humor

To Be, Or Not To Be Sweet

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My very good friend, and former boss, Bosco once asked me something hilarious.

“Debbie, do you say every thought that pops into your head?”

Oh, Bosco.  Oh, honey.

I only say about 20% of what’s in my melon.  If I said everything that occurred to me, a few things would happen.  I would never, and I mean never shut up.  I’d have no friends, and I’d be locked up—either padded cell, or gray bar hotel.

But most of the thoughts to which I give voice are of the positive persuasion.  I’ll tell the lady at the gas station I like her shoes, the kid bagging my groceries he has pretty eyes, and the little guy carrying a bag for his mom that he is a helpful, strong little man.

But for the most part, I’m much more reticent when it comes to the negative thoughts toward my fellow man. 

The self-censoring comes from my childhood. 

Although she’s gotten over it (Hoo boy, has she gotten over it), my mom was raised as a nice Catholic girl in the Ozzie and Harriet fifties.  Act like a lady was drilled into every girl child from birth.

Having a dad in the military was part of it.  It was impressed upon me every time I left the house I represented not only our family but the Coast Guard and the entire United States.  How we acted reflected on Uncle Sam, Smokey the Bear, the Partridge Family and Dick Tracy.

And being raised in the South has a lasting impact on a young woman.

Be sweet.

It’s an IV attached to every little girl, feeding a constant stream of expectations, prohibitions, and assumptions.  “Mind your manners.”  “Don’t be loud, or messy, or bossy, or rough.”  After a while, that kind of stuff becomes part of one’s very marrow.  Like it or not, admit it or not, most women live their lives with an internal hall monitor passing judgment on everything we say and do.

It’s why, when someone obviously doesn’t spare a thought for my feelings I’m stressing out to protect theirs.

But you know what?

I’m not looking for a job, a date, or the approval of others (the last one is the toughest for me). 

So, there are times when I don’t give a fig about being polite.  And I’m not gonna—not anymore.

When someone decides that because of their fellow human’s plumbing, or color, or accent, or who they love, or how they dress, or bank account, that that person is “other”, and less than.  As in less deserving of basic humanity, or kindness, or civil rights, or a voice, or even the right to want those things.

When someone decides that their story, or history, or feelings are paramount, and others need to get over themselves, grow up, and grow a sense of humor.

When someone decides that when others stand up for themselves it’s an attack on them, and emblematic of the war against them and all good decent people; that the very rights of others marginalize them and threaten everything they stand for.

If you steal my parking spot, or the last sample at Costco, or fail to thank me if I hold the door for you, I’ll probably give you a low key dirty look, but keep my thoughts to myself.    

But, from now on, when I see someone being cruel or hateful, or when someone is navigating their lives with a complete lack of compassion, and a proud absence of empathy, I will call it out. 

From this day forward, I refuse to ‘be sweet’. 

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom

Care and Feeding

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It wasn’t Merry Go Round, but very similar.

Many years ago, I managed a clothing store that catered to teenagers.  At back to school time, tons of kids came in with their moms for new fall wardrobes.

One afternoon I was helping a teenaged girl at the dressing room who’d come in with her mom.  I was familiar with them both and I’d gotten a chair for her mom while the daughter did a changing room fashion show, to pick out her new clothes for school.

At the time, I prided myself on an uncanny ability to discern pregnancy in women very early on.  An arrogant, very faulty ability, I was soon to learn.

I glanced at the mom and decided that she was with child.  Wishing to show off, I asked her, “When are you due?”

Oh yes, my friend, I royally screwed up.  But I pranced into faux pas land with my head held high, singing at the top of my lungs.

Her head swiveled around at the speed of light, and she gave me an incandescent side-eye.  “What did you say?”

I had already realized my idiotic mistake and since I couldn’t turn back time, or make myself disappear, I tried to obfuscate by distraction.

“What do you do?  Where do you work?”  If I’d had a bicycle, I could have backpedaled to Missouri. 

That was the day I decided to never assume a woman’s reproductive status unless there was a child actively exiting her body.

This policy was hammered home to me the day a woman ringing me up at Food Lion asked me if I was with child.  I answered her in a nasty tone that I felt her thoughtlessly cruel question deserved, “No.  I’m just fat.”

