Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 661

In case you didnt see this

It's fantastic.

Best gift ever

One of my students asked me what the best gift I ever received was. I had many choices.

Elysha bought me a TiVo several years ago, which I have enjoyed a great deal.

She also got me a catapult-like gun that shoots chickens for Christmas a couple years back. That was pretty fantastic, too.

A few years ago a student gave me a Razor scooter for my birthday. I've had many hours of fun on that two-wheeled contraption.

But in the end, I told the kid, the best gift I ever received was from my friend, Jeff, who gave me a gift box at my bachelor party and told me to give it to my friend, Tom.  I tried to ask why but he insisted that I simply hand it over to Tom and say, "This is for you."

I did.

We were standing outside Stanley Golf Club, surrounded by my friends and many strangers.  Tom opened the box and found an enormous spider inside, still very much alive and apparently quite angry.  Tom threw the box, screamed like a girl, and ran about twenty feet before coming to a stop.

He's terrified of spiders.

That may have been the best gift that I ever received: The gift of terror, wrapped up and ready to hand over to my arachnophobic friend.

Unwanted guests

Yesterday friends of mine attended the wedding of their friend's daughter.

While it was nice of them to go and certainly an honor to be invited, I suddenly find myself terrified that all of my friends will one day invite me to the weddings of their children.

How dreadful.

While I'm certain that these parties would be great fun (provided that they are scheduled with careful consideration for the NFL schedule), it pains me to think how these poor children might be forced to add their parents' friends to the guest lists when they can barely find room for their own friends and family. How awful it would be to know that a bride or groom had to exclude an actual friend from the guest list because one of my friends insisted on inviting their twenty closest friends to the wedding, regardless of whether or not these friends meant anything to their kids.

While I am certain that some of these children would invite us anyway (my friend's four-year old twin boys would undoubtedly invite Elysha and probably hit on her in the process), it would sadden me to think that any child would be asked or required by their parents to invite us.

Particularly if the Patriots are playing that day.

More on shoe removal

The Internet is a pretty astounding place. 

Earlier this week I wrote a post about homeowners asking guests to remove their shoes.  I said that I found this to be a ridiculous request, but the point of my piece was to suggest that people should feel free to step outside the norm but also be prepared to be viewed as odd, bizarre or even rude as a result.

i received a lot of responses regarding this post via email, Twitter and Facebook, and most people sided with me.  But no one seemed to care about my overarching message.  In the end it was all about the shoes. 

Kind of frustrating, I must admit.

Nevertheless, a few people did not agree with my position, including one reader who actually writes a blog that defends the removal of shoes in the home.

Just imagine: a whole blog dedicated to the subject!

I'm in the process of reading through the posts and am trying to maintain an open mind on the subject, but it's admittedly difficult.

The whole idea seems like lunacy to me. 

But the fact that the Internet provides a forum for a person to argue in favor of shoe removal in the home is a testament to its scope and reach. 

What an amazing world in which we live. 

A tale of two weddings

My wife and I attended two very different weddings last weekend. 

The wedding where I worked as a minister and a DJ took place in Simsbury.  The ceremony was held at a farm, complete with hogs, tractors, hay bales and dirt roads.  The couple was married in a picturesque field surrounded by similarly picturesque fields as far as the eye could see.  A single guitar player strummed the songs that accompanied the service.  Amidst the guests were several farmhands, dressed as you might expect farmhands to appear.  The bride and groom were brought to the field by horse drawn wagon.  The ceremony was short.  Fifteen minutes at most, entirely designed by the couple.  It included a Robert Louis Stevenson poem and an Apache prayer.     

While I was standing in a field amidst 150 people who more-or-less looked like me, my wife was attending the ceremony of the parent of a former student.  This ceremony was held in the same room where the couple's reception would later take place.  Instead of white chairs on grass, guests sat in the same place that they would for dinner.   

Elysha was one of three white people in the room.  The other two were the minister and someone's date. 

