Self-Assigned Labels

I've been having a bit of a career funk. I find myself getting increasingly agitated with my job, and as a result I spend more time wondering if there's something that would be a better fit for me at this stage of my life, something I'd enjoy doing more and at the same time generate enough money for us to pay our bills and mortgage.

I decided first to find something I can do in my "free time", defined as an hour here or there over the day that I could use to take initial steps needed to invest in a new hobby or career. I narrowed those options down to trying to write a book or spending time learning a programming language to create a potentially sellable service and opted to try writing a book. It's an ongoing process and I'm writing once in awhile about it on the New Author Chronicles blog.

My next step was to try finding some "career guides" to see what, if anything, would appeal to me as a potential career change. I poked around the shelves of Barnes and Noble, I dug through a Waldenbooks that was liquidating stock (big surprise...didn't find anything), and I skimmed reviews and advice on Amazon and B&N's web storefronts (is there anyone that can compete or come close to competing with Amazon for information despite their awkward interface?)

I decided to get a copy of Finding your Own North Star by Martha Beck. The subtitle proclaims, "Claiming the life you were meant to live."

I haven't finished the book yet. All of what I had just written was just some background on how I arrived at my topic for today.

On page 68 the author is discussing "group everybodies", basically how we tend to have this notion of a vague "everybody" that judges us or dictates standards to which we conform when in fact these "everybodies" are really a generalization based on a very small number of people that we grew up with who were critical or somewhat dangerous to our mental health while we ignored the people who supported us, since the critical people would be the baseline of "Safe."

That's the gist of the part I'm currently in. In the discussion of "everybody" generalizations the author mentions that, "This means that most groups end up with a few very vocal members and a large silent majority. We tend to assume that such silense means agreement, that the groups is totally united and monolithic in its beliefs. We're usually wrong. I made this mistake recently, during a radio interview. I tossed of a remark about Catholicism being more restrictive than mystical Eastern religions, only to have the interviewer gntly inform me that he is a mystical Catholic with a wildly unorthodox worldview, and that I might want to think twice before I lump all Catholics together."

The author goes on to say, "I've met Chinese Communists who talked and acted more capitalistic than Donald Trump, U.S. Marines who were absolutely committed to nonviolence, and devout Mormons who were also lobbyists for gay rights. Of course, they weren't the rule, but they are exceptions I would never have dreamed possible if I'd taken the groups opnions at face value."

I'm sorry but this left me scratching my head a bit. I am the first to admit that I'm ignorant about most topics involved...I'm not Catholic, I don't study Chinese culture nor have I been Mormon (I knew some Mormons, but never was a member of the LDS). But these labels cited are largely self-selected and do tend to have fairly clear-cut definitions attached (and also some common assumptions that go with them).

What right do you have to get offended at being associated with what are commonly accepted archetype for a label you associate yourself with?

The religion one in particular bugged me because I've seen so many people who say they're one thing "Except..." They cherry pick, taking what they like of one religion and branding themselves that religion but then they would get huffy if you assumed one thing that they didn't find convenient, such as the idea that the Pope is to be followed without question for Catholics ("I'm a Catholic, but I don't think the Pope is right about..." Well, how are you a Catholic?)

There are some things you can't say you ARE XYZ then go on to clarify that you're not in certain respects. You can't be a little bit pregnant. I'm told my black and white view of the world comes from my own neuro-atypical behaviors, but really, how can you cherry pick the best features of what you like then turn around and get offended at being grouped in with them, especially if it goes to a fundamental founding of their use?

Nonviolent marines? Why would you join a group that has a pretty clear-cut mission of defending a country, usually using a large caliber weapon to cut the opponent into hamburger, and define yourself as a pacifist?

Communists that are capitalists?

Mormons that are gay rights lobbyists? (I don't know if the Latter Day Saints have an official stance on gays, but if they do, I would assume that you can't be against the official doctrine and still call yourself a Mormon).

Again, I am ignorant of the specifics here. It's very possible that, like with the Mormon disclaimer, there are certain things I'm missing and so I'll take the slap on the wrist for it. But here's my stance.

If you have a group or label you identify with, you can't call yourself that label with "except" for things you don't like if it's part of that label's identity.

I can see where mistakes would happen. I'm an American. Somehow this tends to mean that people may think I can't find France on a map and that I'm a rabid pro-Christian gun nut that loves shooting people. Really I'm an American because I was born in America and am an American citizen. The rest is stereotype and propaganda twisted by perceptions by foreigners and our own internal political parties...well, the Republican party...that cites the patriotic image to shame people who don't conform to what they want.

Maybe other people could point out how these dichotomies are justified. I was simply given pause by the statements in the book. Maybe it was simply the idea of a "mystical Catholic" digging up all the memories of people who cherry pick from the Bible while having no idea what they truly believe (or having a real understanding of the religion they wave the banner of). Sometimes the tenets are kind of hidden so unless you truly devote yourself to a cause or organization you may be ignorant of certain policies, such as the Boy Scouts being anti-atheist (I was led to believe they were mostly about pinewood derbies and camping and helping the community, not condemning others for not believing in the Christian God) and the Salvation Army is anti-gay as a policy. Or these are tenets that aren't hidden but rather tacitly ignored by those practicing in such organizations when it is convenient.

Is that what it's really about? Attaching labels out of convenience instead of practicality?