A few years later, a different clerk got the same tone and dirty look when she asked my forty-ish-year-old self, “Ma’am, do you want to use your senior discount?”

So, Gentle Reader, when in doubt, don’t…just don’t.

Very near our house is a new neighborhood full of young adults and empty nesters.  Once or twice a day my dog and I walk the streets.  With the combination of a large, striking dog, and an overly garrulous woman who could find something to chat about with a stone, we’ve made many friendly acquaintances. 

And I’ve been privileged to witness many young couples becoming young families (But I never jump the gun and assume—I wait until I’m told, or there’s no other explanation for what looks like the smuggling of a prize-winning pumpkin by a formerly svelte young woman).

Once baby’s arrived, seeing them reminds me of the sleep-deprived stew of cluelessness and terror in which Petey and I constantly swam after The Kid was born.  It’s sad, but true that almost all new parents spend the first few years worrying away what should be treasured and enjoyed. 

This precious time passes in what seems like the blink of an eye, and hindsight colored by fear and exhaustion is mightily skewed.

In an effort to help parents be more present, I have a few thoughts that I have shared with clearly overwhelmed moms and dads.  And, they’re either extremely polite and diplomatic, or my words are actually helpful.

I choose to believe helpful.

Here’s the sum total of my great parenting wisdom:  Relax, and cut yourself some slack.  You’re doing a much better job than you think you’re doing.  As long as you feed them, clean them, and love them, it’s gonna be ok.

And besides, humans don’t remember anything much before they turn three.  So that means you’ve got 36 months before any of the dumb stuff you’re sure to do actually counts.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Salad Bar Days

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I recently found three really old recipes during the excavation of a very large junk drawer full of mountains of stuff I hadn’t seen in years.

The recipes were tucked in amongst a sky-high stack of old photos.  These pictures were all taken with old-school cameras.  And the dates of them range from junior high to the engagement photos of Petey and me, taken by my favorite photographer, Kat, one of my oldest friends.

Each photo tells a story, so what follows is the picture, and far fewer than 1000 words.

This snapshot was taken in the spring of 1979.  Each year, the 9th grade, third year Spanish class went to Mexico for ten days.  This photo was our visit to Teotihuacán, a village of temples and buildings so old that the origins of the place were already lost to time when the Aztecs met the Spaniards.

This is the great pyramid of the sun.  The plan was for my classmates and I to walk to the top.  Two-thirds of the way up is a plateau where the staircase splits into two.  This is also where an enterprising young man had set up a jewelry kiosk.  While the rest of the kids continued on, I halted my climb.

To shop.

This is Pig.  He was Petey’s best friend, and in a town (Elizabeth City) chock-a-block full of eccentrics, he was in a not-quite-right class by himself.  He’s big-hearted, good natured, and a magnet for mischief.  I always said that as he was being led off to the electric chair, he’d be shaking his head, saying, “I don’t understand, I just went for a beer run, then I met the red-headed Swede with a limp!”

I can happily tell you that he actually became a very successful builder, and has largely lived a life that didn’t include any intervention from North Carolina’s criminal system.

This is Petey and I at the Rod Stewart show in Norfolk, VA in February of 1982 (my first rock concert).  It was really cold.  Pig, who was with us that night, gallantly offered me the use of his vest, which felt warm but oddly heavy.

As we walked in, a security guard reached for me in what I considered an overly familiar manner.  So, in a move that would make Carolina Panther Christian McCaffrey proud, I pivoted and side-stepped away from what I thought was a lecherous grab.  The crowd was thick and eager to see the show, so the guard let me go.

The McCaffrey in question.

It’s a good thing he did.  Once inside, Pig took his back vest and it was then I realized why it was so heavy.  He had filled it with enough liquor to open a large bar, and a very large plastic bag full of a green, leafy substance.  There was so much contraband in that jacket that if I had been patted down, the words you are reading today, nearly forty years later, would be a missive from the Richmond jail.

This is our enegagement photo.  Looking at this, I can’t believe we were ever this impossibly young.  It’s shocking that we were deemed mature enough to make such a huge, life-altering decision.  I was not nearly as smug as I looked.  But, I’m pretty sure Petey was even more terrified than he appeared.

