Susan's Scribblings the Blog

A writer from the Philadelphia area shares the week online.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog
  • Who the Heck is Kayewer?
  • Category: Uncategorized

    • Scrooging Around

      Posted at 6:28 pm by kayewer, on December 21, 2024

      To all my old and new friends, I hope you have a wonderful holiday. This post is not for you*.

      To everybody else, I want to give you a shoutout, because I’m sure you get tired of always being called the “bad guys” in life. If you mean to do what it is you are doing, you should get recognition for it, right?

      Let’s start with the youngest of the crowd: the children and teenagers. You elementary, junior and high school folks have really set your feet on the path to greatness. You’ve managed to increase the number of successful self-inflicted exit strategies–especially among girls between ages 8 and 12–by 8% in 2024. Through a combination of verbal and physical abuse, not to mention the social media comments you managed to sneak (with fake accounts) into the feeds of people you have judged unworthy of life on this planet, you took out some people this year. Although, by your own admission, they were not equal to you, so why compete against folks lesser than you, or does that make sliding through school easier (along with the other cheating methods you successfully employ every day)?

      Now let’s go on to the men in the crowd. Did you make sure to tell the woman in your life how awful they are today? If you haven’t, you may be a few dozen repetitions behind. Maybe it’s because you haven’t gotten your daily smoke or drink to shore you up for the task at hand. Heaven knows you can’t function without some ingested courage and some choice words to keep your girly and the little brats in line. Be sure to make your actions take over for your lack of words (your short education being the fault of a school system that never liked you, either). Be sure to look long at the people in your home while they huddle in a corner or cower behind a chair, because this is what your goal has always been, and you should drink it in with as much enthusiasm as your next beer. Bravo, dudes.

      As to those women out there, I don’t know what happened between the good old days of congenial interactions with others and today, but nowadays if you’re not well-versed in behaving like an entitled person, what are you waiting for? Be sure to let customer service people know what a lousy job they are doing. Practice your impatient huffing and well-worded insults you will need for nail technicians and your kids’ teachers. Rules don’t apply to you, after all. They do apply to the hired underlings you need to deal with daily.

      Everybody also needs to remember that this whole experience of living is meant to be done in contempt of everything about it. How dare life be inconsiderate of your every immediate need every day. When you take Fido for a walk, leave his business on somebody else’s lawn; yours needs to look as if you don’t own a dog that actually poops, after all. Go to public places with obscenities printed on your clothing; little kids learning to read need to get a lesson in how real people speak, after all. Make sure you park crooked, or cut in line at checkout, because rules are for everybody else, and you have graduated beyond such little things that are for average folks.

      Business executives should be proud of all the extra money they made this year. Your bread still costs the same as your lowest paid employees’ loaf. Pay no attention to them or your customers, because they don’t matter.

      Customers should be proud of how they managed to get away with so much shoplifting and perpetrating scams that gave you stuff you needed this year. Pay no attention to the employees of the businesses you ripped off, because they don’t matter. Oh and yes, that stuff you got which was the hot trend is now in a landfill or at the bottom of the ocean after you threw it out. Not your problem.

      Employees should be proud of how little work they did this past year. Pay no attention to the supporting businesses in your company. They made sure you got the medications you needed for the affliction you got for yourself (due to some messed-up stuff in your life you couldn’t get through without some kind of ingested courage or new habit you picked up). Forget about your managers and supervisors, too. Whatever you got from working this year, it still wasn’t enough.

      While you’re fist-pumping in exaltation over your achieved goals this year, be sure to pay no attention to people who deserve and cannot find the most basic things in life, such as love and kindness, or a simple meal once a day. Senior living facilities and shelters will be full of unwanted people this holiday. It’s their problem because they’re still alive when nobody cares about them. Turn away from what you feel is ugly and inconvenient. Put others in their place with your words or your actions. This is what makes the world the way you want to live in it.

      Bravo to you.

      *(If you are among my old or new friends, and you read all of this despite my warning and are appalled, so am I. Life shouldn’t need to call out these things, but it won’t be a happy time for many, and if one person sees this and has an epiphany, it will be worth it. Making the world better happens one person at a time, and in seeing what is bad in us, we can do better at being good.)

