Author: Bev

What’s wrong?  What doesn’t belong?

When I was a child at school, we were presented with pictures, say of a nest, a ball, and a bird.  What doesn’t go? 

Am I a hypochondriac if I notice something ‘s not quite right with my body?  Something’s wrong.

Maybe I’m not right about what’s wrong, but I’m not wrong that something doesn’t belong.  In this case, hindsight is not all that helpful.

I’m pretty sure that I learned sometime along the line that I should trust my instincts.  I should recognize signals and listen beyond the obvious.

It’s always on a weekend, usually a Sunday.  Or, it’s late at night, when you can’t call your doctor’s office to get a last-minute appointment.

This wasn’t an accident.  There was no blood gushing from any wound or orifice.  I didn’t arrive with lights flashing or sirens blaring.

I was kind of sure by the time I arrived, all the symptoms would have disappeared.  That’s how it goes.  Even though I looked a bit worse for the wear, I didn’t look bad for going to Walmart late at night, or to the ER.

Almost everybody who has a need to visit an ER for yourself or to accompany a loved one, knows you’re in for a long wait the moment you step through the hospital’s automatic doors.  The question is, will I feel a fool for having done this.

If I tend to blow something out of proportion, my husband has been known to say, “it’s not a crisis.”  Well, I’m of the mind that “crisis” is relative to the beholder.  Maybe it’s not a crisis to you, but it’s my body that’s not quite right.

However, whether something is a crisis, or ER-worthy, is best known only in hindsight.  In other words, you never know.

This story is a composite of the experiences of several folks from whom I’ve heard or seen, regarding their ER sagas.  So, the pronouns “I” and “me” are used not as personal pronouns but as an “anybody.”

I had been startled a couple of hours prior, with a sudden, toothache-like pain on the left side of my torso.  Added to degenerative disc pain on my left lower back that had been troubling that week, it was scary but it subsided.  I took a shower and chilled out in front of the television.

Then it happened again while I was laying on a heating pad on the sofa.  It was so acute that I shot up to a seated position and hobbled to the bathroom.  A wave of nausea hovered over me and I spit up salty clear liquid, and dry heaved for a few seconds.  I took my temperature and it was a low-grade fever.

A couple of weeks prior, I had been experiencing some abdominal symptoms for which I had been prescribed a course of two antibiotics.  I was unimaginable that another infection could have crossed that antibiotic barrier.

Could it be a “silent heart attack,” that women can experience as back pain and fatigue.  I had been working for weeks on a cleaning project that required lifting, climbing stairs up and down dozens of times, and exertion beyond the usual daily walks that I take for my heart-health.  Fatigue was a normal reaction, I thought.  But, what if?

So many symptoms can be nothing or they can be something, either simple and routine, or sadly age-related typical, or they can be serious.  How do you know? 

One weighs, if it’s not absolutely acute, if you should just “ride it out.”  Or, when it’s after doctor’s office hours, in these parts, you go to the ER, or you don’t.  I did.

There were people in the waiting room but it was very quiet.  I headed to the intake window and was handed a clipboard and asked to fill out a form.  So off to the waiting room, and here we go.

Along with three or four other pairs of folks who were in varying degrees of misery, I waited to be seen.  I coveted that little boy’s blanket, covering his head.

A woman came in and asked me quite publicly, with absolutely no gesture of privacy, for my name and date of birth.  I would have objected to the blatant lack of patient confidentiality had I not felt so utterly out of sorts.  But I obliged and she put a wristband on my pale, clammy arm.  My husband then joined me in the club of people trying to be polite with one another but not really wanting to socialize.

At a rate of about one patient admitted through the double automatic doors to treatment rooms per half hour on what was a relatively silent week-night ER, we began to hear feel uncomfortable with the cell-phone over-sharing of our compatriots.

Not having additional acute pain since our arrival, I began questioning why we came.  We took a walk and I visited the rest room and settled in another, more isolated waiting area.

Upon hearing another trope from some other people about intimate health conundrums, my less pained body and more alert mind, got irritated and I decided to go home.  I was willing to risk that I had overreacted.

We went to the window and interrupted a nurse munching on party mix, talking with the intake woman.  It felt like an intrusion on their evening plans.  But I said, “I’m leaving.”

She took my name and declined to remove my wristband saying I could have it.  It was public information anyway at this point.

Emergency care, this was not.  This hospital emergency department seemed reminiscent of the television shows I’ve seen of underfunded, overworked NHS A&E departments in the U.K.; not what I expected from “our ER” in rural Pennsylvania.