My guess is he was asking himself the question that he he still asks on a regular basis. “What in Sam Hill have I gotten myself into?”.

Let me know if you enjoyed this glimpse into my demented photo album, because if so, I’ll make further deep dives into my past for your amusement.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Postcards From The Gulf

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My first memories were when we lived in Mobile.  We moved there from Michigan when I was two and moved away the summer before first grade. 

As a result of these being my earliest memories, some are like half-remembered dreams, or fragmented, or twisted and combined with other memories to form episodes that never really happened.  And some are strangely hyper-specific.  And some are just garden-variety, regular memories (but of course, memories are a very tricky thing).

When I was three, we flew out to San Diego to visit my Aunt Tootie and Uncle Dave.  I have two strong memories of our visit.

Many houses in San Diego back up against small canyons.  I remembered my relative’s home was on a canyon.  And I have a clear image of seeing a mountain goat climbing around in it. 

When I was twelve, we moved to San Diego, and until our house was ready, we stayed with Aunt Tootie and Uncle Dave in the same house we’d visited back when I was a toddler.  It was a nice house.

But there was no canyon, which meant there was no goat.  I couldn’t understand it.  I could close my eyes and see it.  I remained confused.

Until we visited Disneyland.  And I went a on a ride that went past vignettes of the Southwest.  And one of them was a gosh darn mountain goat, climbing in a misbegotten canyon.  Yep, my memory was a ride at Disney.

Another memory, though, took place at Disney and was witnessed by family members, so I know for sure it happened.

As a kid, I used to stub my toes, stumble, and fall often (as an adult, too).  So, when I walked, a lot of the time I looked down, at my feet, to see what they planned on doing.  That day in Disneyland, I was trudging down Main St. when I bumped into somebody who was wearing a long blue dress. 

I slowly looked up and took in a beautiful woman in a beautiful gown.  Finally, I saw her face.  It was Cinderella!  My very favorite Disney princess. 

She was as sweet to me that day as she was to all her animal friends.

Our next-door neighbors in Mobile worked at Spring Hill College.  He was band director and she trained the majorettes.  I thought she was the most beautiful, glamorous woman that ever lived.  I idolized her.

One year for Christmas I received a pair of white majorette boots with tassels.  I didn’t want to be a majorette, though.  I owned a baton and had the skinned knees and bruises to prove the fact and make it clear I wasn’t majorette material.

At three, I had another career in mind.  I was going to take my fancy white boots and become a go-go dancer.  I wanted a mini dress with fringe, and I wanted my very own cage to dance in.

How I knew about this at three, I have no clue…

Finally, the memory of the day that lives on in family infamy.  Half a century later I still catch hell for this episode.

It was a Sunday evening, and my mom had spent hours waxing the floors of the house.  My brother was about eighteen months old.  We were in the living room and mom was in the kitchen.  I glanced over at my sibling and he had the bottle of floor wax upended and was pouring it down his gullet like a little hillbilly with a jug of shine.

Staying seated, I calmly, conversationally, almost as an aside, said to my mother in the next room, “Mommy, Buddy’s drinking floor wax.”

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

That’s Ridiculous!

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Buckle up kids! 

It’s time for the further adventures of, “Back in my day.”!

This time, Gentle Reader, I’m sharing with you a short list of recently introduced ludicrous rituals that spring from unearned, over the top wealth, and the resulting near-French Revolution level of conspicuous consumption.

Nouveau riche, parvenu, arriviste, they all mean the same thing; people who have recently come by indecent amounts of money and want the whole world to know how very wealthy, classy, and flat-out better they are than everyone else. 

It’s not new.  The Biltmore Estate, and much of Providence Rhode Island was built during the Gilded Age (1870s-1900) as a big fat, middle finger to old, historic families by newly monied titans of industry and robber barons. 

Nowadays many of the new breed are social media and reality television stars.  And like every permutation of financial upstarts, subtlety and discretion are considered dirty words—what’s the use of being rich if you don’t show off?

The complete lack of humility, and any sense of shame, does though, seem to be a new concept that is directly related to the interwebs. 

