Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Unsolved Mysteries

You might not know it to look at me, but I am a thinker. I have been since I was a kid, when I would spend an hour or two staring at the weird flower pattern on my bedroom wallpaper pondering great mysteries like why those kids on You Can't Do That on Television didn't just say "I'm not sure" to avoid getting green slimed. Or what would happen if the tooth fairy and Santa had to come on the same night. Would he share the cookies? Would she let him out the front door? Do they even know each other?



 As you can see, I was quite the budding intellectual.

Three decades later, I have acquired as many degrees that confirm my brilliance. Yes, friends, you are reading the wise words of a woman with BA's in both French and Sociology (Mon dieu!), and a graduate degree in Social Work. Pretty swank, huh? No need for trivial things like computer science or international economics, no sir. I spent my years and extensive financial aid dollars at elite institutions fine tuning my conjugation skills and reading up on methodologies for dismantling The Self. Cha-ching, baby, chaaaaa-ching.

Lately I've noticed that, no matter how hard I get my stare on or how long I ponder, there remain certain questions I simply cannot answer. Some of these questions persist day after day, sometimes year after year, and pick away at me, even keeping me awake a night. I thought maybe this blog post would be a good way to invite others to please, please share some insight into these maddening mysteries. Please.


1. Is Alanis Morissette a total idiot or a fucking genius?
Speaking of You Can't Do That on Television, this Alanis Morissette issue really chaps my ass. The mystery is simple: in her seminal 1995 hit "Ironic," Morissette lists off situation after situation which she refers to as "ironic", but none of these things is actually ironic. This song is so maddening to me that I literally feel like I'm going to stroke out when I hear it. "Rain on your wedding day"? Um, shitty luck but not ironic. "Good advice that you just can't take"? Also lame, and possibly an indication that you are fucked up, but still not ironic. "No smoking sign on your cigarette break"? Yep, not ironic. And don't even get me started about the ten thousand spoons...

So the question is: is Alanis Morisette (in the words of my high school German exchange student) so many cups short of a cupboard that she--and her entire production team, apparently--doesn't realize these lyrics do not in fact represent irony? Or, does she know they are not ironic and use them anyway, thereby rendering the entire song truly ironic--meta ironic--because it's called "Ironic" but there is no irony in it, which would make her brilliant?!


I have worked this one over time and again, even talking about it with various friends, and we just can't come to consensus. I deeply want for her to be brilliant, but a little voice inside tells me she is really just a tool with a limited grasp of the concept of irony and has no idea that her big hit sends more learned listeners such as myself into full-on conniption because it is so fucking daft.

2. What is the deal with tail-on shrimp and how are you supposed to eat it?
I don't get you, tail-on shrimp.

I mean, what is your deal? Unless you are going to be featured in shrimp cocktail, where I will pick your tasty ass up by my fingers, you perplex and irritate me. I find it confusing when you are in my scampi or stir-fry. How am I supposed to eat you without getting my fingers all gucked up in my food from getting your tail off? Am I supposed to eat you with the tail on, and somehow spit it out? You make no sense. I've tried to de-tail you with just my silverware and it's impossible. Why are you even here? Are the chefs just lazy and can't be bothered to remove your tail?  Is there some special benefit to cooking you with tail on that is important enough to justify asking the diner to dig their fingers into their food to remove you at the table? If that's the case, why don't you come with instructions? You are so delicious that I continue to order you despite the fact you are an epic pain in the ass.


Fuck you, tail-on shrimp, fuck you.


3. Why the hell does Autocorrect infuse people's texts with filth and nonsense?
Ok, first off, if you don't know what I'm referring to here, let me fill you in: Autocorrect is a smartphone program that "predicts" what you are trying to type into a text message and fills it in for you. Nifty! Except it tends to fill in everything with words and phrases that are pornographic, bizarre, and/or nonsensical.  It throws in shit like "Manboobs" instead of "Monday" and "Poophole" instead of "pool" and typically renders the unwitting texter frustrated if not mortally embarrassed. To be sure, I find replacing the word "purse" with "pussy" as funny as the next person, but c'mon, this program is rigged! I've heard it said that Autocorrect fills in your texts with words you yourself commonly use, but that is a lie, since I personally have had all manner of explicit body parts and weird pop culture references "predicted" into my own texts messages when I know for a fact I have never before typed those words.


So what the fuck? Are the Autocorrect programmers just a bunch of childish frat boys sitting around flooding the dictionary with gems like "assmunch" and "dickinabox" while they share a spliff? Or does the dictionary somehow populate with the words most commonly used by all text users? And if so, who are all these people writing texts with words like "afterbirth" and "manjuice" with such frequency that they would get added to the damn program? Who??