Short skirts, bright colors and lots of cleavage dominated the scene.  The bridal party was chewing gum during the ceremony.  As the bridesmaids and groomsmen exited the ceremony, the DJ played the song Tootsie Roll. 

And here's the thing I love about my wife.  In describing every aspect of the wedding, she did so without a single negative connotation.  In expressing the difference between this wedding and the one she typically attends, all she said was "It was culturally different,"

Not better.  Not worse.

She has always managed to find joy and appreciation in someone willing to be different.   

As a wedding DJ, I have lots of stories about non-traditional wedding decisions, differing familial traditions, and unusual requests, and when I tell these stories, people often assume that there is something wrong with the couple involved. 

Tootsie Roll at the ceremony?

Who are these people?

They are normal people, looking to have a little fun with their wedding day.  And what strikes me as most tragic is the people who complain about these non-traditional elements and unusual decisions are the same people whose weddings are utterly unmemorable.  Nothing special or different or unique marks these people's day, because in their minds, to step outside the bounds of expectation and tradition risks the judgment and condemnation of people like themselves. 

I will never forget the pigpens along the dirt road, the horse-drawn carriages, the hayseeds standing in the back, and the way the couple who I married bounced around the dance floor during their first dance to a high tempo New Radicals song that few couple would dare use for their first dance.   

And my wife will never forget the wedding where the bridal party chewed gum and Tootsie Roll was used as a recessional song.

These were special weddings.  Unique.  And while there are some who will presume that there is something wrong with these couples, there are people like my wife who will think that there is something very right about them. 

Look under the back panties

I convinced my friend's four-year old twin boys that she had hidden their driver's licenses in her underwear drawer under her black panties (because all four-year olds have driver's licenses that are hidden away from them until they turn sixteen). 

The boys left the restaurant ready and anxious to toss aside Mommy's unmentionables in search of what is rightly theirs. 

As they were leaving, one of the boys looked up at a waitress and said, "Guess what?  My mommy has a driver's license under her black underwear!"

I'm very good at lying to little boys and convincing them of the most outrageous things.

Elysha agreed but did not find this skill as endearing as I do.

She much too thin

I would like to propose a change in female behavior:

Could women please stop commenting on other women as being too thin?

This past week I heard no less than four women complain about another woman being too thin, and they reminded me of New Yorker writer Ariel Levy mentioning Cindy McCain's size zero in her litany of Cindy McCain faults during an interview about an article she wrote a couple years ago.

"She has been taught her whole life to be the little woman. She was a beauty queen. It was her job to be docile. Pretty. Really, really skinny. Remember, she's a size zero. That's a thin woman."

Cindy McCain's dress size had nothing to do with her ability to function as First Lady, yet Levy, a well-known feminist, brought it up in the interview anyway.

Ladies, could you please stop tearing down one another based upon physical appearance, particularly when it comes to a woman's weight, and especially in regards to women being too thin.

Let's face it: If a woman is too thin, she's either:

Super healthy
Sick
Obscenely self-conscious
Borderline anorexic
Already suffering from an eating disorder
Some combination of the above

None of these seem reason enough to insult the person.

More important, every time a woman complains that another woman is too thin, the one doing the complaining always comes across as petty, jealous, stupid, insensitive and/or mean.

Every time without exception.

And you're further undermining women in general in a time

Open your mouth and complain about a woman being too thin and you are nothing more than a mean bitch.

Ring-a-ling

I despise the phone.

In a recent survey of incoming calls to my phone (26 in all over a period of eight days), more than half of these calls were requests for favors and assistance. And in almost every instance, the call stopped me in the midst of something more important.

Makes me not want to own a phone. In fact, whenever I place a call, I'm often just looking to leave a voicemail, which brings me to some great news:

Ever want to leave someone a voicemail without risky them picking up the phone?

Now you can.

No more neckties

I often think of tradition in terms of aliens.

If aliens landed on the planet right now, what would they think of the activities in which we are now engaged?

As a DJ, this thought most often occurs to me as I'm leading fifty wedding guests in the Macarena. If a flying saucer landed and a three-headed alien emerged and vaporized everyone on the dance floor, me included, in fear that this ridiculous tradition might spread to other galaxies, I might not complain very much.