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged life, mental-health, mindfulness, personal-development, writing
    • Now Lowering

      Posted at 3:51 pm by kayewer, on December 14, 2024

      Corporate America is a tangled mess, and we are all aware of that. The origins of the bizarre methodology by which we make some folks rich and others less so also have a complex story to tell. Big companies are often associated with overpaid CEOs, and in our imaginations we see those people in expensive suits, driving expensive cars and parking them in expensive mansions on expensive real estate. The rest of us, however, get clothing from the discount bin, drive pre-owned clunkers, park them on the street (where they are often stolen altogether or at least deprived of their hubcaps) and plug air leaks in our homes with chewing gum.

      Because the majority of us look upon the corporate ladder as a roadblock to attainable financial security, we tend to hold grudges against the people who are at the top already. We feel they don’t deserve to be there, and in some cases that may be true. After all, a loaf of bread still costs the same whether you have funds left over for butter or go home without and prepare plain toast.

      The recent loss of a healthcare company head, therefore, was not met with much sympathy; in fact reports say that social media is not showing any sense of human grief, and the arrested suspect is looked upon as a pioneering vigilante. The unspoken hope is that the healthcare industry will learn from the incident and start caring more about the people whom they offer or deny medical treatment, to avoid further homicides.

      Brian Thompson, the victim, is survived by a wife and two sons. His total 2023 compensation (note, this is not outright pay, but incentives to be realized over time, including retirement) was around ten million dollars, which is small considering he was responsible for a $562 billion company. He had been with the company for two decades and was pushing for “value-based” healthcare, which stresses doctors helping healthy people stay that way instead of needing to reverse the damage from poor health. A sensible approach to improving the quality of human life, if you ask me.

      Big corporate salaries and incentives are negotiated with the same finesse as the school cafeteria lunchroom sandwich swap; I’ll see your PB&J and raise you a bag of Doritos and, okay, a share of my not off-brand soda. Companies pay big benefits for expertise and guaranteed financial gains, which the CEO must then struggle to obtain and retain. In the case of healthcare, every claim expense eats into that stability, and in some cases the funds may be wasted if the claimant doesn’t improve their health or keep to healthy habits. Picture the lung cancer patient still demanding the right to smoke for an example.

      Some smart big money-earners don’t cling to their wealth and donate to charity or give large bonuses to the employees. Sure, they still have money left over for the good butter on their bread, but the folks who are keeping the CEO up to the standards set for them by the hiring board are sharing in the advantages, and they can also afford splurging occasionally. Not all companies are like that, but it doesn’t help to look upon some services like healthcare as the enemy, nor to not feel something for a CEO taken out unexpectedly by an assassin.

      Changes can be made, but they also start with our attitudes toward big companies and our part in what they do. We each bring something to the total picture, even to our own healthcare. Who are we to say removing an executive in this way is the solution, when there are alternatives even the victim had in mind?

      We should all be ashamed of ourselves for not caring, for him or ourselves, and expecting others to do the hard work for us. What are you bringing to your workplace, and what is it truly worth?

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged health, health-insurance, healthcare, insurance, news
    • Jingle Kisses All the Way

      Posted at 4:50 pm by kayewer, on December 7, 2024

      Christmas is the only holiday with its own set of nostalgic rules which every American must follow. For example, department stores will receive boos if they put up one string of tinsel before November, the Macy’s parade must be held on Thanksgiving Day despite rain or alien invasion, and it isn’t the holiday season until certain legacy commercials appear on television.

      During Thanksgiving weekend, I saw a perennial favorite appear; the Hershey’s Kisses ad featuring a choir of the red and green confections as finely tuned bells playing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The third red Kiss in the second row of the ten Kisses (with a silver Kiss choral director) wears itself out with the final extended note, swiping its tag like a hand across its pointy “brow” with a “whew” at the end. It’s cute, and a classic.