Teen Marriage

I had written about my daughter's friend, Sara. She is the pregnant teen that is going to get married ("sometime")...I wrote more about it here. Read that to get a better idea of the person I'm referring to.

My household of course has people on Facebook. If you're unfamiliar with Facebook then you must not have been using the Internet for more than a month...I'm not saying you need an account on Facebook or actively use it, since I've found it to be useful only in that I've found people I lost track of years ago thanks to Facebook, only to lose them again in a deluge of worthless invites to play some farming game or joining a mafia group and spammed with happy messages that filled time I'll never get back. But I digress.

The point is that Sara has a Facebook account and apparently has her status updates posted online that members of this household see. She recently postponed (cancelled?) her wedding plans. Her mother, also apparently online with Facebook, said that the wedding was being postponed indefinitely (I got this all second-hand, so I'm paraphrasing). They got into some argument and called it off.

That was a few days ago. I asked yesterday whatever became of their canceled wedding plans, wondering what could possibly have caused Mr. and Mrs. All-You-Need-Is-Love to call off their plans.

"Oh, they're getting married now. They think near Valentine's day."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. They made up and they're going to get married again."

Quick time for slow thinkers...if your idea of resolving an argument with your fiance' is to threaten to call off your wedding for a reason short of finding him or her hammering another person in a clear act of infidelity or discovering that he or she will be out of the country or in jail for a stretch of time, and perhaps a few other extenuating circumstances that lead you to a revelation that this person is not the person you thought they were at a deep and fundamental level, you're probably about as emotionally mature as a ten year old and should not be getting married in the first place.

Threatening to call off the marriage because of a spat is pretty much the equivalent to the playground "I won't be your friend anymore!" ploy.

I shudder to think how common this type of idiocy is in our society. It makes me more depressed than I already am having to face the holiday stress.

Teen Pregnancy and Idiots: A Plea for Understanding

I need some help.

I probably don't have enough readers who follow this to give some advice, but hey, doesn't hurt to ask. If you have friends or followers that might be able to offer (constructive) thoughts, please do direct them here to leave a comment.

I need some guidance on a social issue that probably doesn't have a direct "right" answer but I have definite opinions about and I need to find a way to reconcile these ideas. Since you probably read the title, you should have no problem figuring that out.

My daughter has a friend who is a complete moron. I'll call her Sara. And when I say she's a moron, I mean she really is an idiot...ignorant, lacking common sense, and worst of all proud of her ignorance.

She is a senior in high school. I'm not sure she didn't fail a year and have to repeat; she's 18 now. Her boyfriend is in his early 20's. Sara is a sweet girl, kind, and comes off as being a total bubblehead if you met her. She's one of the kinds of people that hangs around and leaves you scratching your head wondering where her head is half the time, but otherwise seems innocent and harmless enough.

Her boyfriend was supposedly going into the military. Her mother works a job that doesn't bring in a lot of cash, and I guess her father is more or less not in the picture (I never hear anything about her father, I think they may be divorced).

The problem is that before her senior year started, she decided to get pregnant. So she did.

Her mother is overjoyed. Sara gave her a granddaughter! Yay! She also was letting her daughter "live" with the boyfriend all summer. She reported that the daughter lived with her so she'd be in the "correct" school district while she was...is?...living with her boyfriend in a neighboring school district.

Did I mention that she's a senior in high school still?

I have a few problems with this. First, it encouraged my daughter to be an idiot. They're friends, and I can't very well just ban her from hanging out with people because they're idiots or she'd have no friends. My daughter saw no problem with her being pregnant because "they're in love". I suppose this partially fits with the theory I have that part of the Twilight appeal to tweens and teens is that it gives some idealized teenager ideal of romantic love, the idea that a true relationship means finding someone that you physically and emotionally cannot live without to the point where you pine away and die because they decide that they, like, want to, like, hang out with someone else, like, ya'know? Be typical teenagers with so much melodrama in your life that every minor blip in your life is a, like, major life-altering catalyst for altering your entire, like, world?

Where was I? Oh, yes, idiot. They're in love. That makes it okay to intentionally get pregnant at 17/18. That is so not the message I want my teenage daughter to get, which I thought she'd know better since she had to live with the consequences of being the daughter of someone who was a teenage mom. It made life hard for them. It seems she forgot about the first 10 years of her life.

Okay. That brought me to the second reason I really dislike this. Their lives.

Sara has no job. No job skills. No prospects. Not even married yet.

I'm not a big believer in marriage for the sake of children or for any religious reasons (imagine that). I'm look at it practically. Supposedly the father is in the military...my daughter thought he was, but for some reason he came home on leave over the summer and simply never went back, and my daughter is too focused on herself to ever wonder why. She thought that he might kind of sorta work at a factory now. In his twenties with a factory job. Okay. It's something.

The teenage mother? Sara apparently got pregnant, got all the back slaps and smiles from her mother, then decided she was afraid of the stigma of being on of "those" statistics at school and decided to take home schooling or online schooling through her school district so she didn't have to face her classmates with the baby bump.

They're not married yet. "They're planning on getting married," my daughter says. "They love each other." Sorry...statistically speaking, this is sooo common a refrain, yet it means jack until it's really done. And until then you lost the primary practical reasons to get married...namely legal benefits. Something happens to mommy or daddy, there's no money or support available to the kid and remaining parent. I know it's common to believe you won't be "one of those people", that "our situation is different." Of course there's a chance things will work out. In families with more wealth, financial issues never figure into the equation.

