Anticipation Nearly Causes an Accident

Coming home from work last night I pull closer to a 4-way stop sign intersection, behind a little import sedan.  Now, generally people at this particular intersection in our town as quite lovely and polite, but last night it seemed everyone was "cutting in line".  The guy in the sedan in front of me nearly got taken out by a delivery truck who didn't give the cross traffic a turn and jumped in for himself.

Once the delivery truck cleared, I figured the sedan would go and we;d get back to a normal 4-way stop rhythm.  Good thing I gave myself just a teeniest bit more space--because just as I thought I could safely pull forward to the pole position (you know, where I'm next to go) the little sedan hits his brakes.  Well, I hit mine as fast as I could and just missed bumping into him. 

The sedan finally eases into the intersection--where, buy the way everyone was waiting for HIM--and made his way through. YIKES!  That was too close.

Come on, people! Practice the rules we learned (or were supposed to learn) in driver's ed.  My kids are better drivers than some people!

Brilliant Article For Life's Stupidest People

I saw this in a Facebook post yesterday from one of lovely former roommates.  I'm not sure why buthtis article really hit a tender spot for me.  People can be so clueless.  This is a wonderful answers to that kind of cluelessness.  See if you don't agree:

How not to say the wrong thing

By Susan Silk and Barry Goldman published April 7, 2013 in The Los Angeles Times

When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan's colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn't feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague's response? "This isn't just about you."

"It's not?" Susan wondered. "My breast cancer is not about me? It's about you?"

The same theme came up again when our friend Katie had a brain aneurysm. She was in intensive care for a long time and finally got out and into a step-down unit. She was no longer covered with tubes and lines and monitors, but she was still in rough shape. A friend came and saw her and then stepped into the hall with Katie's husband, Pat. "I wasn't prepared for this," she told him. "I don't know if I can handle it."

This woman loves Katie, and she said what she did because the sight of Katie in this condition moved her so deeply. But it was the wrong thing to say. And it was wrong in the same way Susan's colleague's remark was wrong.

Susan has since developed a simple technique to help people avoid this mistake. It works for all kinds of crises: medical, legal, financial, romantic, even existential. She calls it the Ring Theory.

Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. For Katie's aneurysm, that's Katie. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma. In the case of Katie's aneurysm, that was Katie's husband, Pat. Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order. One of Susan's patients found it useful to tape it to her refrigerator.

Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, "Life is unfair" and "Why me?" That's the one payoff for being in the center ring.

Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.

When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you're going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn't, don't say it. Don't, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don't need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, "I'm sorry" or "This must really be hard for you" or "Can I bring you a pot roast?" Don't say, "You should hear what happened to me" or "Here's what I would do if I were you." And don't say, "This is really bringing me down."

If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that's fine. It's a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.

Comfort IN, dump OUT.

There was nothing wrong with Katie's friend saying she was not prepared for how horrible Katie looked, or even that she didn't think she could handle it. The mistake was that she said those things to Pat. She dumped IN.

Complaining to someone in a smaller ring than yours doesn't do either of you any good. On the other hand, being supportive to her principal caregiver may be the best thing you can do for the patient.

Most of us know this. Almost nobody would complain to the patient about how rotten she looks. Almost no one would say that looking at her makes them think of the fragility of life and their own closeness to death. In other words, we know enough not to dump into the center ring. Ring Theory merely expands that intuition and makes it more concrete: Don't just avoid dumping into the center ring, avoid dumping into any ring smaller than your own.

Remember, you can say whatever you want if you just wait until you're talking to someone in a larger ring than yours.

And don't worry. You'll get your turn in the center ring. You can count on that.

Susan Silk is a clinical psychologist. Barry Goldman is an arbitrator and mediator and the author of "The Science of Settlement: Ideas for Negotiators."

If I Ruled The World

I had several moments this past week where I thought "If I ran the world, _________ would not be allowed."  Now most of these are directly applied to visitors at Disneyland, but see if these aren't just what the world needs.

If I Ran the World...at least at Disneyland....

1) No one would stop right in the walkway to do anything.  Pull over to the side of the walkway if you need to talk with your friend, change the baby's diaper. find your phone, eat your lunch, or find a bathroom on the map.

2) Having only half/part of your party actually wait in the line and then at the last moment have everyone join you would get you thrown out of the park.  Yes, the line wait sign says "45 minutes".  That is the gauge for those in the line, right now.  Not the dozens of extras you are smuggling in on the last turn before boarding.

3) If your baby/child/teen/spouse is crying--it is time to go home.  Take a time out.  The park isn't going anywhere.  You can get your hand stamped and come back later--after a nap.

4) You would understand that the park's food, while convenient, is expensive. Please don't try to haggle about it and PLEASE don't complain to the wait staff/food service employee about the prices.  It wasn't their decision.  You choose to get in the line, so order already and remember where you are!

5) If you travel with a family reunion group, and are probably from Utah, make sure you know who had your kids.  It isn't fair to the kids when you yell at them because they were standing in line, waiting patiently--and very calmly--with Uncle Fred and you just didn't see the hand-off.

6) Just because the fabric of the clothing you thing makes you look so good is stretchy doesn't mean it actually fits you.  Pouring yourself into a stretchy lace undershirt and topping it with a halter bikini top doesn't keep all your bits out of sight...if anything it makes them MORE obvious and glaring.  Yikes.  Just put some clothes on.

And, perhaps most importantly, 7) I don't care if you are celebrating your 50th anniversary, your weekend wedding, or your coming out to your parents as a junior high lesbian couple, the PDA has got to stop.  I don't want to see it from ANYONE.  This is an amusement park, not some kind of cheap motel lobby!  Enough, I say.


From these basics, you can see why no one has asked me to be the General Manager of the World.

What Do You Mean, You've NEVER Seen It?!?

Maybe if you lived under a rock.  That could be the only reasonable excuse for a fight breaking out over a t-shirt like this:

But apparently, some people don't get out much...or at least watch really awful movies.  Because there was a fight on an airplane over just such a tshirt.  Read about it HERE .

Just Not Right

I was sitting the car, waiting for The Girl to run into the craft store to get whatever she needed to finish a project for camp this week.  While I was enjoying the sunshine and warmth, I watched as a woman tried to park her thunderous Suburban while she held her phone to her head cutting it pretty dang close other cars on either side of her selected spot, and all the while I gawked at the "handicapped" license hanging from her rear view mirror.

Really?!

If you are a legally designated handicapped driver, do you really need to (a) drive while you talk on your phone?  and b) drive a super sized Suburban?  Really?

Ironically, just before pulling into the parking lot with The Girl and observing this disaster in the making, we sat at the stoplight where a young woman in one of the Cube cars was holding the steering wheel with her pinkie and texting on her phone like nobody's business.

Come on, people!  Let's think about what we are doing.  Maybe it is because it has fallen to me to teach The Girl to drive and put in the hours she needs behind the wheel to complete before her birthday, but I have become very observant to the many, many foolish ways people multitask while they simultaneously operated a vehicle.  And we have had plenty of "I had never better see YOU do something dumb like that" kind of conversations because of them.

That kind of behavior is just not right.  And you know I am speaking truth here, right?!