      In 2020, somebody in the marketing department at Hershey decided to bring out a second version of the commercial. As the Kisses begin the tune, a child’s hand appears and snatches a Kiss away. And not just any Kiss, either. The darling snatches up the third red Kiss just seconds into the performance! And we then see the owner of the hand–a little girl and who we assume is her father–putting Kisses into the tops of thumb print cookies.

      Like Lil’ Abner’s friends the Schmoos, whose goal in life is to be eaten, we understand that Kisses are eaten as is or baked into other treats, but the bells are also replaced in the new version by a light jazzy version of the song. Some find the overall effect jarring.

      Within hours, somebody posted the original ad on social media, and the protests exploded. It seems a lot of people do not like Hershey toying with the good old ad. There have even been video parodies online of the terrified Kisses as they are picked off by the kid one by one as they scream in terror, and armchair commentary from somebody hoping they get to see the original ad on TV but must endure the new one, to their vocal discontent.

      Not many things divide the online community to such extremes as when somebody is messing with something familiar. Movie remakes undergo the same criticism, along with renaming sports teams and trying to introduce new soda concoctions.

      We are used to commercials which tout all sorts of crazy gadgets with the tag, “makes a great Christmas gift,” or “order now for holiday delivery.” Watching those Kiss bells toll out a simple tune is an ASMR tradition which, as per popular vote, can’t be toyed with (to coin a phrase), and it doesn’t say to buy the bright packages at all. But we do, in massive amounts.

      I haven’t seen the newer version on television this year, but I also am reminded of other long-gone ads such as the Norelco shaver which featured a Santa gliding through snowy hills atop an electric razor, and the company dropped the R to make the name NOELCO instead. They didn’t change a thing. That’s smart. We won’t see those ads anymore, because No(r)elco was bought out by the Phillips company (the folks who sell electric toothbrushes). Unless the marketing department wants to put their new logo at the end of the old commercial, which has been done successfully in the past by others, that ad is lost to history or old video clips.

      However, the electric razors of today are not ergonomic mouse-like devices anymore, so children today would not know what they were looking at. They might ask, “Daddy, why is Santa riding a mouse with circley things on them?”

      A third classic commercial does change every year, and nobody minds: the Hess toy truck ad is filmed sometime in summer, and features kids in winter gear hoisting a new version of an old classic toy to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” This is the 60th anniversary of the toy. Hess gas stations were bought out and renamed Marathon, but the trucks (or variant transports) are still sold. Batteries included.

      Whew!

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged christmas, fantasy, food, hershey-kiss, hess, kiss, music, norelco
    • Perfectly Terrible Ordeal

      Posted at 9:00 pm by kayewer, on November 30, 2024

      Did you know that Americans admitted to not using about half of their paid time off? In 2018 alone, figures indicate that workers surrendered 768 million days of PTO* (that’s collective among all workers, naturally). and in 2022, 9.5 days on average per worker were left unclaimed.

      When I see commercials on television, the people in them are on vacation, kayaking down rivers and driving reliably tricked-out SUVs up rocky terrain, not rushing to company buildings or working from home. So which is it?

      Sure we’re mostly working from home now, so that should reduce some of the stress from our lives. Perhaps. But we Americans have some sort of masochistic work ethic which forbids us enjoying the adventures of life in favor of the drudgery of reports, remembering to unmute at meetings, being gracious in the face of customer abuse and the uncertainty of fluctuating corporate status.

      Other countries offer generous holidays and time off incentives, and the workers take them. They can spend several days on holiday at the beach or in the country. They don’t even need to travel far from where they are in most cases. Our country is humongous, so we fly or take trains to many major vacation destinations. The last big vacation I took involved more flying than vacationing crossing time zones. I arrived exhausted and spent my returning day mostly in the air and awaiting connections. Returning to work seemed a treat after that.

      What did I just say?

      Full-time workers have five days on and two days off, and on a holiday they are so overwhelmed with everything related to the event itself that there is no time to relax or enjoy the time given that isn’t PTO. It’s a mysterious phenomenon, possibly related to Stockholm Syndrome (in which victims become more attached to those holding them captive) or some dependency disorder to which we have no answers.