But this isn't a family of means. Grandma-Mommy makes minimal income. I guess Grandpa-Daddy is barely in the picture. Daddy works at a factory. Mommy is a student with no marketable skills and hasn't even held a summer job. Which brings me to my next problem...

My taxes will be supporting them. It's one thing when someone is raped. Or hits bad times. Has a rough patch in life, etc. etc...I'm all for the government helping. When someone does something that at the time is reasonable, then the situation changes, that's forgivable. But for the life of me I cannot find any situation where you're making minimal amount of money, have no real skills, and it's justifiable to have a child at an age that stigmatizes you and the child. She intentionally did this. She set out to have a baby, and now that child will be most likely raised at or very close to the poverty line, thus statistically speaking creating the same problem when this kid hits reproductive years all over again. What happens when you have someone in that situation? Typically they're on financial support.

I work a job that is literally stressing my health at times. My wife works hard at her job. We forced our daughter to get a job and she's done a halfway decent job of sticking with that McJob. And it pisses me off to have a third of my income docked to go towards people who are in financial straits and decide it's wise to turn around and have another child in that situation on purpose. Not an accident. Have a child that will in turn be put into a disadvantaged situation with the expectation that they're entitled to a wonderful life at the expense of taxpayers because Mommy and Daddy think it's cool to have a kid.

I've been struggling with my feelings on this because before, I didn't mind her being around. She was sweet. A nice kid. Just...stupid as a rock at times. Ignorant of just about anything going on around her. She was bubbleheaded but harmless for the most part...maybe a slight danger to herself, since she had once stuck a lollipop in her eye thinking she was holding her contact lens (which was actually on the finger on the other hand). Yes, that actually happened, and isn't unexpected from her.

Now I don't want her in our house. Ever.

I can't help but see her as a bad example, and I'm overwhelmed with disappointment at the road she's setting down. I know there are exceptions. My wife was someone who led a life where quite frankly she should be probably dead. From her stories she was far more promiscuous than average in her teenage years. She did things she now regrets. What first drew me to her was that she was determined to make up for those things after she got pregnant and finally realized that she was bringing an innocent life into the world that relied on her to be responsible enough to take are of her. She isn't the nurturing type...she'll admit that...but when she got pregnant her senior year in high school, she stuck with school to graduate. Then she moved out of her parents home, got married to the father (another mistake, she concedes, as he was too lazy to hold a job and she was working whenever she could to make the bills), and then went to college over the next 10 years to get a degree with career potential. Ten years of working nights and part time. She beat the odds, and while she'll always be the statistic of being a teen mom, she's also a statistic in that she beat the overwhelming majority that ends up without an education and living in the poverty level as a single parent. She worked to have her kid have a better life, and that struck me as being someone to really admire.

Sara shows no sign of this. There is absolutely no way, in her shoes, I could see what she's done as being a good idea from anyone with a lick of common sense. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't her being a victim. It was her being selfish and self centered and now I have to pay for it. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing through this obstacle.

I was thinking of this because apparently she asked my daughter to go to Twilight tomorrow with her and her boyfriend and some other friend. Ironic. Twilight is supposed to be all about the romance-without-screwing and chastity, but Sara is going to see it. My wife and I just said that as long as she had money to pay her bills (yes, my daughter incurs bills for her driving and cell phone) as well as paying for her trip to the movie then fine. I don't like her hanging out with Sara as I see her as a bad example and influence now, but like I said...don't wan to block her from being friends with people who are idiots or she'd really have no one to hang around with.

I just need...strike that. I want to find a way to justify liking Sara again as that good kid that didn't cross the line from harmless to a tax burden. As it stands I see her as a financial burden, bad example to society and quite frankly I feel a need to punish her for her idiocy. I feel a need to tell her that she's not welcome in our home, around us or our kids. I want her to understand the immense stupidity in her decisions and understand that her actions are bringing an innocent into the world that doesn't have a choice in dealing with her idiot life decisions, and there will be a point where statistically she will repeat those mistakes for others to have to deal with.

The most difficult keyword there is feel. I could find logical fallacies and justifications to appease the rational side of either end of the arguments. But something about this...maybe it was her being judged a harmless but ditzy person previously...makes me feel anger at her disappointing my wife and I. It's not my place to punish her. I've not even spoken to her since she was dancing around with her joyful news, and I don't think my wife has spoken to her either.

Maybe that's it. I'm utterly disappointed and angry that we misjudged her so much. I have an irrational need to make her understand her foolishness and I want her to get her ass on track to becoming a productive member of society, but she's not my kid. And I'm realistic. She has enjoyed her ignorance and stupidity, and she has no aspirations to do anything in life to be productive. I guess that lifestyle works when the Daddy pulls in cash by the fistful, but when Daddy is a military dropout landing a minimum wage job, I'm thinking that is an indication that Daddy couldn't hack the responsibility and discipline of the military's basic training, Mommy already shows she lacks this, and Sara's own family lacks the means to support the children as well.

I've simply seen this pattern play out too often. My wife's sister has kids out of wedlock and lives with her parents, partially supported by them. Technically I guess it is in wedlock since she never divorced her husband, but the children weren't his. Oh boy. That life would take three posts to explain in itself.

