Fair

I'm lazy,so I'm posting something I've done elsewhere. The following is a piece I wrote for an online forum group that was given the prompt, "Fair? You want fair?" It started out as a dialogue between characters having an argument about the fairness of life, but it sounded so full of cliches that I scrapped it. Then I read a piece by Margaret Atwood that got me thinking of trying it as an assertion rather than a question. This eventually led me to try writing it in the second person. I almost never write in the second person. But here it is.


Fair. You want fair? Of course you do. Everyone does.

All your life you’ve been told to be fair, play fair, act fair, and you expect fairness in return. You build your life around being fair. You speckle your speech with statements like “to be fair,” it’s only fair,” “in all fairness”.

You build a fairness cocoon around yourself. It envelops you and all those around you.

The cocoon is layered with all the fairness you’ve spun in careful, cobwebby threads over the course of a lifetime. It’s a glowing, shimmery fuzz ball of goodness and light. It must be good because in your mind, fair equals good.

Using an invisible scale, you balance how much love, goodwill, and self to allocate to friends, family, charities, causes good and maybe not so good. You take your cue from a friend who donates to charities that support all the major body organs – heart, lung, kidneys, liver, brain (it’s only fair).

You do your best - giving equal time to your children and spouse - but, in all fairness, the children do require more attention when they’re young and time can always be made up to your spouse later on. You tell yourself it balances out in the end. You give similar Christmas gifts to your friends, so none will feel slighted. But wait. They don’t want the same things. So you do the next best thing. Buy gifts of equal dollar value. But then, Sally thinks Jane’s gift is nicer and Jane wonders if you could please give her the receipt for the scarf so she can exchange it for a different colour. And of course, you tell her you’re happy with the souvenir T-shirt from Las Vegas. Who wouldn’t be? To say anything less would be rude, and it wouldn’t be fair to hurt her feelings.

You mete out fairness to the best of your ability. But like Halloween candy, you notice that a little extra always goes to your best friend’s son or the cute little boy next door. You find out Auntie Nina really didn’t want the same amount of turkey dressing as Uncle Joe, and Val will never be happy with what she gets because nothing is ever good enough.

There are times when people tell you that you’re unfair. This, you know, is incorrect. You know you are fair because you have rules that govern your fairness. You abide by the Golden Rule. Do unto others, et cetera. Nothing could be more fair.

You await fairness in return.

But fairness doesn’t always come your way. You wait patiently in line for your turn, but get shoved out of the way by a shouting complainer. You work hard and sacrifice time away from your family, but get laid off to make way for the boss’s son. You treat women with respect and kindness, but they go for the douche-bag who treats them with disdain.

You start to think that maybe life isn’t fair. At least, that’s what others tell you. Life isn’t fair. Get used to it. But maybe it’s not that life isn’t fair. It’s just that everyone plays by different rules. They don’t play by your golden rule. They have their own fairness rules. An eye for an eye, whoever wields the biggest stick wins, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, all’s fair in love and war – these are fairness rules too.

You don’t believe their rules. You can’t believe them. So you continue following your own rules; you continue wrapping yourself and those around you in your fairness cocoon because it makes you feel good. You bask, warm and cozy in your fairness cocoon. Perhaps, if it grows big enough and long enough, it will burst forth in a gigantic, multi-coloured butterfly; wings unfurling, beating back all the unfairness and inequity that still exists.

Meanwhile, you hope your cocoon will keep you safe against the cold, sharp barbs of unfairness flung from afar and not so far. It doesn’t always work. Occasionally, a dark lance will slice through, its point searching for your heart.

Maybe life isn’t fair. Maybe it’s not meant to be fair, but you keep trying to be fair anyways. What else can you do?

Quote:
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you. - Alan Alda

Microfiction Monday

I've found a new-to-me site for playing with words. Susan from Stony River says:

Welcome to Microfiction Monday,
where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

For Microfiction Monday #34



"What's the matter?"

"You always go first."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. You’re doing it now."

"Then you go first."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don’t know the way."

When a sweater isn't just a sweater

Linda: Why don't you just get rid of it.

Jack: What?