I implore you, LEON readers, if you have any reasonable theories or direct information about these unsolved mysteries, for the love of god, clue me in. I have other more pressing matters I would like to devote some thinking to, like how to get my dog to stop eating cat shit from the litter box and new strategies for getting A. to change the toilet paper roll, for starters. Help a sister out.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Defying Gravity, aka Fail Blog #1

So, I'd been working on a post about Do's and Don'ts for when you have to go to the Emergency Room, but something is weird about it and I'm not sure it's that funny. I could make it a lot more funny, but to do so would require violating some professional boundaries and possibly HIPAA, so given that I like my job and hope to remain employed, I'm shelving it for now. (If you're interested, here's the take-away: If you want a pleasant, quick and medically helpful ER visit, don't lie, act right, and try really really hard not to shit your pants.) 

But fear not, friends! A post you shall have! My ER post got me thinking about my own numerous visits to Emergency Rooms over the years. I'm kind of a frequent flier:



Those of you who know me can attest that I am mythically prone to falling down and other acts of violent and dangerous uncoordination, the frequency and absurdity of which dwarf the mishaps and accidents of normal people. I deeply wish this were hyperbole. My body, pocket book, and self-esteem would all be in much better shape if I were just being dramatic here. But alas, I am not, and so I thought to myself, "Self, you have no dignity left in this arena. You lost that on a patch of ice in a parking lot back in 1998. Might as well just broadcast to the entire internet the magnitude of your klutzery." Lemonade out of lemons, kids.

So I identified a sampling of my most memorable fails, highlights from various ages and places, (although two of the fails are from college because, well, it's fucking college and frankly it's impressive that I made it out alive, what will all the tomfoolery, sleep deprivation, reckless abandon and recreational substance use.) I began to notice I was having a hard time narrowing down the list and was ultimately forced to admit that I could possibly create a whole series of posts on this topic and not run out of material. I add to the fail collection often, you see. There is even a good chance that I could acquire puncture wound or broken toe just in the course of writing this post. I tell you, the world is my obstacle course.

So, in the name of good story-telling and metering out my shame over time, a series it shall be. To start us off, I have identified a particularly embarrassing childhood fail. Let us begin...

Fail 1:  Bike Meets Brick Wall Fail, age 8

This fail is near and dear to my heart, as it is one of my earliest and possibly the first time I learned that with great physical calamity comes great humiliation. It started off innocently enough: I was riding my bike down at The Graded School, the large, old, brick school house at the end of my block. (It really was called The Graded School--the name was carved into the front of it. I always thought it was weird to have an adjective as a school name, but I guess that how they rolled in the olden days.) At the time, this school functioned as my town's junior high, so I wasn't old enough to attend, but I knew it well because I lived just a few doors away and all of us neighborhood kids played there regularly. We loved to roller skate and bike down "the hill," the paved drive that ran from the front parking lot along the left side of the building and opened up into the large paved playground area in the back. I use "playground" loosely here, as it primarily consisted of several old tractor trailer tires, a basket-less basket ball court, an open blacktop area salt and peppered with shards of broken glass, and an unobstructed embankment leading down to the leech-filled Passumsic River, which was prone to flood the entire area several times a year. In retrospect, the whole place was kind of a death trap, but in the 80's, this specimen of rural splendor was our neighborhood stomping grounds.

On the day in question, I was riding my bike up and down "the hill" pretending I was Laura Ingalls Wilder riding my horse. Pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder was an alarmingly popular activity of mine, and I was so good at it that I would sometimes go for days at a time pretending that I was away at "teacher's college" and my entire family were just the people who ran the boarding house I lived in while I pined to go home to Walnut Grove. Yeah. So I was pretty good at getting into character, which I believe accounts for my general lack of awareness in this fail.

I'm not sure where everyone else in the neighborhood was that day (maybe they fled the prairie) but I had been doing this horse-hill thing for about 20 minutes or so when I had a great idea: it was time to pull my horse into the barn for feeding! The Graded School was shaped like a large capital "I". The original school house was the top of the "I", and then a newer hallway-ish thing connected a large gymnasium addition at the back of the school, the bottom of the "I". The hill I was going up and down was the side of the "I", and the indent part, I was sure, was the barn. 



So, from the top of the hill I began to pedal, with the intention of veering sharply to the right half-way down to park in the barn. Sweet plan!

Except this: when it came time to turn, I was going too fast. My horse would not fucking whoa. I felt myself panicking but the course of my demise was set. I couldn't turn the required ninety-degrees and instead turned at about forty...and crashed, full speed, head-on, into the brick wall of the gymnasium.