      The Monday (or Tuesday) after a holiday is usually torture for workers because of all the catching up required. So holidays become synonymous with the upcoming negativity, making the desire to willlingly subject oneself to it less palatable, and possibly carrying over that same guilt to PTO.

      Of course, we’re not better off working without time off, but the best thing we can do is make the best of the time we are given and take it for all it’s worth. That means, take the PTO. Stay at home, wear the same outfit for three days in a row and let the den degrade into a troll cave. We owe it to ourselves to enjoy freedom when it’s offered to us.

      And no trips to Stockholm.

      *(Source: Zippia.com)

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged career, pto, travel, vacation, work
    • Getting the Message

      Posted at 7:14 pm by kayewer, on November 23, 2024

      Before a certain illness sent the world workforce home, we employees operated in huge buildings with cubicles, phones, computers, printers, drawers filled with paper plates and napkins, and cabinets for smoker’s coats and non-smoker’s coats.

      My office also had huge screens hanging throughout the department, and on which our call center statistics were displayed. In addition, we had slides relevent to our jobs and designed to bring us together as a department. I was in charge of preparing those slides.

      We were preparing to go with a new vendor, and training had barely begun back in March 2020 when we were exiled to our houses to work. Ultimately the building I worked in was shut down, mothballed and vacated, but we learned that our displays could be accomplished on our computers, so the process began to license individual viewers, train us in producing and editing the boards, and finally testing the program.

      My former boss and I were the two trainees for the system, so after the duo became a solo, I was left with the responsibility of working with the boards’ production company and a few selected test subjects from our department to see how the system worked. It took a few weeks to work out the kinks. Nobody could actually summon the system, including me. The IT staff were boggled, but then when dealing with strings of computer commands, IT’s mission is to be boggled. Finally the coding was completed, the errors fixed and we began the odyssey of producing message boards for users in two departments. We have used the system for a year already.

      I have found joy in assembling the slides for the project. Once a month, I put together visual guides to our co-workers’ birthdays and anniversaries, as well as monthly scrolling text, ego-boosters and more. Overall, our departments enjoyed about two minutes of content each month, all lovingly assembled by yours truly.

      During a lull in the usual reporting and other duties I normally do when I’m not enjoying putting together board content, I assembled what I would need for 2025 in terms of positive messages from corporate icons such as CEOs and specialist speakers on topics of interest to workers. I had a rhythm going with the slide content, and the harmony of it was good for the soul. It’s wonderful when things work.

      Occasionally the network would need a reboot, and I would send word out to the users that it would be restored soon. I would get a polite thank you, and soon the system would be updating data and entertaining the masses.

      Then I was present at a management and supervisory meeting as notetaker this past week, and the subject of disseminating information came up. I piped up and volunteered to add content to our message boards so it would be accessible to us, since the department took up the majority of licensed viewers.

      The department manager then said simply, “Oh, the boards are dead. We didn’t renew the contract.”

      There is no moment so embarassing than when you are the first line on a project, but the last to know the latest about it. I sat there on Zoom, in front of about a dozen participants, and I didn’t even have a certain lower body part to have in my hand (to coin a phrase) and complete the humiliation. Fortunately I did not have my video on, or I would’ve looked like a fish on land breathing its last.

      So when I had the chance to talk to my direct manager, I found out the horrible truth. Back when the boards were on overhead monitors, they were a constant presence that one could see or ignore. Once the information was placed onscreen on monitors, it was an annoyance which could be completely ignored by not signing into it at all. With all the applications our agents were already using, the display took last place. After reviewing the usage data, the only regular viewers were my manager and myself.

      It’s a case of holding a party that nobody attended.

      The experience was great while it lasted, and at least part of my efforts–the birthdays and anniversaries–still appear on another platform. And I know for a fact that people see them, because the slides are copied to at least one department at the start of each month.

      I also enjoyed the work involved. It will be replaced by other tasks, which are already pending training for me and a few others. I guess when one monitor goes off, another one comes on.