Linda: That (pointing at his old rugby sweater). You said you'd get rid of it. You were going to take it to the thrift shop.

Jack: I'm thinking about it.

Linda: What do you mean 'thinking about it'? Either you are or you aren't.

Jack: I like it. It's not like I wear it when we go out or anything. What's the big deal?

Linda: No big deal. It just bugs me when you say you're going to do something and then don't.

Jack: It's comfortable. It's good to have something around that's comfortable.

Linda: And what about the new one I bought for you?

Jack: That's different.

Linda: What's different about it?

Jack: It's not as comfortable.

Linda: What do you mean not comfortable?

Jack: I said "not as" comfortable. It's broken in – comfortable – I can relax in it. It's good for lounging around – when I can't find something to wear.

Linda: You could break in the new one. Don't you like it?

Jack: Of course I do. I love it. It's my favourite. Just because I still like the old one doesn't mean I don't like yours.

Linda: You could have fooled me!

Jack: You're making way too big a thing out of this! Will it make you happy if I get rid of it?

Linda: Yes.

Jack: Alright then. Tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow.


From Thirteen Prompts by Dan Wiencek:
Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man's friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

O is for

Oriental, the opposite of occidental.

That’s what I was called when I was growing up (along with some other more colourful epithets) until Asian became the modifier du jour.

I’ve never really understood the vagaries and inconsistencies of modifying people by geography. Nowadays, the terms Asian or African, either in hyphenation or not, are used as all encompassing descriptors of people who may or may not have been born or even set foot on said continent. It supposedly indicates one's ancestral origins – no matter how many generations removed. Yet, we don’t call someone European unless they in fact are -- at the present, in this generation -- from Europe. e.g. Someone visiting from Europe or just landed from Italy – in which case we’re just as likely to call them Italian.

Let’s look at this scenario: Here is a diverse neighbourhood with a multitude of ethnicities. Most of the families have lived here for several generations. Why do we say that Mrs. Sandhu is South-Asian; I’m a garden variety Asian; Mr. Brown, next door, is African; yet Mrs. Smith is just Mrs. Smith, a Canadian (or American)? Even more incongruous is when we look at the two new families down the street. Both have recently arrived from the UK; one is called Asian, the other is a Brit. Why not European?

I’m also called Chinese-Canadian even though I’m a third generation Canadian. I often wonder when the hyphenation ends. How many generations before the nation of your birth takes precedence over the country of your ancestors?

It’s something to ponder

Sunday Scribblings - Quitting

"Quitter!"

"Who's a quitter?"

"You are."

"Just because I don't want to do something anymore doesn't mean I'm a quitter."

I don't quit. I give up. Sometimes that's what you have to do.

There are times in life when what you are pursuing just isn't worth the time, aggravation and effort anymore - perhaps the pursuit was the real endgame; when you've given it your all and there's no more to give, short of your life or your soul; when it's time to wave the white flag; when it's time to graciously step away and say, "Sorry folks, but I'm done". It's not a bad thing.

This is another one of those things I wish I'd known when I was younger, but then again, maybe it's something everyone needs to learn on their own.


For Sunday Scribblings

Shadows

Shadows.
I'm not afraid
of dark and light
flickering on the walls
of black cats
and shadow people
poltergeists and ghosts
campfire, Halloween and Grimm's tales
unbidden from the mind and
things that go bump in the night.

I'm not afraid.
They disappear at first light

Don't they?

For First 50 Words

What are you doing?

“Nothing.”

“There’s no such thing as doing nothing.”

“I’m just reading.”

“There. You see? That’s not nothing. Reading is something.”

“Okay, okay. I’m not doing nothing. I’m doing something; and that something is reading. Happy now?”

“I only asked a simple question. Why can’t you just answer a simple question?”

Lately, all their arguments started like this.


For First 50 Words

If my life were a dance - First 50 Words

If my life were a dance it would be a free-form interpretative dance; a go with the flow, make it up as you go kind of dance. It would be adaptational and look a little like Isadora Duncan meets Twyla Tharp and American Ballet Theatre.

See more from First 50 Words

A Smorgasbord - for Sunday Scribblings

(Look -> here <-- to see what this is all about. 92 prompts in one story.)