The area in which we live is rife with poverty-level income, with a huge population of underprivileged kids according to the government. Now Sara has added another one. Each of these kids is an opportunity to change and live better and do better in life. Sara has effectively flushed her chance down the toilet.

I hope desperately that she will turn this around and beat the odds. I don't see her as being someone for whom it will happen. My wife happened to be too stubborn to not beat those odds once she actually came to her senses and decided that maybe her lifestyle choices were really stupid. Sara is too stupid to come to her senses.

Can someone give ideas on how to "come to grips" with this? How to forgive when I can't get past the idea of punishing her for her utter stupidity? I can't do that, of course, so right now I simply don't want her around at all. My wife can't offer insight on how to do this because she, too, is apparently too angry and disappointed in Sara to endorse her coming to the home as well. I guess that despite my Aspergian need for rational discourse and her irrational emotion-based decision process we both agree that we don't want Sara around.

Making Your Own Luck

I stumbled upon this Telegraph article reviewing making your own luck. Basically it said that people can make their own skill and it was a matter of skill.

Being lucky is a skill?

That's counterintuitive...working at being lucky? And I'm not talking about the skill of being dirty-lucky. Get your mind out of the gutter. Plus everyone already knew that was a skill.

I'm talking about the lucky you get when you find money laying on the ground or winning a contest.

According to the article the study found that people who were "unlucky" tended to be more tense and focused on details. Basically, the people who weren't tense noticed other things around them. Unlucky people were focused on the walk so they didn't notice the pothole. They didn't notice the money laying along the path. They looked for a specific job listing in the paper and didn't notice the unrelated job listing that happened to be a far better opportunity.

The story goes on to say that lucky people are lucky using four principles; they notice and create chance opportunities, they listen to their intuition, they use positive expectations, and they adopt a resilient attitude.

Which doesn't bode well for me.

I tend to be very focused and stuck on my expectations and routine. I am not an intuitive person; I reason things out and follow logic when all else fails. I tend to be more of a realist and cynic than a positive person. And for the resilient attitude...I'm still here and I'm still working on my novel despite my fears, so maybe I might have a slight bit of a resilient attitude, if that can be counted.

The article is actually very interesting. It's older but if true it might be something worth filing away for future use. I might have to return to it and study it some more too...maybe try integrating it into my life in some fashion. There have been a number of times lately where I really need something like this to fall back on.

Bullying in Schools

The school district my daughter attends, like so many others now, are actively trying to fight bullying in their halls.

When I went to meet with some teachers I happened to see some of the materials out promoting the pre-packaged program on which the district spent a pretty penny on; posters dotted the halls replete with trite slogans and various papers with crayon drawings and misspelled phrases by the students in the elementary schools.

But the thing that surprised me most was that in this program there are forms where teachers fill in incident reports for bullying. There were a series of labels for which you got into trouble...you were a bully, a henchman (aren't they the first ones to be smacked around by Batman?), or a bystander.

Yes. Bystander.

I remember when I was growing up we called this "minding your own business." I wasn't a victim of bullying...I didn't actively seek trouble, and I didn't actively cause trouble (outside of being a class clown, anyway).

But the current system of education teaches kids that minding your own business makes you an accomplice to bullying.

I talked to a teacher about this; she said that she's torn with her own personal opinion on this issue because while she agrees that children should be active in preventing bullying, she remembers when she was in school and she stuck up for another kid being bullied. She ended up being punched in the nose.

Every day there's bullying. As adults, we call it office politics. Or we call it someone annoying the bejebus out of us. Here's a list of what constitutes bullying (according to this site):

• constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature - the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication
• simultaneous with the criticism, a constant refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions and achievements or to recognize your existence and value
• constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
• where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong - however trivial - action is taken against you
• being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what's going on, marginalized, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to Coventry
• being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others
• being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others
• being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all
• finding that your work - and the credit for it - is stolen and plagiarised
• having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
• having annual leave, sickness leave, and - especially - compassionate leave refused
• being denied training necessary for you to fulfill your duties
• having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them
• ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice - or no notice - and without you being informed until it's too late
• finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented
• being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation
• being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc

Wow...most people are bullied just by going to work.

So is it worth the money and time being spent on "anti-bullying programs"? Is it being blown out of proportion? Or is there a genuine need to bring this into the public awareness?

Surely the stories I hear about are those like the one from this guy, now a nearly perfectly adjusted (if not really bitter about his childhood) adult working at Google. I thought these were extreme stories, things that happen to a relatively small number of people, like winning the lottery or managing to get out of debt.

When I was growing up I experienced very little outstanding examples of bullying despite being fat and definitely a nonfan of athletics and sports. I figured that most of those stories were exaggerated, seeing as I was a prime stereotypical target for bullying and I wasn't actually experiencing it. Maybe someone reading this could post comments about their experiences growing up, or as parents with kids in school now.

Is bullying really a big problem?

High School: Geeks and Bullies

This post (click for link) by a PhD in computer science at Google regarding why he won't go to his high school reunion had me thinking back to my own experiences in high school.

I suppose this is another example of how I've ended up at this point, largely defined by my weight. The only thing is that I never had it as bad as this guy did. He describes having his fingers broken by some other student just so the bully could hear what it would sound like and having a swastika shape burned in front of his house; not that it was anti-semitically related, just that the kid who did it knew it would really bother him (and his brother got some revenge on the perpetrator too; he elaborated both of these details later on in the article). He grew up as a skinny geek and social outcast and his article is wondering what mental defect his ex-classmates have that they would think he'd want to see them at the 25th reunion.

