Month: February 2019

What Is it in our human nature that makes us susceptible to shortcuts?  You know what I mean; you look at a ladder leaning against the roof and you think “it’s a little crooked, but it should hold me “, just before you come crashing down to the ground.  Or you pick up a paring knife while holding an apple in your hand instead of taking the time to find the cutting board thinking “oh this knife is not very sharp “, and the next thing you know you find yourself making a trip to the emergency room for stitches. 

We’ve all been there!  It makes for great laughs on America’s Funniest Videos, but sometimes the results are more than amusing.

I think men are notorious for taking shortcuts.  It’s may be something in their DNA.  It’s the thing that makes them think that driving a car around an asphalt track at 200 miles an hour is a good thing.  It is also the thing that makes them drop everything to run into a burning house to rescue the inhabitants. 

Women don’t do that…at least not most women.  We consider all the consequence and decide it’s not a good thing.  I don’t know how many times I have watched my husband doing something and thought that perhaps he had not considered the obvious first step.  But true to form, he takes the easy way out and I’m left to pick him up off the ground or sweep up the broken glass.   The only place where women tend to take shortcuts is with the cell phone.  They only take a second to look at a text and find themselves sliding off the road.

The most recent example of a failed shortcut is the case of Jussie Smollett.  He wanted a raise.  There were probably several ways to achieve that end, but he chose to fake a racist homophonic attack for the attention.  How well did that work?  He has been disgraced, his part was chopped from the show Empire, his career is in tatters and he is facing the possibility of being convicted of a crime.  All because he may have thought that fabricating a story would be easier than doing the hard work required for recognition and more compensation.

The sad thing is that the press took the same short cut. Instead of waiting until all the evidence came out, they started their witch-hunt.  The perpetrators were wearing MAGA hats, therefore, it had to be those ‘evil’ Trump supporters.  They are the only ones devious enough to stage an attack like that. 

In truth, the only ones who would stage an attack like that are the actors we find ourselves being surrounded by these days.  What did Shakespeare say, in his pastoral comedy, ‘As You Like It’?

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,

Unfortunately, many of us play too many parts without thinking of the consequences.  We mouth pronouncements as if they are truth, expecting everyone to believe us when we haven’t taken the time to really dig for the truth or even get to know ourselves.  As a writer, I am painfully aware of the shortcuts that I could take if I were not careful.  There are many famous writers, and I might add politicians, who have been guilty of plagiarizing the works or words of others. 

What are all the forwarded inaccurate posts on Facebook but shortcuts?  We don’t have the time or brainpower to create our own thoughts, so we send on someone else’s version and consider that we have made our point.  We haven’t.  All we have done is highlight our ignorance. I sometimes laugh at the posts I see that people have forwarded as fact when all I must do is Google the person or event in question to see that it is not true.

We live in a very fast world, information and everything else spins around us at an alarming rate.  It seems to me that these times call for more caution rather than recklessness.  Perhaps the only way to survive in these perilous times is to slow down and let the world speed by.   By being deliberate we may avoid the shortcuts and pitfalls that seem to plague society today.

Every morning we sit in the library to have coffee, With every upcoming holiday, I create a message out of old wooden alphabet blocks, on the sill of the leaded glass window above my husband’s favorite chair, wishing us “Happy Fourth of July” or “Merry Christmas”. For the past two weeks, the message has been “Happy Valentines Day.” So, it was funny, when I told my husband that I didn’t know what to write about this week, that he said, “Why don’t you write about Valentines Day?” I had been staring right at the message without seeing it.

Valentines day used to be a big deal to me, beginning with when I was in grade school. I doubt that the tradition we followed then has made it to the 21st century. It would be too anxiety producing now, but when I was in grade school, Valentines Day was a big deal. We would make valentines out of red paper and white doilies with messages of love for our family members: mother, father or brothers and sisters. Everyone decorated a shoe box with a hole cut in the top large enough for a card. The box would be placed on top of your desk and people would slip penny valentines into the slot.

It wasn’t just a matter of looking at the cards that one received. A lot of thought, at least on my part, went into choosing the perfect valentine for my classmates. A package of thirty to forty valentines cost less than a dollar at the Dime Store. I would carefully read every card deciding which one was appropriate for each of my classmates. I wanted to make sure the sentiment reflected my thoughts concerning each of them.

Other kids may not have felt that the day was as important, but I experienced its importance every Valentines day at my house. Like most of the other families in my neighborhood, during those years after the war, we did not have a lot of resources. New shoes were a once a year event, coinciding with the beginning of the school year. My uncle would arrive with the hand-me-downs from my cousin at least once a year. Christmas resulted in one or two presents at most. On birthdays my mother would bake a cake. That was the extent of our celebrations.

But, Valentines day was special. Without fail, my father, who had not married until he was 38 years old, would stop by on his way home from work, to buy a box of Valentine chocolates for my mother. Every year, he would turn back into the love struck suitor who fell in love with his best friend’s youngest sister. He was fourteen when she was born, but I don’t think he was waiting for her to grow up during all the years he roamed throughout the country grooming prized Herefords for cattle shows. They reconnected twenty some years later and he gave up the wandering life.

I can still see him, appearing at the front door, with his hands behind his back, holding a red cellophane wrapped box of chocolates. He would slyly approach my mother, giving her a peck on the cheek and his heart tied up in red. Mother, in turn, would always giggle and say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” but we all knew how special it made her feel.

The boxes would remain, long after the candy was gone, used to save old letters, newspaper clippings, photos, anything of importance. They would eventually wear out to be replaced by a newer box, because as children, we loved to dig through the contents as if we could view our parents internal lives based on what they chose to save.

The old Valentine heart boxes are gone as are most of the momentoes of those days. Recently, while trying to pare down my own life’s accumulation, I came upon a valentine made by my brother, Tim, who has been gone for thirty years, as well as one of the letters my father wrote to my mother during his traveling/courting days. Generations have come and gone, but I still feel the love of my long departed family when I think of those ‘Valentine Days’.

Perhaps that’s why we need this holiday. We need to stop worrying about the love that is missing in this world and reflect on the love that we have experienced and are experiencing even now. That my husband had to remind me of the day is somewhat sad, but predictable. I guess that is what Valentines day has always been; a day for husbands, fathers, and sons to remind the women in their lives that they are still loved. I’m grateful for that even if the heart shaped boxes of chocolates have long ago passed out of fashion.