Image is everything, and if it isn’t gorgeous, or impressive, or shiny enough, then they manipulate and stage their live’s until it is.  One’s social media presence must announce to every eye that views it that this person is richer, chic-er and more loved than you can ever hope to be.  So, a whole slew of holidays and celebrations tangentially connected to life events have been contrived to prove it.

Promposals.  This is asking someone to the high school prom.  But this isn’t the time-honored meet-up at the locker of your intended date and bashfully, adorably asking them out. 

No, this must be a production worthy of Busby Berkeley, complete with setting, props and co-stars which is of course filmed and then shared online so others may feel dumb, dull, and underserving of love in any form. 

Weddings have become six-figure extravaganzas that are complete failures if they don’t make every other couple swoon with envy.  It’s tough to pick one item from such a self-involved cornucopia but among body shaming bridesmaids, mandatory, color-based dress codes for guests, and the obscenity that is the unfrosted wedding cake is one particularly pretentious trend; the choreographed dance.

It’s not enough to eat bad chicken dinners, wear uncomfortable clothes and purchase a gift that costs more than your first car, no, you and seven other sad sacks have to rehearse for weeks in order to get up in front of two hundred  people and gyrate awkwardly for ten minutes to “Shake It Off”.  Or worse yet, watch your boss do it.  Try looking him in the eye on Monday morning after that nightmare.

Sorry, Brunhilda.  I gave up enough for your big day.  There’s no way I’m shaking my arthritic, uncoordinated, money-maker for you as well.

Fact: everybody that ever had a baby feels like they are giving birth to the most important, special child to ever walk the earth.  But that’s ok, because every baby should be born into a family that feels that way. 

What started as a gender reveal ended as a 47,000 acre forest fire.

But, here’s the thing; the world isn’t holding their breath to find out if it’s a boy or girl.  And a gender reveal party with (sometimes literal) explosive announcements of the news is something only the parents really give a rodent’s hind parts about. 

Is it wrong that I kinda wanna smack her?

A push present is a gift the father of the newborn gives to the mother.

You know what Joseph gave Mary?  He let her sit on the donkey on the way home, instead of walking next to it.

Just sayin’.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Hurricane Debbie

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Luckily, Dorian didn’t spank us too hard here in the Heart of Carolina.  So, now we look ahead to what more Mother Nature has in store for us silly humans this year.

Because, anybody with a memory and even a few firing synapses knows that between now and the end of hurricane season, the Atlantic and the Gulf will experience quite a few more storms, and probably see at least a couple more category fivers.

As the child of a Coast Guard family, except for San Diego and Michigan, everywhere I’ve ever lived has been in hurricane country.  When I was five and Hurricane Camille hit, we were living in Mobile.  That was the first of probably a hundred or more I’ve experienced since. 

Heck, there was a hurricane that hit Orlando one year during a Matthews Family Band vacation at Disneyworld. 

When little, I went outside and played under the calm eye of many hurricanes (and the watchful eye of my parents).  I’ve been battening hatches, filling bathtubs, and counting batteries and non-perishables since I was tall enough to see the top shelf of the refrigerator.  I can refill and light a Coleman lantern in thirty seconds. 

Grouse and moan all you want, but if you live in hurricane territory, you can get hit.  Nobody, no matter how famous or powerful, ever won an argument with Mother Nature or changed her mind.  Even the most stable of geniuses can’t move a hurricane’s path by one inch.  The only way to approach her is with abject humility.  And we can’t just pay lip service—we must internalize this elemental truth.

When a storm’s headed your way, there are only two things that will save lives and can slightly ameliorate the purgatory of post-hurricane life.

They’re information and preparation. 

Educate yourself.  Learn about hurricanes; what do the categories mean?  Learn the stages of tropical wave, depression, storm, then hurricane.  Where do they form, and how do they move?  What’s storm surge? 

No.

From June 1st to November 30th, become a weather nerd.  Keep up to date with the current weather in traditional hurricane areas from a trusted knowledgeable source, whose only goal is to impart pure info with no agenda and no drama. 

If a hurricane’s headed your way, keep your gas tank full and cell phones charged.  Refill prescription meds.  Check bottled water and perishable food supplies; restock if needed.  Have extra batteries, a weather radio, and lanterns.  Make sure there is food, water, and any necessary medicines for pets.

