Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 660

What is Hell?

The Devil believes that hell is a place where your greatest loves can be turned against you, so in my case…

Springsteen's Thunder Road, over and over again for eternity.

But the Devil doesn't know that I fall more in love with that song each time I hear it.

At last! A job tailor-made to my abilities.

When Clara is old enough, I will tell her to try to combine her talent and her passion into her choice of career in order to ensure happiness and success. 

And if I ever get tired of teaching and writing, I think I've found a job tailor-made for my skillset.

IDump4U.com is a service by which you can pay $10 to hire a professional to breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend over the phone.  Launched by social media consultant Bradley Laborman, IDump4U.com will also break off engagements and end marriages for an additional fee.

Company founder Bradley Laborman will not only dump the object of your un-affection, but he will say all of the things you're unable to say yourself.  Fill out the site's dump form and offer up your reasons behind the breakup to be read by Laborman.

Normally I am opposed to all forms of passive-aggressive behavior, but this opportunity may be too good to pass up.  Even though I despise the use of email or telephone calls to express serious emotion, there are people in the world who have difficulty dealing with conflict, find it impossible to be direct and have significant others who would make a breakup exceedingly difficult (as evidenced by some of the calls that have been recorded and posted on the website). 

If you are one of those people, I can help.  Utilizing my ability to be direct and honest, combined with my fondness for shadenfreude, this seems like a career built for my talents.

And as a special introductory deal, the first five customers will receive my services for free.

Email now.   

On the opposite side of the spectrum is RentAFriend.com. 

RentAFriend.com offers up friends for hire with prices ranging from $10 to $150. If you need someone to go to a movie with, go for dinner with or be a wingman on a night out with, you can just search the site and connect with someone who's willing to do it with you—for a fee.

The site, which has been around for six months, already has a reported 200, 000 members.

This is not the job for me.  While I am certainly capable of being a good friend (though some of my friends may disagree), I may be too honest to fake a friendship with someone who is desperate enough to pay me to be their temporary friend.  Fifteen minutes into our friendship session, I'd inevitably be diagnosing the reasons why this person has no friends and pointing these flaws out to them, hoping to make changes in their otherwise pathetic lives.     

Perhaps I could even review my Friendship Application with them (which I am currently revising), in hopes that they might learn something in the process. 

Perhaps instead of RentAFriend.com, I should launch WhyYouAreALoser.com. 

This seems more suited to my skillset.

Pants are priceless

A clothing store called Khaki and Black went out of business in our town's center last year and has been replaced by a bank.  As I drove by with a friend, she said, "Great. Another bank. Just what the center needed."

When the store closed, my mother-in-law expressed a similar sentiment.

My response:

What makes a pants store any more valuable than a bank?

In fact, wouldn't a bank bring more consumers to the center than a clothing store?  A bank brings customers back again and again, often on a weekly basis, whereas a clothing store, particularly a women's clothing store, only draws a select clientele on a significantly less frequent basis.

Why is a retail clothing establishment automatically perceived to be more valuable than a financial institution?

Vegan beliefs

I find veganism fascinating, particularly when it is practiced for ethical reasons. The morality behind avoiding meat raises so many interesting questions.

For example:

Do ethical vegans force their pets into veganism as well?  Is a vegan's dog not allowed to eat dog food containing rabbit, chicken or turkey?  Are the cats of vegans discouraged from hunting mice?  Is a boa constrictor owned by a vegan not fed rats?  Why might there be a distinction between the ethics of food when it comes to humans and pets? 

And is it ethical to alter an animal's natural diet based upon your personal beliefs?

Also, is it ethical to impose your vegan beliefs on their children?  Should a person's eating habits be defined by their parent's sense of morality and their disregard for the presence of incisors in their child's mouth?

I guess that if you believe that imposing religious beliefs on children is ethical, vegan beliefs could be viewed in a similar light.  Yet there seems something less diabolical in a vegan stuffing green beans down their child's throat than a parent stuffing the homophobic belief of a 2,000 year old desert God into a child's impressionable mind.

Youre not welcome

I spent last Saturday attending a bat mitzvah in New Jersey. 

Given the long drive, my wife and I plucked our daughter from the crib at an early hour, changed her diaper, and plopped her into her car seat, still wearing her pajamas. 

Upon arriving to the temple three hours later, my wife and her sister brought our daughter, Clara, into the ladies room to change her into something more appropriate.

While waiting, I removed my iPhone and began answering email.

A few moments later a woman approached me and said, "Cell phones are not allowed inside the temple.  You need to turn that off now." 

Her tone and demeanor were less than polite.

"Oh, okay," I said.  "I'll turn it off now."

"Thank you," she said.

"You're not welcome."

It's a phrase I've used before in circumstance such as these. 

She was already turning to walk away, so this unexpected comment spun her back in my direction.  "Excuse me?" 

"I'm willing to follow your rules since this is your place and not mine, but I don't have to like it or pretend to like it." 