It must have touched more than a few nerves; there's a huge list of anecdotes in the comments section.

I guess I was lucky. I grew up a geek; my first computer that I owned was a Commodore 128D, and I remember playing in elementary school...around third grade or so...with a TRS-80 in the school's enrichment program (or gifted program, whatever other schools would call it. I think it's a dying thing now since No Child Left Behind places emphasis on kids who don't want to be in school and gifted kids are assumed to be fine left to their own devices; a real shame). I wasn't an easy target though...I was overweight and sullen. Not emo. Just looked scary if I got mad, and my temperment was such that usually I left well enough alone. Mind your business, I'll mind mine. Step into my business and I usually used words that bullies were too dim-witted to understand. Or maybe they were afraid of what I'd do to them in retaliation.

Maybe it was the rural area I lived in or maybe it was because fat people were expected to be stupid and I didn't fit the stereotype, but for the most part I had no problem with people bullying me.

I was in chorus in high school. I did a lot of theater work (have a minor in it, actually). I wore a trenchcoat because it was a great utility; at the time, my fat usually kept me pretty warm so a thin trenchoat was just the ticket to protect from the wind without drenching me in sweat, but at the same time it had huge pockets for carrying my things which was necessary because I was too fat to get from one class to the lockers for my things then to the next class in time. I don't know how I'd survive in today's school system where bookbags are a hazard and coats aren't allowed during the day and trenchcoats are a one-way ticket to the guidance counselor, if not the principal. There was also the fact that the coat was almost like a post-industrial wizard's robe or hero's cape.

The fact that the coat draped on an already oversized guy sporting a non-smiling face was probably somewhat intimidating probably helped, in retrospect, send a message to not bother me if I wasn't in the mood.

I was a class clown despite these appearances. My insecurities and social awkwardness expressed itself by making others laugh; I enjoyed performing on stage and in class alike, to the chagrin of my teachers.

I had a small circle of friends. I only hear from a few of them anymore and those I do keep in touch with I usually only hear snippets from via Facebook.

I was fat, geeky, socially awkward, "different", hated sports, strongly disliked school and the institution of public education, resented the people I saw around me to be fools and ignoramuses, and introverted. And I liked computers, rejected organized religion which in itself is a sin in a small rural town like the one I grew up in, and wore a trench coat. What a formula. And of course I didn't date. There were a couple of girls I had a crush on at some point but no one ever wanted to be known for dating the fat social reject. I was far closer to "friend" material than dating material.

(I sometimes wonder if I would meet some of these people on the street if they'd not recognize me and suddenly be open to going out on a date, just so I could reminisce about whether they remember some fatass from high school that they wouldn't give the time of day to...then tell them to go to hell. Not that I'm bitter. My wife might even get a kick from listening to this transpire.)

And yet no one really picked on me. Aside from the expected comments about being fat. Usually I didn't hear them much, either because it was said behind my back or I didn't provoke outright teasing (or they feared that if I did catch up to them at some point, this fatass could still give them an ass whupping, I don't know).

I suppose that while I look back with very little fondness for my public school years I was fortunate in leaving without great mental scarring, unlike the guy that posted the article that got me thinking about this again. I honestly don't recall any great pains inflicted by my peers while growing up except for the occasional teenage melodrama of heartbreak, but that's hardly limited to something geeks have the monopoly on.

See? I've finally found something fortunate in my life to focus on. I'm told I always focus on the negative...now I have an example to point to.

Although now that I've said that I'll probably find a memory I've been supressing...

Anyone else have anything they'd like to share from their formative years?

Your Daughter the Teen Mother

This is a topic that is just something I end up thinking about periodically, probably because I have a 17-year-old daughter with a boyfriend. It's a subject of great debate yet is often kind of couched in a silence at the dinner table; an uncomfortable pebble in your shoe rubbing on your foot. It's simply avoided.

Fortunately my Asperger's and her mother's sometimes lacking skills of tact means this normally doesn't apply to our family as a problem.

If I'm reading this right, the US had a 84 out of 1,000 teens pregnant on average. This report shows that almost half of school-age teens have had sex at least once. Newer information just further convinces me that this isn't a topic that should be ignored.

I've worked around kids enough...with a young one and a teenager in the house, especially...to know that you can't take for granted that they know what they should or shouldn't do. You'd assume that they could figure something out. Then we get questions about things like how to make spaghetti ("The instructions are right on the box!"). For some reason apparently the biological drive to mate, despite fumbling and possibly getting slivers, is strong enough that teenagers manage to figure it out while simpler things like boiling water without disintegrating the pasta...with instructions in hand...escape them.

Lesson: don't take it for granted that they know their parents views, understand those views, and understand the consequences.

My daughter has had exposure to the hardships incurred by unwed pregnancies. She has an aunt that has two children without a father in the picture; she lives with her parents and so the children's grandparents use a considerable amount of their resources to raise the grandchildren. She herself...well, isn't my biological daughter. My wife became pregnant her last years of high school and married the biological father; the marriage crumbled and reached a breaking point nearly ten years later, after which she divorced and met me, so she's my step daughter and she was raised under economic difficulty and had to move around as jobs and money permitted while her mom worked during the day and went to college on weekends and at night to try making a better life for them. She basically grew up seeing what can happen (although I guess her mom was a bad role model for showing the bad side of being a teen mom, since her mom worked her tail off to get through school while raising a daughter with little help from the father and managed to graduate with a degree...she now has a master's degree).