When we were wee, life was like a chocolate sundae. Sweet, yummy and blissful. Perhaps I should say blissed out. Because I don't think childhood is rooted much in reality. At least, not the adult version of reality.

Fantasy was a mainstay of my childhood. Bedtime stories allowed my imagination to sprout wings and fuelled inspiration for secret identities where I could be the wicked stepmother or monster one moment and hero the next. No masks necessary.

I always met bedtime with anticipation. Bed was a place to go on a dream journey – destination; unknown. The following morning, I'd sit in the kitchen where I regaled the family with another new tale.

These stories always troubled my grandmother. They gave her goosebumps because according to her old-world superstition, she believed that retelling dreams was like bringing a fortune cookie to life. It would bring both punishment and reward, but most likely the former. A powerful force, that could change the course of an already slippery life.

My earliest memory of real storytelling was with my best friend, Dana. We had an ongoing storyline called the "Chronicles of ED" (our initials). The chronicles always began with the words, "I have an idea" or "I have a secret". They ranged from silliness about my shoes to the weightier issues of first love and the spicy details of a date. Anything was fair game and went on until one of us said the words, "the end". It didn't matter to me if Dana had done most of the talking in the past hour, as long as I got my 2 cents worth in, I was okay with it.

It's still a mystery how Dana and I became so close because we came from totally different backgrounds. I was The Town Mouse to her Country Mouse. Yet we were like two peas in a pod. We shared everything: our deepest darkest secrets, skin and hair tips, music; we even had our first crush on the same guy who approached us with the lame pickup line, "Hi, my name is Larry. What's your sign?" We shared a collector personality – collectors of quotes and snippets of overheard conversation – invaluable for our storytelling.

After college, as one last fling before beginning real life as adults, we went backpacking in Europe. We continued our storytelling tradition as fellow travelers by keeping a journal titled, "Hotel Stories – With (or without) Baggage".

If I could stop time or go back with a Time Machine, it would be to this part of my life. Alternatively, if I could be an omnipotent monarch, my first act as Queen of the World would be to banish all greed and pettiness.

Dana planned to be a writer. I wasn't so sure what I would do. My own writing began with simple Dear Diary entries and I had continued keeping journals throughout school, but writing as a career was something else. If money had been no object, I would have made the decision to become a writer after our European trip. As it turns out, we said our goodbyes, Dana gave strict instructions to keep in touch, and we went our separate ways.

My first job was also my worst job. I was organizer of a hospital fundraiser and Christmas dance. I carry holiday memories of tuxedoed strangers kissing in boozy embrace and helping guide (carry) tipsy socialites back to waiting limousines. I'll never view society pages the same again. I couldn't continue.


I realized that my dream job was writing. So, I got hired on a news-talk radio station writing a little of everything. I got very good at summarizing what was in the news. Heck, I even did a piece about the inner life of pets.

I continued to do my own writing on the side and began submitting pieces to various online magazines. Through Google magic, Dana found one of them. She sincerely congratulated me on the publication. She, too, was doing okay with her writing. Then something happened – it became a competition between us. Who had the most/latest published piece; was it syndicated? I suppose not an uncommon phenomenon – but she became more nemesis than friend. The last straw was when she called me a thief for using an anecdote from our Hotel Stories journal. I snapped. As a child, I had dreamed of the books I would write. I didn't need her approval. I was a writer, period.

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life or fall victim of a misspent youth. There is no second chance. I've decided that rather than dream about who else I might have been, I should think about who else I can still be.

Every now and then, I get that sinking feeling I'll never write anything worth reading, but then it brings me back to my three wishes I shared with Dana way back in childhood.

That's why I live where I live - next to the ocean, pen, paper and laptop at hand.

Life is good.



If you made it to the end, congratulations!