She stormed off, resuming her position as guardian of the lobby, shutting the doors to the temple and directing people where to go.

Immediately I regretted my decision.  It was Shabbat, and though I am not Jewish, I understand the religious significance to the day, which forbids work of any kind, including many arcane rules pertaining to technology. 

And yes, I find these rules ridiculous.  For example, one such rule prohibits the extinguishing of fires, even when great property damage will result. 

And when it comes to the use of electricity, it is acceptable to leave the lights on all day, but the flipping of the switch to turn the lights on is prohibited, making this a ridiculous and environmentally damaging rule.  Wikipedia explains it thusly:

This prohibition was commonly understood to disallow operating electrical switches. When actuating electromechanical switches that carry a live current, there is always the possibility that a small electric spark will be generated. This spark is classified as a kind of fire. However, as science became more advanced, and the properties of fire and electricity became better understood, this reasoning broke down: fire is a chemical reaction involving the release of energy; the flow of an electric current is a physical reaction. Therefore, some hold that the proper reason it is forbidden to complete electric circuits is because it involves construction or building, which is also prohibited on Shabbat. 

I couldn't help but wonder what this guardian of the lobby would do if I turned off the lights in the temple and then started a roaring barn fire in the middle of the lobby. 

Would she be as adherent to her rules as she was to the cell phone rule?

But this was not why I responded with "You're not welcome."  I answered her in this fashion because the woman was rude in the way that she responded, making a non-Jewish person like myself feel less than welcome in the temple. 

And I immediately regretted saying it, because I don't keep secrets from Elysha and knew that I would have to tell her about our exchange.  And I knew that she would be disappointed in my response.

As I was mulling over the best way to relate the story, while listening to my wife and sister-in-law attempt to coax my less-than-cooperative daughter into her outfit, a woman and her son approached the restrooms, stopping to speak to the same woman who demanded I stop using my cell phone.

"Excuse me," the woman said, holding the hand of her toddler.  "Should I take my son into the ladies room, or would it be better if I went into the men's room with him?"

"You can take him into the ladies room," she replied.  "But please try not to be as loud as those women who are in there now.  It's completely inappropriate."

Again, she was not polite.  And she was talking about my wife behind her back, with no intention of addressing her complaint to my wife directly, I was sure.

And instantly, all the regret I had washed away. 

Perhaps this is how things always work.  Every time I am brutally honest or rude to someone, perhaps I am simply operating under the guise of karma, evening the score some other poor person who had been or would soon be wronged by my target.

And I was not the only person who responded sharply to this woman.  A couple hours later (because anything done in a Jewish temple must take at least three hours to complete) a man entered the lobby and removed his cell phone from his pocket.  The woman, still guarding the lobby, pounced once again, demanding that he put it away.

"I'm checking the time, lady," he said, flashing her the screen that indicated the time.  "You wear a watch.  I carry this."

As she turned to leave, I gave the man an approving nod.

Solidarity is a fine thing.     

A matter of perspective

On Easter, 2001, I was leaving Boston Market with a meal for six when I was hit by a car that was speeding around the building and into the parking lot. I was thrown over the hood of the car, spilling my food all over the jerk's windshield and knocking me to the pavement. The accident resulted in a massive charlie horse on my left leg where the car had initially struck me, a scraped elbow and knee, and a bump on the noggin, but it wasn't enough to call the police.

I made the guy replace my food, throw in a couple pies, and we called it even.

I had forgotten about that accident until a few days ago, when a trip to the same Boston Market reminded me of the incident. I mentioned it to a friend, who said, "For some people, being hit by a car in a parking lot would be the closest that they had ever come to death. For you, it's almost forgettable."

Sad but true.

Programmed to despise shopping

I was listening to a former student, a boy, describe his recent adventures in the mall. Though he spoke for about five minutes, the crux of his story was this:

My friends and I went to the mall and other retail establishments in town and acted like twelve and thirteen year old boys. We ran up escalators, gorged on free samples and made a general nuisance of ourselves. As a result, we were repeatedly asked to leave these establishments.

I had many similar experiences as a kid, some stretching into adulthood.  My friend and I used to play a game called Mall Football in which one of us (usually me) walked in a straight line from one end to the mall to the other without deviating course or speed while the other had to block for us, finding ways to remove innocent and unaware shoppers from our paths.  If the shopper was not removed from the path, the ball carrier was required to bump into him or her to get by while maintaining course. 

The last time I played this game was less than twenty years ago.

I won't be more specific.  

This game and the many others I once played sounded strikingly similar to the stories that my former student was telling me, and I think most boys have similar stories from their past.

And then it hit me.

No wonder so many men don't like to shop.  We're programmed to despise retail establishments like the mall from an early age.

Young girls can head off to the mall and be perfectly content by spending the day staring at clothing that they cannot buy, chatting with friends, and trying to look pretty and catch a boy's eye.

