years now and have become so good at it that if you were to ask him if his mom yells at him he would tell you “No”.  I know this because I mentioned how I don’t like it when I have to yell at him and he looked mystified and said I don’t ever yell at him.  How can my child not remember that I just yelled at him three days ago?  How is it that he doesn’t remember that I pretty much yelled at him non-stop through years 3 through 5?*

Because I did it THE RIGHT WAY.  And now, because I want you all to have the same parenting success that I’ve had, I am going to share with you the simple rules for yelling at your kid the right way too.

1.  Never make value judgements about your child when you’re losing your shit.

When I as an inexperienced yeller I would say things like “You’re being so bad!” and “Why the hell won’t you nap you little hellion!!”.  This implies that your child is misbehaving on purpose and is a bad child.  I realized that every time I yelled at my child I was accusing him of being a bad kid or of purposely sabotaging my life by dumping the entire bookshelf onto the floor instead of addressing the actual thing I was mad about.  So I changed my language accordingly “What you’re doing is not okay!” and “It makes me angry when you won’t nap!”  This expresses how I’m feeling about his behavior rather than suggesting that his behavior means he’s a bad person: instead of yelling about who my child is by suggesting he’s an evil little cur, I’m expressing that his actions are making me angry.

2.  Don’t be mean.

Some people might suggest that yelling in itself is being mean.  I disagree.  Yelling serves a distinct function in your child’s growing up experience.  For one thing it helps teach them that people have limits to their patience.  Can you imagine what would happen if a kid grew up never reaching the limit of their parents’ patience and then discovered out in the world that people have serious limits and are much more likely to punch you for pushing too hard when you’re not a sweet little cherub?!  Kids have to learn this and it is best for them to learn this with the people who love them best in the world. Yelling is also sometimes necessary to keep kids out of danger (like when they hurl themselves out into traffic without looking, this is a great moment to yell your guts out to get their attention while you grab them back to safety).  It may scare them but sometimes this is useful for their own safety.  Yelling also helps them understand that everyone has to express their anger sometimes, that it’s normal to lose control of your emotions sometimes.

When you yell at your kid you should never be mean.  This is an extension of the first tip.  It’s not just about how you phrase your anger – it’s about not saying petty mean shit to your kid that they’ll remember long after you’ve made up.  Things like “You’re so stupid!  How many times do I have to tell you not to pee on the seat?!” or “What kind of loser kid are you to not understand what I told you?!”  The kid will NOT remember that the reason for the anger was an action that is remediable but will remember only that they are inherently stupid, which you only said out of anger, not because you really think they’re stupid.

3.  Remove the swear words from your yelling.

I heartily approve of swearing to relieve tension and to attach emphasis in language where it is needed.  However, peppering your shouting with swear words makes it much scarier and though you may achieve something like making yourself feel better, you will not have a positive affect on your kid.  Swearing at your kid is a lot like saying mean petty shit when what you really need is for them to acknowledge that they’ve done something you want them to stop doing.  I speak from personal experience.  Once you let the damns and the fucks rampant in your yelling, you’re just losing ground.

4.  When you have become calm again, talk with your kid about what happened.

Apologize for losing your cool but be clear that an apology for yelling is not giving them a pass for what actions of theirs made you angry in the first place.  In the adult world it is not okay to yell at someone and if you do yell at someone an apology is always necessary.  By apologizing to your kid for yelling sends a couple of important messages: that everyone loses their cool sometimes and this is a forgivable action but also that the proper thing to do is apologize for having done so.

Then discuss calmly the thing that made you angry.  Explain why their actions are not okay with you and if you feel consequences are required, mete them out.  If I lose my cool and yell then I usually give my kid one more chance to change his behavior before giving consequences.  But I let him know exactly what the consequence will be during this discussion, while I’m calm.  Often times these sit down talks become meaningful discussions about appropriate behaviors and sometimes they extend into great learning moments.  Take your time.  Give your kid the chance to respond with questions or opinions.

5.  End discussion with a hug

Then give them a giant hug and tell them that they are your most favorite person in the entire world and that no matter what they do, you’ll always love them.

This is the moment I usually inform my son that I’ll love him even if he commits crimes but I won’t lie for him or hide him from the police.

To be honest, I rarely yell at my child anymore.  I snap at him impatiently sometimes but the days when I frequently hauled off in a yelling fit are far behind me.  By writing this post I’m not saying that parents SHOULD yell at their kids, only that it’s natural, it’s definitely going to happen, and it matters how you do it.

*To be fair to me, raising a special needs toddler takes even more patience and energy than raising your usual hellion tiny person.  I was just discovering at that time how different my kid was from other kids.  The things that worked for other parents didn’t work for me.  Their patience was tried, mine was fried.

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