I've been thinking about ties in this same vein.  For reasons that I fail to understand, it is considered fashionable for men to tighten their shirts around their necks and strap on a patterned noose that is literally capable of asphyxiating them if tightened enough.

How did this ever become normal?

The tie serves no useful function, and if examined objectively (through the eyes of an alien), it is utterly ridiculous. Other than the apt metaphor that the tie serves, marking man's forced enslavement to cultural norms, this self-strung noose is nothing but an unnecessary expense and a stupid looking accessory. When I see a man wearing a tie (myself included), I can't help but think how ridiculous and conquered he appears, the pathetic victim of a cultural norm gone awry.  

I thought I stood alone in my opinion, but happily I do not. Tie sales have suffered a sharp decline in recent years as people of similar thinking take similar stands.  Kathryn Hughes of the Guardian (I love the British) attempts to explain this trend by writing that "the tie is the sartorial equivalent of an appendix - an entirely redundant bit of kit left over from a much earlier phase of evolution. …it is at least a couple of centuries since men felt it necessary to protect their throats in the street from anyone making a lunge at the jugular with a sword."

She also indicates that the tie serves as an outdated means of defining class, and that these markers of wealth and distinction are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

And so a few years ago I stopped wearing ties, and in order to reinforce the point, I threw most my ties away. 

And yet on Sunday I wore a tie. 

This was the first time that I had worn a necktie in more than two years, and two years ago, I only wore a tie because I was a member of my sister-in-law's bridal party. 

On Sunday, I wore a tie because I was serving as minister in a wedding and was asked to do so, but as soon as I arrived at the reception and assumed my role of DJ, the tuxedo went on but the tie came off.

Except in specifically requested and understandably necessary circumstances, I do not wear ties. 

But even so, it frustrates me that there are still days when I still find myself strapping that noose around my neck to appease a cultural norm.

And even though I believe that most people would agree with my assessment of the tie if they take the time to examine the situation objectively, few are willing to rise up and challenge the norm, and still fewer are willing to allow norm-breakers to be themselves. In debating the need to wear a tie with a man recently, he said to me, "Look. It doesn't matter how you or I feel about wearing it. Just put it on. It's expected."

Have we forgotten that less than fifty years ago, the hat was even more ubiquitous than the tie?  Men wore hats almost wherever they went, and hat racks could be found in every public establishment.  Ask a man in 1955 if hats would ever become a thing of the past and he might sound as short-sighted and narrow-minded as the guy who told me to "Just put it on.  It's expected."

In 1955, the disappearance of the hat would have been unimaginable.  And yet it happened. 

And American Poet Laureate wrote a brilliant poem about the extinction of the hat that I have attached below.    

I mentioned this fact to the man I was debating, and he scoffed, insisting that wearing a tie was expected and wasn't asking much of me. 

How pathetic, I thought, that this man no longer has the strength of character or gumption to stand up for what he believes, or at least stand aside while others do so.

I couldn't help but think that he deserved that paisley noose around his neck.

Death of the Hat

Once every man wore a hat.

In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities
are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled
with thousands of strawhats,
brims and bands,
rows of men smoking
and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs
who branded your initials in gold
on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.
Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.
Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat
and a hatcheck girl to mind it
while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.
In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared
everyone in the street was wearing a hat.
And they were wearing hats
when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day
and returned home
carrying the evening paper,
the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded
into the winter streets,
stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house
wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
in their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,
wears a hat of earth,
and on top of that,
a lighter one of cloud and sky--a hat of wind.

Its your house and your rules, but I dont have to like them.

Slate's Emily Yoffe offers advice to a woman who would like visitors to remove their shoes upon entering her home.  In the words of the advice-seeker:

"How do I let guests know that I want them to take off their shoes without posting a nagging sign by the door?"

"I always take my shoes off, and I think it's a polite gesture"

Yoffe's advice is good.  She tells this advice seeker that removing one's shoes upon entering the home is a reasonable expectation in Japan, but here in America, she needs to forget this ridiculous expectation and allow her guests to keep their sneakers on.