Boys aren't happy unless they are running, fighting, competing or causing general mayhem. Even today I must suppress the desperate urge to run up the down escalator. I was at the mall last week and the down escalator was broken. I almost used it as an excuse to run up it, even though a perfectly good staircase was adjacent to it.

To a boy, the mall is very much like a church. It's large, open, gleaming and full of boyish opportunities for fun and adventure, but for reasons that baffle us, we must be on our best behavior or a Rent-a-Cop will throw us out (although getting thrown out of church is nearly impossible.  As a boy, I tried like hell but never succeeded).  

Even suitable diversions like arcades no longer offer boys a retail sanctuary, as most have been replaced by boring shops and stupid boutiques. Retail is simply not a welcoming place to an adolescent male, and as a result, we grow up to despise these places.

If society could accept a little more Mall Football and the occasional clogging of the escalator, women might find their boyfriends and husbands much more amenable to a day in retail hell.

Sit and watch Daddy

Thank goodness I've never found myself with the need to strap Clara into one of these things. 

I'm not the most modest person in the world, especially around my toddler, but this would be too much for even me. 

Talking to the wrong guy, buddy

I was standing next to a tall, round man in the line at McDonald's, waiting for my food. This was the same restaurant that I managed while attending college, so I have several friends still working there.  After a moment of waiting for our orders, the man turned to me and said, "You need to keep an eye on them, don't you?"

"Huh?" I was listening to a podcast at the time and was genuinely unsure about what the man had said.

"You gotta keep your eye on these people or they're sure to make a mistake."

"Why's that?" I asked, hoping to goad him.

"Well… they don't get paid much and you don't need much of an education to work fast food. So how can you trust them?"

"I hear you," I said, trying to sound as agreeable as possible. "What do you do for a living?"

"I drive a truck."

"Need a Master's degree for that?" I asked.

It took the guy the few seconds to realize my implication, and then he turned back and glared at me. "Go to hell," he suggested in a less than kind tone.

"Keep in mind," I added, "that half of the stuff you buy probably comes from China, and the people in those factories don't have much of an education either.  But how do you keep an eye on the guy whose manufacturing your toothbrush on the other side of the world?"

The gentleman offered a two-word suggestion that I will not repeat here.

And he was a large man, round in the belly but tall and muscular as well, so I waited until he was in his truck and down the road before exiting the restaurant.

I may be bold with my words and would not turn down an opportunity to fight, but I'm not exactly looking for a fight either, regardless of how often I irritate people.  

It still shocks me how often a person in line will turn to me, assuming that their underhanded,cowardly, backstabbing comment about the cashier will go unchallenged.

Lacking social sensitivity and stress

Two recent Scientific American reports that speak directly to me:

1.  Researchers have found that the intelligence of individual group members is not a good predictor of how well the group as a whole performs.  Teams that perform best rate high in social sensitivity: their members interact well, take turns speaking and include more females than teams that perform poorly.

This may explain why I am often left off so many teams and why I am actually forbidden to join certain annual committees at my workplace.

I've been known to make people cry from time to time. 

Stupid social sensitivity.

2.  A multiyear study of nearly 2,400 surveyed subjects found that those who experienced negative life events reported better mental health and overall well-being than those who did not.  Negative events included serious illness, violence, bereavement, social stress, relationship stress, and disasters like fires, floods, etc. 

So those who had zero negative life events experienced more overall stress and lower life satisfaction. And here's the rub: Those who experienced a high number of stressful negative events also reported greater stress.  While the authors note that its impossible to identify this sweet spot of adversity, their research suggests that around two to three events might provide the ideal amount of protection from future stress and unhappiness.

This study seems to support some of my personal observations and explain a little bit about myself.  In my  experience, I have found that people who have not experienced difficulty and tragedy in their early lives tend to be more fragile and easily troubled.  Small problems can seem looming and daunting to them, and they often become paralyzed by stress and fear.

Conversely, I have often attributed my relative immunity to stress to the difficulties in my past.

After you have been killed twice, robbed at gunpoint, robbed at knifepoint, arrested and tried for a crime you did not commit, lived in your car, been slandered in public, and lived with a goat, everything less doesn't seem so bad.

And my almost utter disregard for the daily stressors that impact so many people has proven frustrating to some of my friends and colleagues, and occasionally my wife.  I can sometimes come across as nonchalant, cavalier and uncaring, when in reality I care a great deal about the tasks at hand but simply do not worry so much about any negative ramifications involved.

For some people, effort, concern, attention and stress are interminably linked. 

Not me.  I can be concerned about an issue, give it all my attention and work hard to resolve it without the worry of what might happen if I fail.

Unless that failure includes a shotgun-toting, switchblade-wielding goat and a jail cell full of bees, I know I'll be fine.

The question is what would you prefer to be?

The slightly more fragile, more stressed out person who left a relatively happy high school experience for a traditional four-year college, followed by two years of graduate school, a good job, a stable marriage, a nice home and two lovely children…

…or me?