I remember little about the impact other than the sound of my crumpling horse-bike, but I suspect my body hit the wall before bouncing back several feet and splaying all over the gravely blacktop, which I hit with a resounding thud to rival any child-body-on-pavement thud. I laid there for a minute and assessed: wind knocked out, head pain, searing knee and ankle, tingly elbow, feeling of utter shock and devastation. I also sensed that I had acquired a sampling of bloody, gravel-encrusted scrapes but I couldn't bring myself to move to check. Before I could muster the strength to lift my head, a figure appeared over me. It was Mrs. E. from across the street. She had heard me crying (was I crying??) and came to see what was the matter. She looked positively stricken. "My god, dear!" she said, so concerned, "what happened?"



Holy shit, people will want to know what happened! Oh my god! How on earth do I tell them that I essentially pedaled myself full-speed into a brick wall? That I was trying to put my fake horse in the fake barn? That I forgot to think about the mechanics of speed and turning and such? They will think I'm a fucking wackjob! That. Can't. Happen. Gaaaaaah!

And yet--perhaps because of head injury-- I couldn't think of a single reasonable lie to tell her that would explain this. There were no other kids around. There were no rogue kitties to swerve to avoid, no disorienting sun glare. I caved:




 I just let it go. I began--or perhaps continued-- to wail. Cried my fucking guts out. Poor Mrs. E.  She had two daughters a bit older that me, who I know for a fact were major contributors to the broken glass situation around here but likely had never propelled themselves into this building.  She gingerly lifted me up, gave me a once-over for protruding bones or severed arteries, and said she thought I "needed some ice." We collected a few pieces of debris--chunks of broken reflector , part of my gear shift lever--and walked me and my bike carcass home. 

Actually, technically she walked me to my neighbor's house because I didn't want her talking to my mom. I limped into the garage and threw my bike in a heap next to my sister's (We were not consistent kick-stand users in our family) before slinking in the back door and racing to the upstairs bathroom where I sullenly de-graveled my wounds before dabbing them all with a wet washcloth. I knew we didn't have any band-aids. My mother's first aid philosophy centered around the concept of cowboying up and the belief that any non-fatal injury could be healed by "rubbing it" or covering it with paper towels. After taking inventory of my scrapes, aches and at least one hematoma forming on the back of my head, I declared myself healthy enough to avoid disclosure of this incident to my mom and decided maybe it was time to curl up with a good Nancy Drew. I'd had enough Little House for one day.

Over the next few weeks, I will offer up more confessions of LEON's Top Fails in addition to my other material. I think it will be therapeutic. If nothing else, please please take this body of work as a giant, illustrated cautionary tale. Although, let's be honest: there is no prevention mechanism for the particular blend of Little House obsession, physics ignorance, and lack of planning that lead to this FAIL, nor for the many LEON eccentricities that conspire to erupt in all manner of physical nonsense. In any case, stay tuned for Fail #2: Dorm Steps Peach Snapple FAIL, coming soon...Cheers!

PS. If you like LEON, you can like it on Facebook! You'll get all the posts without having to check the blog directly. Amazeballs!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Schmexercise

It's summer!

Or, for those of us with BMIs over 20, "the season of low self-esteem."

 Each year at this time I dive head-first into a shame spiral about how lax I've been about exercising and "getting back in shape." Actually, to get "back" in shape you have to have originally been in shape, and I'm sure that there's some kind of statute of limitations preventing me from using my senior year in high school as a benchmark to return to. Still, to be fair, a few years ago I had lost a lot of weight and was feeling great:
 


But then I did a bunch of life things like falling in love and working like a maniac and I slowly packed back on some of what I had lost. For a while I didn't notice, but then I had to buy new work pants and shit got serious. I started feeling like Fatty Fatterson and the Chubtones every time I had to wear something other than yoga pants. It was time to (sigh) exercise.

For some people, exercising is a wholly pleasurable endeavor. These folks are inclined towards activities such as repeated marathon running, mountaineering, extreme weight-lifting and the like. They can be identified by their ripped abs and glow of self-satisfied vigor:


 Perhaps you know some of these people; I do. I find them completely disequilibrating to be around. These elite exercise enthusiasts are typically oblivious to the fact that most of us have a love/hate (if not full-on hate/hate)relationship with physical exertion. They just don't get why we might prefer, say, laying in our underwear watching a House Hunters International marathon to hitting the pavement for a 12-miler.