Here's the list I used (original minus the 8 I've already used):
Real Life --- When we were wee --- Chocolate --- Why I live where I live --- My Shoes --- The books I would write --- Three Wishes --- First Love --- Earliest Memory --- Mystery --- Bed --- Music --- Two Peas in a Pod --- Hotel Stories --- With Baggage --- Thief --- My 2 Cents --- Who else I might have been --- Who else can I still be? --- The Inner Life of Pets --- Monster --- Fortune Cookie --- I would never write... --- Google Magic --- Instructions --- Skin --- If I could stop time --- Good --- Bedtime Stories --- Morning --- I don't want to be a passenger in my own life. --- Hero --- Nemesis --- In the last hour --- Punishment and Reward --- Anticipation --- Change --- Destination --- Kissing --- I have an idea --- Fantasy --- Chronicles --- Goodbyes --- Yummy --- Crush --- Troubled --- Superstition --- Dream Journey --- Inspiration --- In the Kitchen --- Deepest darkest --- In the news... --- Secret Identity --- Rooted --- Wings --- Ocean --- Second Chance --- Masks -- Simple --- The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse --- Spicy--- I have a secret --- What's your sign? --- Slippery --- Hair --- Wicked --- Phenomenon --- Decision --- Goosebumps --- Dear Diary --- I get that sinking feeling --- the end --- Writing --- Collector Personality --- Hi, my name is... --- Powerful --- First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job --- My first act as Queen/King of the World would be --- Hospital --- Money --- I Carry --- Misspent youth --- Competition --- Dance --- Holiday Memories --- Now & Then --- New --- The Date --- Fellow Travelers --- Passion --- Time Machine

B is for Broken *

When I was about six years old, I had a walking doll.

She looked a little like this:

Walking dolls were all the rage in the 50s and mine had been given to me as a Christmas present. She was about twenty inches high and was the most beautiful doll I'd ever owned.

One summer afternoon, when we'd run out of things to do and boredom was setting in, my cousin, Bobby, decided that it would be interesting to try and open up the doll and see what was inside. I thought it would be interesting too, but didn't think it was such a good idea.

Cousin Bobby persisted. He assured me that it would be okay. It would be like an operation and we'd be able to put her back together again. He "promised". What did I know? He was a whopping two months older than me and always took charge about these things. Against my better judgment, I agreed.

We found a pair of my grandmother's sewing scissors and Bobby set to work. With the pointy-end of the scissors, he poked a hole through the rubbery skin. Then snip, snip, snip through her chest. She was full of white cottony stuffing. Next, he twisted off her head. Well, that was interesting. It was mostly hollow but we could see how her eyes rolled up and down inside the sockets.

We were giggling and probably making quite a racket when my grandmother came up behind us. She looked at the doll, took away the scissors and told us to clean up the mess, then walked away. That's when I took a good look at what we'd done. Legs, arms and head had been twisted off and bits of stuffing lay amid the doll clothes that we'd been so careful to remove.

There was no way we'd ever put that doll back together. She was utterly broken and I was heartbroken. For days afterward, tears welled up in my eyes every time I thought about it. It was Bobby's idea, but my own decision to go along with him.

Bobby got a spanking over this episode, but no one spoke to me again about what we'd done. I was never reprimanded or punished. I think the family knew our destruction of the doll was punishment enough.


* Another Encylopedia of Me blog.

Encyclopedia of Me

Lately, I've come across several Encyclopedia of Me blogs. Some of them have been around for awhile and a good number have been abandoned. Still, I'm always looking for ideas to prompt my writing and this one seems to have merit.

As far as I can tell, it originated with a meme dreamed up by Bella Dia in this post and she, in turn, got the idea from the book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, titled Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.

The instructions are simple: Write a post per day (or thereabouts) for one month using the alphabet from A to Z as the prompt. It can be about anything to do with your life - past or current. It can be short, long, serious or whimsical. Pretty much anything goes.

Since there seem to be several variations of the original (just do a Google search and you'll find lots), I've also decided to do my own take on it. Instead of one letter per day for a month (and because I think this should be a pleasure, not a chore), I've decided not to have any time constraints -- just A to Z posts whenever the fancy strikes. It may take me a month. It may take me a year. I'll have to wait and see how it all plays out.