She sees the hardship that her grandparents go through emotionally with having their daughter and grandchildren with them as well as experiencing her own childhood with parents barely scraping by because of balancing family, bills, and education.

But again, we couldn't take that for granted.

My wife wanted to make sure that our daughter was able to tell her...if not both of us (okay, I'm not a teddy bear to relate to when there's emotions involved. I'm cognizant that she'll first go to her mother if something like this happens to have some support before revealing it to me...) that she was sexually active so she could get birth control. Or come to us with questions.

We differ a little here.

She knows I disapprove of her having any relations with someone else before she is married. I know, it's such a conservative view! Weird! But the fact is that I disapprove of it before marriage, I have made it clear to her that she has full support to do whatever she wants to do once she is 18 and out of the house.

See, my philosophy extends from the notion that if you want to play adult, you need to be in a position to live like an adult. Having sex is a big risk; condoms break, they slip, and anything that can get one motile sperm into the uterus can get her pregnant. At that point you are then responsible for bringing a potential life into the world that didn't ask to be here. Taking risks like that means you think you're prepared to go into the world as an independent adult.

She was told that if she got pregnant, she'd be given a reasonable time to move out to her own apartment. She's not disowned or banned or anything like that...she just needs to get her life in order and understand that there are consequences; sex isn't a little hobby thing to do when you're bored or to fit in. We agreed we'd help her out with things when we could, but only as long as she's making a reasonable effort to keep her own head above water...steady job, education if she needs it, pays own bills, learns the joys of keeping her car running, things of that nature.

But we can't swoop in and save her every time. She wasn't living with us rent free if she decided she was living here; she uses electricity, she uses groceries (unless she buys her own), she uses space...she was going to pay a reasonable rent. My parents never told me much as I grew up about finances; I wanted to remedy that with her. We told her that we're paying a little under two grand a month to keep a roof over our heads. We make no secret from her what it costs with our bills and taxes.

But none of this made much of a real-world impact until she was strongarmed into getting a McJob. It was heartwarming to see her read her first paystub and realize how much money was taken out for silly things.

My primary concern, reinforced from the surgery, was that we want her to live on her own if we were to die. We have provisions in our will for her and her brother so that she'd be taken care of while my parents were still alive, and she's nearly old enough that should something happen she can care for her brother reasonably well in about five to seven years, I suppose (we're hoping to change the will should it become necessary later on), until he's old enough to live on his own. But my worry is that if we're always there to keep her protected from the real world she will never mature and lead her own life.

We need her to understand that. Desperately. I need to know that while it may not be pleasant, I want to know that if something happened to my wife and I that our daughter isn't going to be unable to sustain herself in "the real world".

I need her to understand that we will not raise her children for her because she wanted to experiment with her boyfriend because who will raise them if we die? Is it just another generation tossed aside unwanted after we pass away because we're too old to adequately care for her children?

She needs to understand that there comes a time when she needs to face the world and reality. We need to transition from careless teens to parents to grandparents...not perpetual parents. Just as my son and daughter can choose to do.

My wife and I don't want to look back on our lives after sixty or seventy years, just having the last grandchild moving to college from our home, wondering what we could have been doing had we not been raising our children's children or worrying about what is going to happen to our great-grandchildren. What if we had set firmer boundries? Or forced our daughter to take responsibility for her actions?

Of course this is all just one possible scenario. It's a worry, one of many that parents have to face. And like I said...as far as we know our daughter isn't active sexually, and she knows that abstinence is the only way to be sure she doesn't get pregnant, but that she is fully allowed to do whatever she wants when she is of age and we won't judge her negatively for it because we support her living her own life once she is taking responsibility for (possible) consequences. As long as she's happy and making her own way we can die without worrying about how she's going to manage. I told her that no matter what she chooses to do at that point it's fine with us.

Others, no doubt, have different opinions on the matter...

The Positive Effect of Negative Thinking

Here was an interesting article called "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking." It explores the idea that negative thinking isn't necessarily bad for you.

See, when you tell someone something that they don't believe, they cling more tightly to their own belief. Asserting that "Sarah Palin is a genius!" will just have your friend believe even more vehemently that she's a moron, or telling a friend who knows he's one of the dimmer of your entourage that he can be the next Einstein will have them thinking even more stubbornly that he's...well, a Sarah Palin.

Indeed, what I took away from the article was that trying to get people to think in a positive fashion can have a more serious effect; they start to see that their lives suck more than they did before the positive outlook.

It was an interesting read. If you suffer from the periodic "blue day" I'd encourage you to check out the link and see what you think of the findings. I thought it was quite fascinating.

Principles in Character and Reflection on One's Self

Dictionary.com defines a principle as "An accepted or professed rule of action or conduct", "Guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct," and "A personal or specific basis of conduct or management."

Character is defined as "The aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing," "Moral or ethical quality," and "Qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity."

Part of introspection...basically observing yourself, your emotional and mental states...is to see if you can find who you truly are. There are many times in my life where I do this. We all change as time goes on, but you should find that you have certain principles that act as a foundation for who you are, the essence upon which you build your character.