3-4 days out, board up windows and put away outdoor items.  Fill up bathtubs with water to flush toilets.

If you’re ordered to evacuate, go.  Don’t be stubborn, don’t be foolhardy.  Just go. 

*A plea and a word of warning from a Coastie kid.  If you have a boat, don’t take it out.  Do not foolishly and selfishly risk the lives of heroes.

The book/movie Perfect Storm infuriates me.  As cute as George Clooney is, he had no business out on that water.

If you are a recent transplant and want to know what a hurricane can do, read Isaac’s Storm, by Erik Larson.  It’s the story of the deadliest hurricane in US history which hit Galveston, Texas in 1900 and took almost 12,000 souls.

Thankfully, today we have forecasting that is eons more comprehensive than Isaac Cline had.  People now have time to flee.  And that’s the point—go. 

When a hurricane hits, use common sense and stay safe.  If you die because you made dumb decisions in a hurricane, the angels will make fun of your dopey butt for eternity.  And those guys are relentless.

Assbutt.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Puppy On The Couch

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Mr. Crowley Pants.

When The Kid turned 15, Petey and I were constantly high-fiving each other.  We had a teenager who was kind, polite, helpful, and an all-round joy to be around.  We were the best parents in the history of parents.

And then.

And then, The Kid went upstairs for bed one night and didn’t come down the next morning. 

Instead, what came down those stairs was some kind of monstrous, hideous mockery of our sweet child.  We, the parents, were deemed too lame to exist.  There was so much eye-rolling it’s a wonder blindness didn’t ensue. 

We asked ourselves how we could’ve been so wrong about our parenting skills.  No two worse parents ever lived.

Steve.

Before Crowley, our Yugo-sized Akita, we had another Akita, Steve, and a 200-pound Anatolian shepherd named Riker.

Riker was the most loving dog I’ve ever known, and Steve was as gentle as the breath of a fawn.  Although a full-blooded Akita, he never showed a hint of the aggressiveness that many people think define the breed.

So, of course, Petey and I thought, “We got this.  We could make rabid badgers docile enough to sleep with newborn babies.”

Then, we got Crowley, a black Akita puppy as solid as a tank. 

He and I walk miles a day around our neighborhood, greeting everyone we meet.

Everything went well until Crowley was about eighteen months old. 

He started becoming aggressive.  With us, and a short list of humans that he adores, he was and remains, sweet and wildly affectionate.  But he’d growl when anyone else got too close.

Then came the day my father; the man who gave me my love for canines, the man who’s almost more dog than man, met him.  When he knelt down to him, Riker knocked him over on purpose.  My dad wasn’t hurt, and Riker didn’t bite him, but my heart was broken.

My Dad and Riker. Can you see the grin on that happy dog’s kisser?

I felt like a parent who’d raised a serial killer.  I called our vet, crying so hard I could barely tell her what happened.  She suggested a behaviorist.  We made an appointment.

The thing was, he didn’t do a thing for the dog.

I was the patient. 

I kept saying, “But Steve…” 

Finally, he said, “debbie, this is not Steve.  You need to accept that and help Crowley to have the best life he can.  He’s not dangerously vicious, but he is what he is.”

So, we learned coping strategies to keep him focused and bought a soft, flexible, plastic muzzle for when he’s outside.  It’s really for me (no smarty-pants Gentle Reader, I don’t wear the muzzle).  It’s so that I know no matter what happens, my dog will never bite anyone, human or dog. 

I’ve kept up the long walks, and he’s become calmer and steadier.  We’ve begun carefully reintroducing familiar people, and each encounter has gone well.  We’re cautiously optimistic.

The lesson I learned with Crowley is something we should keep in mind with everyone, every day.  Preconceptions, and assuming someone knows the lines of the script we’ve written in our heads is the road to disappointment, discord, and the deepest of doo-doo. 

Like that dog shrink said, “This may not be exactly what you expected, but it’s what you have.  Deal with the reality you’ve got.”

And that horrible teenager/hobgoblin that resembled The Kid?

About ten months after it showed up, one morning our sweet child came downstairs for breakfast, and the teenaged beast was never seen again.  Heck, every once in a while, The Kid even apologizes for the trauma that pod person rained down upon us.

