dang it

I wonder if I'm the only one bothered by these things?

When I buy a soft drink at the drive through window, and they hand me a cup with cola dripping off the sides and bottom of the cup so that when I move it across my lap to the cupholder, it drips on my business clothes.

When there is a left-over sock when I finish folding the clean clothes.

When someone leaves a message on my voicemail at the house or the office, and they say their phone number so fast that I can't distinguish the numbers. Even on the third listen.

When the stockers in the grocery store completely block the aisle with their boxes so that shoppers can't buy groceries. (Didn't they use to restock in the middle of the night when shoppers weren't around?)

When the dry cleaner presses the lapels on my business suit unevenly so that one lapel ends three inches higher than the other.

When someone leaves a wall of blinds adjusted at different heights and tilts.

Similarly, when someone leaves cabinet doors and drawers open.

When someone leaves toothpaste spit in the sink.

When clerks in department stores talk loudly to each other about their personal lives or their frustration with their jobs while I'm trying to pay them for purchases.

When mail arrives mangled.

When I pick up the wrong thing in the store and don't notice until I unpack the sack at home.

When a waiter serves my food with his thumb stuck in the edge of the edibles.

When drivers go slow in the left lane.

When I'm driving the speed limit in the left lane and drivers are mad because I'm not driving fast enough.

When no one at our dining table will eat the last piece of something (because it's last!) and it gets thrown away even though several people would have liked to have it.

unwritten lore

When I was in the first, second, and third grades, I learned a variety of songs, poems, conventional wisdom, and jokes on the playground at recess.

Many of these strange pieces of oral history involved either a topic that couldn't be discussed with adults or the use of words that we were not generally allowed to pronounce out loud.

I always assumed that these elementary school discussions were particular to my school in my town. Imagine my surprise years later when I discovered that children in cities far from my hometown had learned the identical songs and jokes!

It was one of those late nights in the girls dorm at a university when somehow we began sharing the silly elementary school no-no's that we had repeated so deliciously when we were six or seven or eight years old. It was amazing to discover that regardless of which part of the U.S. the elementary school was located in, the same naughty poems were being recited.

At that time, young children did not have cell phones and internet connections. How did that unwritten lore travel across the nation with such accuracy? We know from the gossip game that a secret passed around rarely ends up as it began.

Certainly, the cadence and rhyming helped cement the consistency of the songs and poems. Perhaps it was the forbidden nature of the jokes that caused them to be repeated with such unerring accuracy.

I wonder if the communication principles of that very effective childish network are duplicated among adults. Maybe "old wives tales" are a similar form of communication outside standard communications channels. Maybe today's urban legends are a similar phenomenon.

Signs

I love reading signs.

When driving across the U.S., I'm entertained by the small town combination businesses. Bob's auto repair and bait shop. Susie's florist and nail salon. I always wonder what caused them to add on the second part. Was business slow in the first business and the second was added on to fill the available time? Did Bob or Susie suffer a mid-life crisis and need a change?

Hair stylists seem to be unusually creative in naming their establishments. I liked "Metamorphesis" and "Hair and Hairafter." I was a little worried about the "Curl Up and Dye" shop and also "From Hair to Eternity."

The names of funeral homes also offer good possibilities. The one in my hometown was named for the owner, a man whose last name was Pickle.

I think they changed the name of the hospital that was named for Mr. Dedman.

On one of my road trips not long ago I was noticing how many storage facilities have been built in virtually every town along the highway. (Do we really have THAT much stuff!?) That's when I noticed the sign: Self Storage.

Immediately, my mind conjured up a wall of lockers where people could hide themselves away. The ads might be: "Rat race getting to you? We've got just the place for you!"

I guess the locks would have to be on the inside.

I wonder if that's where all the people on the milk cartons have gone?

Friend capacity

Some people have one best friend. Some people have several very close friends or confidantes. Other people seem to have fairly strong connections to a large number of friends.

Some people have several close friends and a larger number of friends that are not so close. Other people seem to have an army of friends, but none of them are particularly intimate friends.

I wonder if people have a genetic code built into them that determines how many and what kind of friendships they will develop. Could you build three or five or more categories (type A: one close friend; type B: no close friend; many acquaintences; etc.) for the various models?

Thinking further, will a "Type A: one close friend person" never be able to sustain two close friends? That is, will that person end up changing close friends rather than adding a second close friend?

Or, if a person seeks a CLOSE friendship with a "Type B: no close friend" person, is that effort doomed from the start?

This line of thinking contemplates people as hardware with a certain number of ports available for connections. In this scenario, a person would be unable to change themselves to another category of person.

Or is the structure of relationships around a person more environmentally influenced? This might mean that when a person was in college he had more close relationships than later in life. Or that a married person might have more friends because of the development of couple to couple relationships.

After observing people for many years, I keep gravitating back to the genetic "friend capacity" idea. Some people seem simply unable to sustain many relationships, while others manage an extensive network of friends.

I wonder: is this just a matter of personal choice, or is it influenced by environment, or is it more a matter of the way we are constructed?

Comparisons

I'm wondering about a strange principle: that we have to learn something new and different in order to fully understand something old and familiar.

In high school I studied Spanish; I actually learned more about the English language than I did about the new, foreign language. I learned new English vocabulary and finally understood some of the rules of English grammar.

I think that occurred because I benefited from being able to compare two things. By learning Spanish grammar, I could better understand English grammar -- by comparison.

This principle isn't limited to languages. I noticed the same pattern recently when I went to another country. I expected to learn about THEIR culture. In fact, I learned a lot about my own culture -- by comparison.

I learned that the fundamental American ideas of individualism and fairness are applied to the way we drive, the way we board a bus, and the way we approach meals. I never realized that I held strong (maybe unreasonable -- at least unfounded) preferences until I was around people who did not share those preferences.

This isn't to say that I am going to change my preferences. What I'm saying is that now I recognize my preferences and I understand them in light of a different way of thinking.

Interesting, isn't it, that we have to leave to understand where we are . . . that we have to give up things in order to value them . . . that we don't see clearly until we get some distance away.