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Tagged community, digital-marketing, education, humor, news
    • Long Haul Getaway

      Posted at 6:37 pm by kayewer, on November 16, 2024

      Visitors to the United States make note of how big the entire country is. Some states are bigger or smaller than others. Rhode Island, for instance, is small enough that you may not realize you’re in it until you’re out of it.

      Next door to me is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the larger side of our 48 contiguous parcels. It’s called a Commonwealth because the founding fathers preferred it to “State,” which is interchangeable; however, their ties to England before independence was a big reason for the nomenclature. It’s a horizontally huge plot of land big enough that it takes over four hours to cross by car. Which is what I did this weekend.

      The turnpike is an enjoyable ride, passing by acres of farmland, touring the insides of four mountain tunnels, and seeing the development of county after county as housing sprouts up all over. The authority in charge of the toll road have made it a clean and smooth drive for everybody.

      I’m not sure how good their cable or radio reception is in the far reaches of farm country (I used satellite radio for the trip, and it only blacked out in the mountain tunnels). I attended an event at a location far enough away to necessitate the trip across hill and dale to appear live. And it’s not just me: people visit from Ohio and New York as well.

      I drove the four hours straight out, with just a bottle of water by my side and Eighties tunes for entertainment. My car’s direction feature didn’t work (I spoke with support), so while I waiting for them to reboot my system, I turned to maps on my phone to get the directions to what was a twisty trip into the mountains via winding skinny roads to the site of the event. The standby method didn’t let me down, and I arrived safe and sound. The shopping was intense, and I came out of it with quite a haul. I won’t go into detail, because I included holiday shopping in my trip.

      After spending a third of the past two days driving, however, I’m a bit beat. The benefits of driving the route are exhilarating enough to make me do it again, for the peace and steady rhythm of the road, as well as the feelings of independence which eventually escape our capabilities as we age.

      For now, I’ll make shorter trips to the corner market.

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged art, photography, summer, travel
    • He Wins

      Posted at 3:34 pm by kayewer, on November 9, 2024

      An American having a birthday in November–particularly the first ten days of the month–sometimes celebrates or suffers from reasons not to do so. I know first-hand how this happens, because I am one such Scorpio dealing with the fallout of the recent election.

      Second worst birthday ever. The first was back in 2016.

      Belated, early, or not, the outcome of how this humungous chunk of ground on which we live will be run politically for four years can cause elation or depression on one’s birthday, depending on the side you’re on. Our presidents tend to swing like a pendulum between our two main parties (Democratic and Republican), with one side running for four years and the other then taking over for the next four. Usually the incoming party tries to reverse what they feel is damage done in the prior administration, so taxes, policies and international relations tend to fluctuate in kind. For most of my life, however, our country ran reasonably well when run by either party. Then suddenly, somebody swept in and came into power, and as I’ve watched the past ten years unfold, I’ve never seen such a disturbing turn of events.

      After the 2016 election results became my first worst birthday present ever, I watched as throngs of extremists praised far-right ideas and ignored what our forefathers would have recognized as rantings and fascist concepts. Men with no jobs, who could have had jobs taken by immigrant workers, chanted against their presence while ignoring the fact that, without those jobs being held by somebody, food and other merchandise would never leave the farms.

      The worst of it? The overturning of abortion rights for women paved the way to a futuristic Handmaid’s Tale society which will glut men’s egos with what they perceive as power. When I looked at the inordinate expansion of red states which caused the election this past week to swing to the right, I was horrified. Not even half of the states were willing to elect a woman to office. Either the women didn’t vote on Election Day, or they agreed with the men, which would be even more horrifying.

      What woman in her right mind would want to elect a person who thinks that, if she were walking down the street minding her own business, and a man sexually assaulted her, the possibility of pregnancy should be of no concern? She should simply go home and wait to see if she is going to give birth to a baby for whom her attacker would have no responsibility.

      Already men are taunting women with the mantra, “Your body, my choice.” They’re not being deleted from social media. Is Mark Zuckerberg that afraid to put his foot down? Maybe the goal is to put the collective masculine foot down on the throats of women.