So yeah, I think we crushed that parenting thing…

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

An Upcycle Made By Two

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In my high school, there was a girl named Kacey. 

She was imposing, and fully, forcefully, occupied all the space her body inhabited, like a warrior queen.  She was neither self-effacing nor apologetic.  Kacey was quiet but not shy.  She had a gaze that could quell both the boisterous and the boneheaded. Even someone as illiterate to the subtle as me could interpret her silent condemnation.  

I admired her.  She was kinda my hero.

Kacey was an amazing artist and her mom was a decorator. The inside of their house was a revelation.  It looked like a spread in House Beautiful. 

But the furniture and accessories didn’t fall into any one category.  There were pieces from various periods, ethnicities, and design philosophies.  They also used repurposed found objects; this was the first time I’d ever seen a trunk used as a coffee table.  I asked the name of this style.

“Eclectic.”

Kacey’s mom explained that meant using many different styles to make a harmonious whole.  I loved it.  And I loved the idea of repurposing well-worn items to new uses. 

The Kid has an apartment with a small patio containing a hammock chair.  I offered to get a table for the space.

But there were a few, very specific requirements.

It needed to be tall enough that The Kid could easily reach it from hammock height.  It needed to be impervious to weather.  It needed to be either heavy enough to not blow in around in a storm, or easy to bring inside.

I also wanted it to be unique and look good.  Purchasing something purpose built that had the qualities needed would be very expensive.  I would make like Kacey’s mom and create a table from various parts.

Not my collection. For illustrative purposes only.

There’s a thrift store nearby that I love to visit.  I’ve bought a really cool lamp for the living room, books, old Corning Ware which I collect, and other items I find that are interesting and cheap, even if I have no idea what to do with them.

I have a wooden stool in my kitchen that I painted years ago.  I also did one with an Argyle design for The Kid’s kitchen for Christmas one year.  They come in handy all the time.  During a visit to the thrift store, I’d scored another for $8 ($40 at Target).  I put it away until I figured out what to do with it.

Then I had a thought.  The stool would be the perfect height for that outdoor table.  Then I found a large tray to top it, about two feet across with a ridge around it.  I planned on just gorilla-gluing it to the stool.

But then Petey began collaborating on the project.

He had a much better idea than glue.  We went to a hardware store and he helped me choose the right product to make both parts weather-proof.  But instead of glue, he suggested Velcro.

But not the regular Velcro that’s on jackets and children’s sneakers.  He showed me industrial Velcro.  This stuff holds fifteen pounds per square inch.  And the entire tray didn’t weigh three pounds.

Then Petey really stepped up and helped me with measurement, placement and assembly.  It turned out great; The Kid loved it.  It fit perfectly in the back of the car for the ride to its new home.  But if it hadn’t—Velcro; it could’ve been broken down for transporting.

The total of supplies came to around $30.  A quick google for something similar shows the cheapest version online starts at around $80.

So, if my math’s right, I think my project might have earned me fifty bucks…?

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Keep Your Mitts Off My Moola

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The Kid calls me a bunny rabbit, and as loathe as I am to admit it, it’s kind of true.  My default setting is to trust. 

My mom will correctly size up a stranger in mere seconds.  It likely comes from being a Jersey girl.  The Kid is a probably much healthier combo of both world views.  But despite protestations of massive amounts of street cred, my sweet child falls much more on the bunny rabbit side of the scale.

Actually, rabbits are probably much more suspicious of people than even my mom.  Have you ever met a bunny in a grocery store and exchanged not only chicken recipes but life stories?  Most of the time the mere sight of you in the frozen food aisle is enough to send them fleeing in terror.  There is very little love and trust for humans on old Watership Down.

But I would much rather live my life leading with my heart and assume that everyone around me is good, and true, and full of the milk of human kindness.

Except.

Except for when it comes to my money.

Then, Gentle Reader, I make Sherlock Holmes look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm on ecstasy.  Every penny that leaves my hand has been run through a rigorous series of checks and double checks.  If you send me a bill or ask for money, you’d better have an airtight case, or you ain’t getting a penny.  You’d have a much better chance of getting a kidney out of me (literally; I’ve offered a kidney more than once to dialysis patients).

You’ve got to deserve my money and play fair.