Urgency to help hurting and or scared people was nowhere to be found.  When people are more willing to leave and risk life and limb rather than wait for hours to be seen on what appeared to be a slow night in the department, something’s wrong.

It occurred to me that staff shouldn’t be seen to be snacking with their mates instead of attending to patients, it’s off-putting and unprofessional to say the least.  This atmosphere announces that this hospital doesn’t care about patients.

I realize that this was not a trauma requiring the word, “stat.”  And it probably wasn’t a crisis, with the operative word being “probably.”  But you never know and I’m just saying, “what’s wrong with this picture?

I began this column thinking about Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible’s book of Luke.  Pretty much everybody knows the gist of this moral story about loving your neighbor.

There is no question that the Samaritan demonstrated kindness toward a person not of his or her own group.  The two were strangers, truly “others,” from groups historically hostile toward one another.

One might think of these two individuals as symbolic of left versus right political groups, for instance.  The story doesn’t say much about the thieves who attacked the one needing help.

Sociologically, when a culture has a clear outside enemy such as in times of war, their petty squabbling amongst themselves becomes diminished.  They have someone or something to band together against.

I want to consider the thieves as well as the one who was helped.  Let’s, for a moment forget about the Good Samaritan, the Jewish priest who crossed the street, and the Levite from yet another tribe who also crossed the road to avoid the nearly dead man who needed someone’s help.

Why aren’t we mad at the thieves who created the whole mess of the beaten-up man?  We’re a little angry at the Jewish priest and the Levite because they walked away without helping.

I want to know what happened to the one who needed help.  Once he/she was helped, their wounds healed, and back to their usual, everyday routine, what kind of person did they become?

Another related Scripture from the book of Luke, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” might be the enlightened philosophy of “the one helped.”  I say, enlightened, because we tend to really “get it” when it happens to us.

Many years ago, a man, not necessarily considered a good man by some, or many people, anonymously gave something to our family, that we really needed, when we really needed it.  It was anonymous, but we knew who gave the gift.

Not many people knew our need.  We didn’t advertise it.

Not only did that act of generosity and kindness meet a concrete need, it instilled a “pay it forward” attitude and a ripple effect in us, “the ones helped.”  Now, many years hence, I try to do similar acts of kindness, commensurate with my abilities, to others, as unembellished as possible.

The effects of acts of kindness can last forever, throughout generations.  Kindness can be your legacy.

I wonder if people who have never had an unmet need will have the same understanding of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” as “the one helped.”  None of this precludes the existence of thieves (John 10) who are here to “kill, steal, and destroy.”

Given the vagaries of human nature, often a kindness extended won’t be returned like for like, in a direct exchange.  In fact, that same person who met our need so long ago, turned on us with a nasty exchange later on.

However, nothing can erase the original act of kindness.  It’s out there.

Don’t regret a spurned act of kindness.  It will return to you some other time by some other person or circumstance.  There are simply universal laws of return which will be demonstrated sooner or later.  Just wait for it.

My husband is the king of options.  I’m the opposite, queen of quick decisions and quite okay with option number one.

I typically know right off the bat what I like and what I can live with.  My husband, on the other hand, has to explore multiple options, ad infinitum.  He does research (did I mention that he has a PhD.) until I’m literally sickened by the detail circus he’s produced.

This man makes me crazy on a daily basis with his options.  He really should assign that lovable “crazy” emoji to my name in his phone contacts, for exchanging text messages and phone calls.  Instead, he uses the “love blowing a kiss” one; and the chorus said, “Awh.”

I’ve made plenty of wrong choices and hasty decisions in my life, but none of them have been outrageously disastrous.  But my right decisions have far outweighed the wrong ones.  I married the right man, didn’t I?

Is it better to have multiple options?  Or are we better off with limited choices to weigh?

Then there’s second guessing yourself.  “Darn it, I chose option B when I might have been better off with option C.”  Rarely, do I harbor feelings of regret over the choices I’ve made.

How can you know which choice would have been, could have been, better?  Is hindsight the same thing as experience?  And do we learn from both?

Can you learn to live well with your choices?  Decorating or landscaping choices are never a problem in our household.  It’s our philosophy that one can always repaint, move the furniture, or find a new place for a shrub if our first selection doesn’t sit well with us in the long run.

However, I’m sort of famous in my family for not being happy with my menu choices.  I often look longingly and mouthwateringly at my table partner’s food choices and regret what I chose.  But there have also been some winners.

So, what’s on the menu?  I wrestle with options.  I guess that’s why nine out of ten of my dreams are situated in restaurants, where I am a patron.

Choices.  I’m just happier with fewer of them.