First of all, exercise makes most of us really fucking hot.  And sweaty. This is not a good hot and sweaty, like, say, you'd get in a sauna. This is a soul-killing tsunami of physical misery. Your heart is pounding, sweat beads drip into your eyes and ears and your hair gets all wet and disgusting. Your skin flushes and itches and maybe you even get heat rash hives. I suspect that the exercise fiends enjoy this panoply of sensations. Perhaps they find it invigorating and cleansing. Regular folks, however, do not share this perspective. We know this state of sticky despair is our body's way of warning us to abort mission, and we avoid it at all cost.

Secondly, unless you are already fit, coordinated, and experienced, it is almost impossible not to look like a total asshole while exercising. Between the active-wear that exposes your arm pudge, the complete absence of appropriate technique, and the huffing and puffing that serves as a flashing neon sign advertising your lack of fitness to the world, exercising can be an emotionally debilitating affair. It requires the participant's willingness to be humiliated in the name of health. I experienced this recently when I attended my first Zumba class:


This extent of my embarrassment rivaled the time my mom told our entire house full of Christmas party guests that I had just started my period for the first time.

Lastly, it is often those fitness elites themselves who serve as a barrier to exercise for the average person. We are totally sure that they are judging us. Most likely, many of them are completely unaware that we are even there and are focused instead on their own workout and general awesomeness. There are some, however, that we are certain are utterly consumed with taking stock of our every hyper-extension, grunt, and misstep:



We feel their laser eyes boring down on our flabby bodies each time we pause to take a water break. And we feel small. Bad small, not fit small.

All of this is enough to make many of us give up exercise altogether and resign ourselves to our chubby, winded lot in life. But before you throw in the sweat towel and head for the Ben and Jerry's, I encourage you to try the secret weapon I have honed over years of pride-swallowing fitness endeavors. It has allowed me to keep plugging along in all my sweat-soaked glory through all manner of yoga classes, Nautilus rotations, and even "running" my first 5k earlier this year. I call it the "Wonder Woman," and it's very simple: just pretend you are inside an invisible jet.  No one can see you. No one even knows you are there:



Feel like going home after only doing 11 minutes on the eliptical? No problem, no one will know! Drop a dumbell on your foot and burst into tears? Who cares? You're invisible! Cry your eyes out!

The Wonder Woman, when properly employed, will allow you the freedom to exercise without inhibition. Go ahead and try that pilates class you've had your eye on. Feel free to take up ballroom dancing or tennis. I can't say you won't be hot and sweaty, but shit, you can stop if you want and no one will judge you. You can lay your ass down in the middle of the gym and take a nap if you feel like it . No one will see! (NB:Young people may prefer to call this technique the "Cloak of Invisibility" for a more age-appropriate pop-culture reference. Be my guest. Whatever works!)

The bottom line seems to be that we've all got to move our asses from time to time or risk dying painful, shameful and preventable deaths from horrible diseases that will consume us and make us wish we'd done more step aerobics. So, use the Wonder Woman. Or come up with your own method for staying active. If anyone invents an anti-hot-and-sweaty pill, I'll be your best friend. No joke.



Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Five Ways to Fuck Up an Apology : A Primer

Ah, apologies.

Those pesky little moments of humility and accountability where we get to be all mature and remorseful while every cell in our bodies squirms with awkwardness and shame. Or, alternatively, those moments of great deception when we attempt to get the social currency that comes with vocalizing remorse while internally holding fast to the notion that we are right, goddamnit, and the other person is a moron/asshole/baby or otherwise off-base. Apologies can be an opportunities to grow and to build enhanced connections with people, often taking relationships to a new level:


 Often, though, they are characterized by insincerity, minimization, passive-aggression, or other qualities that negate the value an authentic apology may have held, and in fact can even escalate the conflict or leave the other person feeling worse than if you hadn't "apologized" at all.

You'd think since apologies are so important, we'd all be kick-ass at being sorry. Not so, friends! My personal and professional experience indicates that there is almost nothing we handle more poorly in our interpersonal relationships than apologies. I myself am a perfect example. I mean, I'm a therapist  for christsake, and even I have an embarrassing collection of epically fumbled mea culpas that salt and pepper everything from my romantic relationship resume to my friendships. (Sorry about that, everybody. Really. Totally sorry.)

There are two ingredients needed to make an effective apology: actual feelings of remorse, and the ability to appropriately communicate them. If you're missing the first, then your impending apology is already pretty much dead in the water and I urge you to reconsider even attempting a fakey. In addition to being lame and possibly karmically toxic, it can get you into a Boy Who Cried Wolf territory with the recipient; once they are on to your trickery they never believe any future apologies and usually write you off as a narcissist or a douche. (Maybe you are a narcissist and/or a douche, but I encourage you to at least attempt to function like a more authentic, compassionate human being, even if it feels overwhelming. If nothing else, you'll have more friends.)