Here's my first:

A is for Artistic
When I was young, my relatives thought I was artistic. They gave me gifts of pens and crayons, drawing books and sketch pads, how-to draw anatomy and learn-to-paint books. I don't know where this perception came from because I never felt particularly artistic. Perhaps, my mother was artistic. She died when I was a toddler and I don't have any memory of her. So maybe the family was projecting their image of her onto me.

At any rate, when I was in school, certain teachers persisted in this same notion. I still didn't get it. I didn't have the drive to spend endless hours sketching and painting like my friend Kathy. Now, Kathy was talented. She drew constantly. Her books and papers were filled with doodles and wonderful landscapes. She used every available piece of paper, including the margins of notebooks. You can imagine my shock when one of our teachers chose me along with Kathy to decorate and paint the classroom windows one Christmas. I felt like a fraud beside a real artist.

Around the same time, I realized that being smart – as in intelligent - was more highly valued in my family and at school than being artistic. I tried my best to prove that I was more "smart" than artistic. This tactic, more or less worked. I left behind my art supplies and went on to university and took mostly sciences. I occasionally took out my sketch book and made half-hearted attempts at drawing. Nothing was ever quite good enough for my liking. More often than not, pages were torn out and thrown in the wastebasket. I was my own worse critic and could never get past the self-editing (I now realize this had a lot to do with my inner competitive nature - but more about that another time).

Later, I married and had children. Lo and behold. D, my first-born, from the age he could hold a crayon in his little fingers, loved to draw and colour. When he learned how to draw a car, he drew pages and pages and pages of cars of every size, shape and colour imaginable. When he learned to draw people (well, cartoon people), he doodled caricatures and cartoons everywhere. When he was given colouring books by well-meaning friends and family, he always came up with atypical colours (what, you've never seen a tree with purple leaves?), and more often than not, coloured and drew extra "stuff" outside the lines. Clearly, he was more artistic than I ever was. I let him and his imagination be.

When he got to elementary school, his teachers noticed his artistic abilities and his artwork was often posted on the walls and bulletin boards. In about grade 6 or 7, he was asked to paint a winter scene on the classroom window. No other instructions, just a winter scene. Because he was a huge hockey fan, he decided to paint a hockey scene. Hockey is a winter sport, right? Well, it turns out he painted a scene of a hockey fight – complete with a bloody-nosed, bruised and cut combatant. The picture was deemed inappropriate and his teacher and principal told him so. He was forced to wash off the offending painting and not allowed to do another.

D was mad. He couldn't understand why his teacher hadn't been more specific in his instructions and/or at least give him another chance. If he had wanted a picture of children frolicking in the snow, why didn't he just say so.

Now, D was and still remains a strong-willed and independent free spirit. He's not one to go down without a fight. In this case, he couldn't really do much about the windows. The teacher had made up his mind and that was that (although D confided in me that he was tempted to erase all the windows in the class when no one was around). I asked him if I could speak to the teacher about it. He flatly said, no because he'd already tried and it wouldn't help.

Then, for the remainder of the year, he mounted his own silent protest. In some ways, I think it was a subconscious reaction. He doodled and sketched in the margins of all his school notebooks, assignments, and even test papers, if he had extra time. And guess what he drew? He sketched cartoons and caricatures of people fighting – the bloodier and gorier the better.

His teacher was not pleased. The teacher spoke to him about it. We spoke to him about it. He was given detentions. He didn't care. He thought he'd been treated unfairly, and felt this was his only way to express his displeasure.

Eventually, he got over it, but sometimes I blanch to think what some child psychologist might have thought about those bloody pictures.

300 words

Procrastination is the bane of all would-be writers. My procrastination takes many forms. One of my favourite ways of avoiding work of any kind is by sitting in front of my computer screen and deciding that I simply must check on a favourite message board for new posts. This is followed by checking for new email; and by-golly, the Inbox is getting mighty full and needs some deleting; and surely someone has posted something new on Forum xyz.

Eventually, I open up a game of Spider Solitaire. Spider Solitaire must be the spawn of some evil-minded hater of writers and workers everywhere. Anyone who works in front of a computer screen and has Spider Solitaire installed on their desktop is a victim waiting to happen.