With clothing, I consider myself fortunate that most of the time I’m happy with my purchases.  But there were a notable few times when I asked myself, “what were you thinking, woman?”

It’s usually with the most expensive clothing purchases that I’ll get home and question my choice.  More than once an item has gone unworn to the donation bin three months after I was sure I’d love it and it’s too late to return it.  That one pair of black shoes lasted a year.

True story – I once found the cutest animal print dress in a store, forty miles from home.  I debated and debated whether to buy it.  It was a tad on the expensive side so I declined, until I got home.

I called the store and asked them to hold it for me, made a special trip back to the store, and bought it.  It still hangs in my closet unworn, with the tags on it.

I’ve yet to find the occasion to wear that dress.  I think it may have been a bad choice.  Time will tell, I guess.

If you ever see me wearing a rather form fitting animal print dress, you’ll know that it worked out in the end.  Sometimes you just don’t know if your choices were good, until the end.

I couldn’t be happier with my choice of spouse, he with his unending options and me with my quick decisions.  And yet he still drives me to distraction with his options.  I’m certain that we will remain together until the end, the only option worth considering for the both of us.

 

“Is it really cold in here, or is it just me?  A generalization refers to a point of view, assumed to be nearly universally held, common to most, or usual, without considering specifics.  “Does everybody like this music, because I really don’t.”

“Is it just me,” is maybe a rhetorical question, where you don’t expect an answer.  But it’s more likely a statement of belonging to a certain group of people who think alike.  The generalization of the question, “is it just me,” is that you assume that the answer is no.

We all need to feel a part of some group, whether it’s family, community, country, an organization, professional or work group, or social club.  Even if your group is a bunch of introverts, you belong to a group of somebodies.

As an essayist, it’s probably common that I think mostly in generalizations.  For example, if I think a certain way, about a certain thing, I might assume that “most” people think that way too.  Clearly, I don’t think it’s just me who thinks that way or has experienced a particular circumstance, or I wouldn’t be sharing my opinion widely.

However, I am fully aware that generalizations can be dangerous.  They can lead to hatred toward an individual because they belong to a group that you don’t like.

When referring to people, perhaps we should err on the side of sensitivity and not generalize, but stick to specifics. People are too multi-faceted to generalize about them.  They might surprise you.  I hope they do.

When I think that some of us or even most of us have gone through the same thing or feel the same way, I realize that not ALL of us have.  If you read or hear someone generalizing about a group you belong to, and you don’t fit the description, don’t take offense, turn the page, flip the channel, click “NEXT.”

On the contrary, if I think that everybody agrees with me, or should agree with me, about something, I’m naïve, narcissistic, and self-centered.  Or, not as generously, perhaps I’m a bigoted arse, as the English say.

I don’t care what one says, there will always be someone, if not a bunch of people who don’t get it, see it, or even know what you’re talking about.  This is a case of, if it doesn’t apply to you, move on.

I’m aware that one should not assume that everybody agrees with what I think.  For example, because as a woman, I think a certain way does not mean that all women think that way.  If I’m a certain age and feel a certain way, doesn’t mean that all people of the same age feel the same way.  My husband does a certain thing, it doesn’t mean that all husbands do that.

Most things can be generalized, as long as we’re aware that there are always exceptions.  For example, most people will be unhappy with torrential rain.  Also, most people will probably prefer a sunny day over an overcast day.  Most people will agree that puffy white clouds against a blue sky are cheerful and a gray sky is ominous.

This reminds me of my college social science statistics course.  My biggest takeaway from that class was the difference between cause and effect, and correlation.  In a way, most of our generalizations are based on cause and effect thinking. 

For example, if I was caught outdoors in a rainstorm and got soaking wet and when I settled down at home a few hours later and I began sneezing, had a runny nose, and felt altogether miserable, I might conclude that getting soaked gave me a cold.  That’s cause and effect thinking.

What we didn’t consider in the rainstorm-to-cold conclusion are the other variables besides the rainstorm that may have caused my cold.  I forgot that I didn’t wash my hands or “sanitize” after handling forty different items in the grocery store that had already been handled by a go-zillion other folks who hadn’t washed their hands and wiped their noses with those same hands – didn’t your mother ever say, “you don’t know where those hands have been…”

Germs cause colds, not rainstorms.  Start thinking along the lines of correlations instead of cause and effect, which is often just plain wrong because it’s too general.

Correlational thinking goes like this, shark attacks are strongly related to the sale of ice cream. Nobody would reasonably claim that ice cream consumption causes shark attacks.  These two phenomena are correlated but one doesn’t cause the other.  Another variable, summer throngs of people at beaches, is the more likely cause of the rise in both shark attacks and increased sales of ice cream.