When I stop to think about who I am, how I've changed...I wonder if other people do this as well. Not just because I wonder if I'm normal in doing this. Thanks to my Asperger self I've stopped hoping to fit any cookie-cutter definition of "normal". But I find that sometimes reminding yourself of who you really are is a wonderful way to help keep yourself in "check".

I don't think many people...or enough people...take the time to do this or realize the ramifications of what they do. My wife was in a situation where she attended a small rural church and had what she thought were many established friends there. She had been having a rocky marriage at the time. She and her ex were attending marriage counseling services recommended by the pastor which...as you can tell from the "ex" part...didn't turn out well for the marriage.

She ended up separating from him.

Not long after separating and filing for the divorce she met me. We started dating.

At the time she wanted to share her church experiences with me...I had misgivings (as you may be able to tell from previous posts). She insisted I try going because the people were friendly and welcoming, as is the Christian community.

The pastor of that church asked someone to relay to me that if we, my then-girlfriend and I, were to show up together at a service one or both of us would be asked to leave. We were not welcome to come to church functions together.

Many of her friends at the time drifted away, suddenly busy with other things and never bothering to even offer words of support during her divorce period. The couple that did bother offering to go out still continued going to the same church that excluded my wife's attendance.

She still places much of the blame on herself and the pastor only because the pastor had intimate knowledge of the issues in the marriage and still was biased in her ex-husband's favor while she didn't air her own dirty laundry of the things that were happening for the congregation's benefit. Her friends knew of many of the things that had been going on or at least had some idea, though.

I sort of filed it away under validation for what I saw as people claiming to be good Christians while in reality just using religion as a tool for justifying passing judgment on other people. I thought it contradictory to the whole What Would Jesus Do characterization, but hey, to each their own. I found the pastor to be contradictory to the ideal of what a good spiritual leader was supposed to be in several ways and was somewhat baffled by why these people continue to go listen to him.

So what does this say for the principles involved here?

As a friend, if you were in a social group that for one reason or another shunned your friend, do you privately tell your friend you support them while continuing to associate yourself with the group?

What does it say for your principles when you continue with a group whose figurehead acts in a manner that is contrary to the professed values of what the organization stands for?

Do you have a right to protest that you aren't like everyone else when you voluntarily continue to associate yourself with that group, that you can be friends with someone who is ostracized by this group while still being part of that group?

I related this story because it was a powerful illustration of the type of situation that had me questioning the power of doublethink and how people rationalize away the contradictions to their principles, assuming they have them. It's not the only time I've had something related to me as a story or experienced personally that had me thinking about how other people act and react to situations. I think it's difficult, for example, in this situation for some of the principle players (that's another definition of principle there...what a flexible word!) to fully come to grips with their behavior if they were to take time to sit and reflect inwardly on their feelings and reactions to the situation. Perhaps they were just too selfish to consider the effect their reaction had on my now-wife's emotional state or simply didn't consider this to be an issue.

In case you're wondering, today it's largely water under the bridge; it happened many years ago, and the ex-husband the pastor was courting to stay in his congregation quit going shortly after all the dust settled. We were banned from going so we obliged them in not returning to their weekly message of fellowship. I say largely under the bridge because clearly I still think about it once in awhile. I've simply come to terms with it to the point where I'm not obsessing about it nor do I really have feelings of anger at the collective reaction the congregation had. I can honestly say that it reached the point of "Acknowledge, and move on..."

Character

Character is what you do when you know no one is looking.

Most people at some point in their lives encounter a situation where something is going on that is ethically or morally wrong, but in speaking up you can put your job or friendships in danger, or at the very least make you unpopular with people that can make your life hell.

My wife was recently in that kind of situation. This isn't a post about what had happened; it isn't my place, despite how very hard it is for me not to try to get the word out there at how outrageous the situation was.

This is about choices we make in that kind of situation. She chose to speak out. She didn't scream it from the top of the hills but she did do something that could make her unpopular with certain people in a position to make her life more difficult.

She chose to do what is right.

She could have stayed quiet, she could have rationalized away what had happened to help her sleep at night. But she actually chose to do something to try to right a wrong.

And I couldn't be more proud of her for it.

On Character

I said I've been using this blog as an outlet; creative outlet, a way to express my worries, things in my life, things that other people probably don't care about but I just wanted to try getting out of my head.

Recently I had a bit of a character lesson about my children. See, we think that the older one has a problem with selfishness.

I have a seventeen year old stepdaughter and a four year old son. That daughter didn't say much of anything leading up to the surgery. No questions. No, "good luck". Nothing. My son had no idea what was going on...I felt he was too young to fully understand, so I thought we'd just deal with his questions as he had them. I left Monday afternoon for the hotel and Tuesday had the surgery.

My wife checked her email and had a message from my boss asking how I was doing. In it he said he had asked my daughter when he saw her in passing during the day and she had said, "I don't know."

Originally my parents were going to bring my son and my stepdaughter up on Wednesday night to visit me. They came up with my son. My daughter decided she wanted to go hang out at her boyfriend's house and watch a movie and play a video game.

My wife had a text message arrive from the daughter on Thursday asking how I was doing. This was the day before I was to be discharged...and the first time she asked how I was.

On the Monday after Easter my wife had gone on an appointment an hour away from the house. The daughter decided she wanted to hang out at her boyfriend's house for the day, since she had school off. I was home alone most of the day.