Assuming you are actually sorry, now you have to figure out how to say so in a way that is effective. Since many apologies need to happen on the fly--say, mid-argument--you don't really have a lot of time to strategize. It helps if you know some common pitfalls to avoid. And guess who's here to help with that? Me, baby. Me. (No applause, really. You're too much...)

So here you have it, free of charge, right from the Mental Health Professional's mouth:

1. The Equivocal Fakey, aka "I'm sorry, but..."




The EF is one of the most common apology pitfalls out there and occurs when you aren't actually sorry at all. Remember my advice above and try to resist the urge (or the outside pressure) to prematurely apologize, or you risk walking off this plank. The EF is basically a gigantic monster blame bomb you are throwing at the other person, insinuating--if not outright saying--that whatever you're "apologizing" for is their fault.  It's completely inauthentic because what you are really thinking is "I'm not sorry at all. You deserved it because of what you did and I think you owe me the apology. I am still mad and I also don't think I did anything wrong." It can be super-destructive to bust out an EF, and it makes you look like a jerky hothead. Avoid this at all costs because you lose points and then you have to apologize for your apology, which is a real drag.

2. The Condescender




The Condescender is a dark and twisty little bugger that worms its way into apologies from people who are self-righteous, judgmental and/or arrogant. Sadly, the person implementing The Condescender generally earnestly believes they are apologizing. These people often have no idea how patronizing and un-sorry they sound. If you tend to find yourself constantly taking stock of other people's flaws, weaknesses, and limitations and never of your own, you may be prone this one. My suggestion is to stick to a script that only talks about you: "I am really sorry I did/said ______. I know I hurt you." The goal is to emphasize the feeling of remorse for your behavior. Again, it helps to actually feel sorry. It also helps to try to be less of an arrogant prick.


3. Enigmatic Mystery Apology




The EMA--popular in frat houses and other arenas where straight men congregate-- is problematic in that the recipient has no fucking idea what you are talking about.  It's hard to have meaningful repair in a relationship when you're not sure if the person is sorry for shooting your dog that time at hunting camp or for banging your girlfriend down in Cabo last New Year's. Maybe s/he is sorry for taking your Garbage Pail Kids collection in 3rd grade, who the hell knows? The EMA can be particularly confusing when you have done multiple crap-ass things for which you are or should be sorry. The solution here is to be specific: "Dude, I am super-sorry I drank all your beer and then painted your computer screen with White-Out." Once you've been clear, you can go back to non-communicating as usual.

4. The Relapse




Like The Equivocal Fakey, The Relapse also occurs when you are not really sorry and/or not yet calmed down. It is characterized by repeating the behavior you just apologized for. If you do this, you are either devoid of even a minimal level of self-awareness, or you are still angry and amped up for a fight. The Relapse comes in two forms: short-cycle, like the example above, and long-cycle, such as when someone apologizes for cheating on you and then cheats on you again. I'm just going to spell this out so there is no confusion: If you apologize for something, you need to make every effort to avoid ever doing that thing again. Otherwise, you are a shitty person.


5. The Time Bandit





The Time Bandit is the granddaddy of the apology fuck-up. It has the capacity to deal a fatal blow to the relationship. The Time Bandit is an apology given at the absolute most stratospherically inopportune moment possible, when the receiver is either completely unavailable/incapable of responding to the apology or will be forced into responding in a constrained fashion for which s/he will resent you until the end of days. Examples include apologizing for infidelity right before your partner takes the stage to accept an Academy Award and broadcasting your apology on the Jumbo-Tron at the nationally televised play-off game. Ninety-five percent of TB's typically start with a shocking confession at the helm and come from  spineless, sackless, cowardly gits who intentionally chose an inappropriate moment in an attempt to manipulate the recipient into a small reaction,  quick forgiveness, and minimal discussion.  (The other five percent of TB's are made by people who are too socially inept, disoriented or impaired by altered mental status to even have noticed how inappropriate the timing on the apology was. Those folks get a pass, and frankly, should get points for apologizing at all.) If you have considered--or worse, utilized--a Time Bandit,  the only course of action I can recommend is a swift self-flagellation. That, and grow some fucking balls.

So there you have it, friends. Be honest, be specific, avoid blaming, keep assholery to a minimum, and try not to sabotage your recipient with shenanigans that will make them hate your fucking guts.

Happy Tuesday!