A sensible “out” if you want to use generalities is to use the word, “usually.”  It’s just sensible in interactions with other humans, to never use the word always, preceded by the word you.   Also don’t say, “you never…”.  Use general words which apply to once in a while, sometimes, or occasionally.

Sometimes it might be, “just me.”  But it usually applies to more of us, some of us, or perhaps most of us.  The word, usually pretty much explains generalization.  I think we should give massive accolades to the Depressed Persian Tow Truck Man from MADtv, who said most wisely that something can happen usually, but “never always.”

If you like words or trivia or intellectual nonsense, let’s talk games.  Are you game?

The tune that played through my head while pondering this subject was Game of Love, the 1965 American version by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.  However, upon further examining the lyrics, the only thing I found useful was “…Let’s play.”

I wonder what might make love, a game.  Love doesn’t seem so much a thing that you play at, if playfulness is key to the game of love.

I guess if you’re one who perceives that “love is a battlefield,” with “no promises and no demands,” (Pat Benatar 1983), it might be that love is a war game.  But is this love?  Or, is it playing games?

With love, I believe that if it’s a game, it has to be a win-win or lose-lose.  Love as a game certainly is not a game of chance.  Come to think about it, the game of love might not be a spontaneous game but one of strategy.  Premeditation and planning are required for the win-win goal of this game.

There is some skill involved in the game of love.  Just ask anybody who has partnered with another for many years.

They’ve learned some things about juggling; about tolerance of differences; how to obey the sixth (kill) and ninth (lie) commandments – well all of them help out in long-term relationships; they’ve mastered the balance beam; how to be angry and sin not; they’ve learned their history lessons, household economy, and the temporariness but vitality of the five-year-plan.

I’m of the mind that love is a thing that grows out of challenges borne together over time, rather than a thing that culminates one time a year with dinner out, strawberries dipped in chocolate, champagne, and flowers.

Some people like to play games others don’t – what’s the difference?  I question this both literally and figuratively.  Some folks bow out of playing board games, card games, solving puzzles, video games, and electronic games.  Are games too trivial for some, or childish?

I believe some people literally avoid games because their temperament is too competitive or maybe not competitive enough.  We’ve all been there in a game of sport or even a board game, when folks who make a mistake get angry, seemingly way out of proportion to the spirit of a game.

I guess since I mentioned games of sport, I should surmise that “game animals,” the wild kind, hunted for their meat, are treasured in particular for the sport of the catch.  Hunting is a game of sport.

I mean, people who act deceitful or manipulative in a relationship are said to be “playing games”.  In this scenario there has to be a winner and a loser in the game.

Long-term relationships might be compared to the Olympic Games where only the most dedicated athletes make it to the podium.  Or some might compare their love relationships to the Invictus Games where although wounded, they can still win amongst their peers.

Card games involve both skill and luck.  For example, you have to work with the hand you’ve been dealt.  Some folks have the ability to win the game in spite of a few “bad” hands dealt to them.

What does one get out of watching a game show on television?  Do such folks consider it a personal game of skill to have picked the winner, thus considering themselves winners?

War games, I suppose are the epitome of games of strategy.  “Game theory” is a branch of mathematics that postulates a scenario. The scenario is played out and analyzed against other possibilities and outcomes.  Then another scenario is put onto the table.  I think that theory, analysis, and strategies, of war games would be potentially fun for certain minds.

Since you were so very gracious to follow me down the rabbit-hole of my thoughts about the concept of games, what do you say we go forward as “game changers?”  Maybe we could completely change some upcoming situations with new ideas or decisive plays that will make somebody’s world develop better than expected.

Along with Dean Martin, I have found myself singing, “Everybody loves somebody sometime….  My sometime is now.”  Apparently, songwriters Sam Coslow, Irving Taylor and Ken Lane are my tribe (lyrics licensed by Barton Music Corporation).

So, I have questions.  Can anybody answer everything?

I want to know something about everything.  Does that make me a busybody?

Nobody knows everything.  But somebody knows something.

How does anybody become somebody?  When do you become somebody?

I was just pondering that everybody knows somebody.  But the other way around, not so much.

Maybe somebody will tell me I’m clever.  Perhaps nobody will.

Everybody will have an opinion on everything.  A busybody will however, “know it all.”

Nobody knows everybody.  I know somebody.

Anybody can be somebody, right?  I’m not just anybody, I’m somebody.

A busybody thinks they know something about everybody.  But, in reality they know nobody entirely.