It's just too easy to open up -- for just one or two quick games. Two hours later, bleary-eyed and half-asleep, you vow to yourself, just one more game. Come to think of it, I think I'm addicted. Having an addictive personality certainly doesn't help, but having an addictive, procrastinating personality is even worse.

I'm procrastinating as I type this. Although having just finished re-reading Bird by Bird: Some Instructions On Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, I'm not really procrastinating, I'm just doing my 300 words a day. Never mind that it may end up nothing but tripe. She says it's perfectly okay, so long as I write something. So why not procrastinate by writing about procrastination, which really isn't procrastinating because I'm actually doing something. How about that for circular logic? The other thing I can get away with is that this is what Lamott calls a "shitty first draft" and can include almost anything as long as it's coming out and onto the page. Kind of like stream of consciousness, but maybe more like diarrhoea of the typing fingers.

One of these days what I write or let flow, if you will, is actually going to make sense and have some coherence. She (Lamott) claims that writers don't really know how they do it so much as they produce something by just doing it. I think it's true. Sometimes, as now, I just type whatever comes into my head and let the thoughts flow and the words somehow come too.

Now, it may be that after I'm done today's writing, and I re-read this, I'm going to think I need a brain transplant. On the other hand, (where is the first hand – but I digress) I think it's the feeling that thoughts do lead to words that can be set down on paper. It doesn't have to make sense right away, but when you write, at least it allows your mind to free-flow somewhere it wouldn't have gone had you been more intentional.

I used to have a little game I played when I was younger. I'd think of something interesting or for me, what I thought was profound, then wonder how I got there. Silly, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but one'll come to me. Anyways, I'd start tracing backwards, each thought, emotion or idea that led to where I was at the present. I was usually shocked at how my mind traveled in such circuitous routes to end up wherever it was I ended up. I think writing is kind of like that. You have to let your mind just carry you along and let your fingers follow on the keyboard. It might be tripe, but occasionally you come up with something worthwhile. And the journey to get there is sometimes just as interesting as the end result.

So here I've done more than my 300 words of a shitty first draft. Who knows if something else will come out of this. Thank you, Anne Lamott for inspiring me to at least put words on paper.

Eccentricity

I have a compulsion to watch the movie, "Jaws", before I go on beach vacations. Eccentric or just plain weird? Perhaps there's some horrible psychological, even pathological, meaning to this little quirk of mine. You decide.

I'm not quite sure how it all started.

I loved Jaws when it first came out in 1975 -- the best movie of that summer.

I remember it scared the bejeebers out of me. I remember watching in horror and fascination as the first victim was tugged this way and that by the unseen shark; screaming at the part when Hooper is in the water at night examining Ben Gardner's chewed-up boat and the head pops out of the hull; and watching right to the end credits when Hooper and Chief Brody drag themselves onto the beach after paddling to shore on the detritus that was The Orca.

When it came out on video, I first rented it, then bought it on VHS tape. Later, I bought the Special Edition VHS. Now, I have it on DVD with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the actors.

I can't remember how many times I've watched it. At least enough times that I know most of the dialogue - even the obscure lines like, "That's not funny. I'm sorry, I don't think it's funny." If you know who said that, you get a special Snoopy sticker. What can I say, I liked the movie.

Somewhere along the line I found myself watching it while packing for a trip to Hawaii. Not all that unusual – right? Who doesn't put on some music or the TV or a movie while doing a chore? One day, I realized that before every single trip to Hawaii (which was yearly at that point), I watched Jaws.

It didn't occur to me that it was that odd until one of my sons asked, "Why do you watch Jaws before going to the beach? Isn't it a bit creepy?" To which I had to admit, "I suppose . . .."

The problem now is that I can't stop. It's become part of my packing and getting ready ritual (there's that obsessive-compulsive nature of mine again).

Maybe it's just a subconscious protective mechanism to remind me not to venture out too far in the ocean. Maybe it means I have a subconscious desire to be bitten. Maybe it's a means to assuage pc guilt for all the shark-fin soup I've had in the past. Maybe it's simply a case of me being a creature of habit. Maybe I'm just eccentric.


From a Sunday Scribblings prompt: "admit any eccentricities you have"
More Eccentricity