When my cable goes out, I always call and request a credit for the time I had no service.  The other day one of their representatives said, “It’s not worth you calling us for this outage.  It only comes to sixty-three cents.”

Um, excuse me Miss Spectrum.  When you’re paying my bill, you get to decide that.  But right now, I’m responsible for it, and yes, I want every darn penny of that sixty-three cents.

When we bought our house, I had only lived with my parents, then with Petey in a tiny little mobile home park, and an apartment.  I’d never lived anywhere where I was responsible for a monthly water bill. 

One day, about eighteen months after we’d moved in, I got my first water bill.

For $1300!

The city informed me, when I called in the midst of a financially provoked stroke, that they’d neglected to bill us since we’d moved in, so what I was holding in my trembling hand was for the entire time we’d lived there.

Yeah…nope.

As I politely explained and kept politely explaining over a week-long conversation, I had openly called the city to turn on our water.  My mail box is right in front of our house.  The house is not hidden behind a bush, we were right there, out in the open, using water, every day.  This was 100% on them, and I was not paying.  But they were free to start sending me a monthly bill with new charges, and I’d be delighted to pay it.

I won.

So, if you’re having a dispute with your credit card company, or you think you may have won a trip to the Bahamas from a contest you never entered, or you’re thinking about ordering a brand-new, authentic, Vera Wang wedding dress online for $40, give me a call.

‘Cause you might be all starry eyed and gullible, but I’m a bunny rabbit.

 A bunny rabbit that’ll take you out.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

True Confessions

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I’m a terrible boss.

The entire world should rejoice every morning that the only things I am the boss of are my dog and myself, and even that’s hit or miss at best.  The dog still won’t do calculus, and would the boss of herself have eaten their weight in cake last night?  Possibly, but if they did, they wouldn’t feel guilty about it.

And, FYI—when you eat your weight in something, you double your weight.

When I was in the second grade, I was in the Brownies.  This was back when the gas currently in your car was roaming Pangaea, looking for a fellow T-Rex to share its life.  When the troop voted for a leader, I was elected.  It seemed easy, and natural.

Until junior high, I was a leader in my classes and among my friends.  In the seventh grade, I ran for class representative to the student government.  I assumed I’d be elected, no prob.

It was one of the biggest shocks of my life when I lost.  My whole world view shifted, and things were never the same. 

Then growing up did what it does to everyone, especially women.  It knocked the heck out of my ego, and made me question and at times abandon, the confidence that was an intrinsic part of me like my buck teeth (now fixed) and widow’s peak (still there).

I retained parts of that gutsiness inside me, but it was fractured, with large chunks of it damaged or missing.  Sadly, like a pitcher in a slump, I got all caught up in my own head, second guessing every instinct.

For five years in the 80s, I managed a clothing store.  That’s what utterly convinced me that although I’m great at being bossy, I’m horrible at being the boss.  Some of my badness had to do with immaturity and the cure has come with advanced age.

Yup, that’s me, circa 1986…

But some things are just part of me, things that, until the day I die, make me singularly unsuited to be in charge of paid employees.

A boss should be willing and able to make the tough, unpopular decisions.  If you’ve ever had a boss, you have, at some point during your association, been unhappy with them.  They have to tell you no, or you can’t have that week off, or your work isn’t good enough.

I hate, hate, hate it when people are mad at me.  It makes me feel like a kicked puppy.  And I spent too much time worrying about whether or not my employees liked me—sometimes to the point of something close to paralysis.  Somehow, with The Kid and our dogs, I’m able to be the bad guy when really needed; I guess deep down, I know the stakes are so much higher.

A boss needs to know when to just back off and let an employee do their job.  Petey, when he was a charge nurse at Duke was awesome at this.  His co-workers adored him and always gave their very best.  I asked him what his secret was.

He didn’t quite understand the question.  “If they work here, I assume they know how to do their job, and I let ‘em do it.”

With a sad combo plate of little trust in my staff and no trust in my ability to teach and inspire, I was a micro-managing Matilda.  I exhausted myself, so I probably brought my poor, bedeviled employees to the edge of violence.

So, give thanks.

Give thanks that you can look at that questionable photo of me in the paper, and say with feeling, “You’re not the boss of me!”

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.