I think nobody can really know everything about anybody.  Everybody has private thoughts.

I’ve worked on this little ditty now and again for some time.  I really hope somebody, if not everybody who reads this realizes that I’m nobody to be telling anybody that I know anything.

In fact, I’m not at all sure if my grammar is altogether correct.  But somebody will surely tell me about it, thusly educating everybody.

They say hindsight is 20/20 so everybody out there has perfect hindsight.  But they also say nobody’s perfect.

“Everybody finds somebody someplace….  My someplace is here.”

I seem to be learning lessons about life rapid-fire lately.  Even as I grow older, “learning my lesson” keeps on coming, maybe even more so than earlier in my life.  So, kids of all ages shouldn’t feel called out when they have to “learn their lesson” over and over again.

Something I learned while playing matching games on my phone, usually when most people are sleeping, was not fresh knowledge but more of a refresher course.  The nugget that I received as a eureka moment was this, “there is an optimal time for everything.”

I know this fact but it came as brand-new knowledge when I found myself awakened after several dreams in the wee hours of the night, and decided to play a game on my phone.  When I opened the game app I remembered that I had closed it in frustration last time I played.  You see, I had nearly completed the game when I inadvertently tapped the home button and the game progress I made was wiped out only to start over.  I closed the app in exasperation.

When I opened the game this time, I played it lickety-split without any ads butting in, and as it was a typically long game with lots of points, I finished it in record time.  I said to myself by way of a reminder, “there’s a right time for everything.”

I’ve learned this same lesson hundreds of times, why don’t I remember it?  For example, why don’t I just simplify and erase some needless frustration by stopping an endeavor when exasperation first sets in, saving it for another time.  But no, I usually let the tension build way too much before abandoning it for that better moment in time.

Only until the better time presents itself and the task goes smoothly, or as it should, do I see the difference.  Some people have to learn lessons by seeing it or doing it for themselves.  They learn by doing, not by hearing.  Is that you too or is it just me?

Some of us call it trial and error.  We can’t see the end result abstractly; we have to actually do the task and see that it was the wrong choice (or the right choice) before we get it.

In the same vein, we can’t see in the moment, that if we had just WAITED, we wouldn’t have needed to worry or stress because it worked out better than we imagined.  That’s the downside of imagination, seeing a negative outcome when a positive one was on the way.  That’s an example of “hurry up and wait,” usually borne out in a hospital or doctor’s waiting room.

Many years ago, I had a dream that I got the job, in the waiting room.  Specifically, a bunch of us were waiting to be interviewed for a job.  It was an inordinately long wait.

There was a closet in the waiting room.  People who already worked there came out periodically and retrieved outdated office equipment like manual typewriters, shorthand pads, and Dictaphones, from the closet.

Some of the younger folks in the waiting room exited the building when they saw the old, unfamiliar stuff being unearthed.  Others of us just waited.

Morning dwindled into midday.  I took a train home to refresh myself and came back in the afternoon and just a few of the interviewees remained.  A child began to act out and it was too annoying for a couple of people who then left.

It was the end of the day and the interviewer came out and asked one question of the three of us who remained.  I got the job.

It seems that there truly is a time for everything.  Sometimes you just have to wait for it.  And if it’s not the time and you try to force it, you end up banging your head against the wall in frustration.  It won’t happen until the time is right.

Have you ever observed that some people have good timing and others just don’t get it.  Not until they blurt something out at the wrong time, do these folks realize they should have waited.  It would have made all the difference.

The origins for “a time and a place for everything,” comes from the Bible’s Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.  “For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven,” is how I remember it.

Ecclesiastes, along with Proverbs and others, is considered wisdom literature.  In particular, Ecclesiastes ruminates about the meaninglessness of life without God.

Therefore, this quote about time and place, put into the context of meaninglessness, explains the frustration we experience when we get the timing wrong.  “If I had just waited… maybe I wouldn’t have had to suffer….”  The wisdom and simplicity of sometimes just waiting, is highlighted in this Scripture.

In popular psychological parlance, we’ve been told to chill out and (pause), wait for it….  If you’ve been hanging out in the waiting room for a while, I’m your sister.

Try making the best of the wait.  “Whistle while we work,” is a little chorus I remember from lessons learned in childhood, originally from the 1937 Disney film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it reminds us to go to work as usual, putting one foot in front of the other, while we wait for that other thing that we’re so tempted to force into being. 

The time will be right sometime.  So, dreams, jobs, waiting rooms, needless frustration, worrying for nothing… just wait for it.  Or not.  Maybe you’d rather learn your lesson again the next time around, like me.