My advice, however, would be slightly different. 

I have friends who ask guests to remove their shoes upon entering the home, and they go so far as providing a basket of slippers for their guests.  I find the requirement ridiculous, as would Yoffe, but I would not tell them that they should end the practice.  It's their home and they have the right to set the ground rules. 

They just have to understand and accept that most people, including myself, find the rule ridiculous and silly.  

And because I am who I am, I have made my feelings clear.  Upon entering their home a couple year's ago, the wife said, "You don't think it's a big deal to take off your shoes.  Right, Matty?"

Clearly she was sensing my annoyance or had dealt with someone else's complaints earlier.  Either way, I answered, "Actually, I think the rule is ridiculous and a little rude, but it's your home, so I follow your rules."

There were attempts on the wife's behalf to explain why the rule was a good one, including the likelihood that their newborn daughter would soon be crawling on the floors,  but ultimately I had to explain to her that I would probably always find the rule ridiculous, but it would not change the way I felt about her or my desire to visit their home.

Though her husband seemed fine with this, I got the sense that this did not sit as well with her, and I suspect that it would not sit well with the advice seeker in Yoffe's video, either. 

In her letter, the new homeowner is essentially asking Yoffe to explain how she can ask people to remove their shoes upon entering her home without her guests find her rule ridiculous, annoying, off-putting and strange.

But here's the thing:

When you establish rules and customs outside the norms, people will always think of you as ridiculous, annoying, off-putting and strange. 

You need to either learn to live with this perception or conform.

You can't ask Americans to remove their shoes upon entering the home without annoying a majority of your guests.  It's simply not something that is done in the majority of American households.  Fortunately, most people will lie in circumstances like these, assuring the homeowner that the rule is understandable and fine and completely sensible.  But rest assured that in most cases there will be a subsequent conversation in the car after the visit about the oddity and annoyance of the rule.

I just choose to be upfront and honest when asked a question, even if the answer might make the questioner uncomfortable. 

In fact, my friend has warned his wife to avoid asking me questions if she might not like the answer. 

This is an example of my ridiculous, annoying, off-putting, strange non-conforming behavior.  And while I know there was probably a conversation about it after I left the house that day, I understand and accept this.  I am being true to myself, and I know that oftentimes that is considered rude. 

Unfortunately, most people are unwilling to accept that their non-conformity is different, strange or off-putting. 

When my daughter was fourteen months old and still not watching a minute of television, many of our friends and family thought my wife and I were being acting ridiculous.  There were probably conversations about us behind our backs.

We were fine with that.

When I threw all my neckties away and began showing up at formal occasions like weddings without one, I am sure that there were many people rolling their eyes and thinking that I was acting like a child.

I'm fine with that. 

When I refuse to engage in conversations about the cost and appropriateness of certain gifts, I know that there are people in my life who find my decision to walk away from these conversations rude and unnecessary.

I'm fine with that, too.

I have a whole host of oddities that I am sure offend people.

I don't say "Bless you" when someone sneezes because doing so presumes a religious belief upon the sneezer and is an empty blessing from me considering my lack of religious belief.

When a guy squeezes too hard when shaking my hand, I say, "Ow!  That's hurts!  Who taught you how to shake a guy's hand?" because accepting the pain without complaint seems silly and subservient to me.

I sleep in the shape of a question mark at times in order to allow my dog to sleep on the bed wherever she likes.

All of these behaviors are not normal, and I would expect my friends and family to think of me as a little odd and possibly foolish.   

I accept this.  

So I would tell Yoffe's advice-seeker the same thing I told my friend:

Asking people to remove their shoes upon entering your home is a perfectly reasonable request given that it is your home, but you must also understand that your rule is ridiculous, silly, annoying, and makes you look a little strange.  You may believe that this rule is perfectly sensible, but most people do not.  As a result, you will always be perceived as the weirdo who makes people remove their shoes at the door.   

Just be willing to live with this perception and everything will be fine.