Then I got a phone call from my wife...she had a flat tire and was letting me know she was running even farther behind schedule. I couldn't drive. I didn't have a car anyway...my daughter had the second car. My wife would be able to change the tire, but it was another emotional punch making me feel useless as I currently am...but self pity is for another time.

My wife called my stepdaughter and her boyfriend, a jock-built treestump that for his faults isn't the worst choice in the world for the daughter to be dating. But my daughter told my wife that they had "just sat down for dinner at Olive Garden". My wife was quite irate that she hadn't told her where she was going other than the boyfriend's house...this was a deal that they had between them that she'd let her know where she'd be in case there was a problem.

At any rate, I had the phone call about the tire, and waited about half an hour before I was about to redial her to check up on her. She was stranded by the freeway where every year a number of people are killed by motorists whizzing by as she'd be working on the car; I was quite anxious to hear from her again. Just as I was about to dial the phone rang. She was okay. A state trooper and another gentleman stopped and assisted just after she got the nuts loosened on the tire and had started getting the vehicle jacked into the air.

After her adventures she got home and told me the daughter had never called again. Never bothered to check whether she was okay, if the car was running again, nothing.

I called my father. Because of schedules I wouldn't be able to get the car into the shop to plug the tire for awhile, and my wife is leaving Wednesday until Sunday on a trip. That meant the family car may be driven by the daughter and we wanted a spare tire available for her, just in case something happened. My parents watch my son overnight Monday into Tuesday so Grandma can visit with her grandson for awhile and also save a little on daycare costs. I called, and my son answered the phone.

"Hello," he said in his hesitant but developing big-boy phone voice.
"Hey, dude!" I said.
"Oh hi Daddy I'm having a fun time how's your boo boo Daddy?"

I was surprised. He asked about my surgical wound? It's been a couple days since he asked, again, to see my boo boo under the shirt. I told him I was doing a little better. When my father got on the phone I asked him who put him up to asking.

"No one. He did it on his own."

My own son asked about how I was doing. My daughter hasn't said much at all.

She then called that night (still Monday) to say she had missed her ride to acting lessons and she decided to go to her boyfriend's house. "Don't you have your ride's phone number?" "No." "Did you tell him you were going this week?" "No." She didn't see a problem with this. Her acting classes, half paid by her, are supposed to help her in the career she insists she wants to break into. She can't be bothered to cover her bases to make sure she makes it there in time for her ride to take her, or if she were running behind be able to contact him and beg for five more minutes until she arrives at the rendezvous point.

My wife had words with her that night. She told her how selfish she has been, how she couldn't be bothered to ask how I was doing after having a rough time after the surgery. How irresponsible she's been about making sure she'd get to lessons on time. How I help keep the house over her head, how she doesn't mind having our food, our money, our help...all in exchange for taking out trash, keeping her room organized (which has been another problem), and for now, dishes and general pickup duty as needed since I can't get around very well.

This morning she had to get a ride to school from her boyfriend. My wife was taking a half-day from work to drive to my doctor's appointment and then after school was picking up my parent's car from the shop, and the daughter was to drive home the family vehicle. I realized that nothing my wife said made any difference to her. She left this morning without so much as a "good luck."

My four year old son had more concern for my condition than my 17 year old daughter.

I know this paints a negative picture of her. She sounds like some street hooligan, a rebellious teen that is out running around at all hours and probably a road to get pregnant by the time she's 18 and strung out on drugs by the time she's 20. But she's not. For the most part, when she's told to do something, very specifically, she'll do it. A general directive such as, "Pick up your room", usually yields a room with two or three things moved to another shelf but still would have crap strewn about the floor and her claiming not to know what else to clean up, simultaneously giving a blank look I've come to call "teentard", complete with a blank stare.

But when she's told to get the trash taken out she'll do it. Told to help the little guy pick up his trains, she does it. She doesn't stay out late; she normally stays close to her curfew. She doesn't argue much unless confronted about something she neglected to do. She gets decent grades in school; not top-tier academics, but not in the bottom either. Since my operation she's spent only the two days with her boyfriend at his house; we just wished she had priorities shifted slightly more towards concern for her stepfather and his health instead of sitting and watching a movie and playing a video game.

Part of me wonders if she just plain doesn't give a rat's arse about me. I'm just a supply of food and shelter and a car to borrow. But that's making it too personal. My wife thinks she's just plain self-centered and selfish.

My wife tried to raise the stepdaughter to be independant, to not rely on others for emotional support. I married my wife when the daughter was barely 12 years old, so most of her personality had been set; she was a good kid, overall well behaved. But now it seems that she was raised to be so independant that she primarily cares about herself. Most teenagers do that to some degree; most people in general display selfishness to some degree. But here I was nervous as hell about this operation, bleeding out the night after the operation, the person that gives her a home and food and even a car to tool around in, and she couldn't ask me how I was until two days after the operation? She sends over one hundred text messages on her cell phone a day, and while it's still a social faux-pas to say something personal over a text message, she couldn't even have sent one text message to me to wish me well or ask if I was still alive.

I'm disappointed in her. I never dreamed I'd feel so disappointed simply because my four-year-old showed more concern for me with a simple question on the phone than my seventeen year old, who is more than old enough to comprehend some of the dangers of this surgery and difficulties I'm facing.

I will say that at least I'm not angry with her. Only disappointed at this point. But que sera, sera...