      The measure of what made a man a man used to be his epiphany of where women exist in their universe. For ages, men have been afraid of women, and not in the cowardly sense, but in the way that suggests their awe but admiration of what we contribute as the “opposite sex” to society. In ancient times, women held positions of respect. In the deep South, the women ran the household and served as the societal enforcers (viewers of Gone With the Wind will know just how powerful Scarlett’s mother Ellen O’Hara was). Women have shared battlefields (Molly Pitcher), given their lives for science (Marie Curie), penned timeless literary works (already covered in said adapted movie) and proven their worth in settling the West, expanding sports and much more throughout history.

      Anybody who has seen a movie from the Frank Sinatra era knows that women supported men; the post-war household was run by a woman who cooked meals from scratch, minded the children, cleaned and laundered and shopped, and still kept every hair on her head in the perfect style and greeted her man at the door looking her best, with the newspaper ready to be read and slippers to comfort his tired feet. That was no made-up concept; the men crossed the ocean to defend our nation and the world against a formidable foe, and while they were gone, women filled men’s jobs at home, put on work clothes and got themselves dirty, burnt and injured to support the war effort. When the men returned, women had proven their worth, and stepped aside to be equal partners while filling their original roles.

      And now this may all change. Images of present-day Iraq or Pakistan could become this nation’s new norm. Can this truly be what American men want? Subjugation? Free-range denigration?

      If that is true, I will spend every birthday until the last one content in no man earning my respect.

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged feminism, kamala-harris, news, politics, women
    • No-Vember

      Posted at 3:11 pm by kayewer, on November 2, 2024

      This is the month for elections and turkey in the United States. For some folks, it seems like we will elect a turkey to run the country (or the turkeys are the ones doing the voting).

      I promise that will be the only political joke I will put in this blog. I follow the ideals laid out by Linus Van Pelt in Peanuts, in that one doesn’t discuss religion, politics or the Great Pumpkin.

      At least one of them only comes around every October 31, and the other only periodically. Thanksgiving is a set holiday on the fourth Thursday every year. That’s about two weeks after we learn whether we should splurge on the annual family dinner or tighten the purse strings.

      That’s a political observation, so it doesn’t count.

      November is also National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I’m slightly behind on the second day, but this weekend is where I will catch up and exceed the word count to stay ahead. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in the month, starting officially at midnight the morning of the 1st and ending at 11:59:59 on the 30th. That averages out to about 1667 words per day. Fortunately I have three consecutive completions under my belt, so I’m not worried if I don’t reach the goal for a fourth year. A hat trick is an accomplishment; more than that is extra gravy.

      At my age, I need to watch my gravy intake. It all packs on pounds.

      November is a great month to stop doing something, such as snacking, smoking, consuming a daily two-liter bottle of soda or not walking more than a thousand steps a day. This month for me is going to be a no-spend November. I have one day in which I’ll be doing planned shopping, and that’s it. Nothing from Amazon or my favorite websites for this month. Fortunately my holiday shopping is finished. This means no shocking bills come January. Nobody wants to start out a new year with a payment plan (other than tax time).

      If you take on the No month challenge, it helps to have something to do instead of the thing you plan not to do. If you normally guzzle a big bottle of “Hillside Condensation,” try a bottle of essence or vitamin water instead. Instead of the bag of chips, try a bag of grapes. Instead of sucking in chemicals, try a throat lozenge. If you can’t get outside to walk (like on lucky days when it actually rains), take some stairs or a tour around the building or the block, or even around your yard. Cell phones have great step counters.

      A friend of mine hauls out her phone regularly to track her steps. She usually meets her goals. I don’t pocket my cell, so I don’t know how that will work for me. I would need a wearable counter instead, and those are about as fashionable as Halloween glow-in-the-dark neon necklaces.

      So for me it’s no spending this month. I already have groceries except for regular essentials such as bananas, milk and eggs.

      And a turkey that won’t be running anything except my electric bill.

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    • For Men Only

      Posted at 3:38 pm by kayewer, on October 19, 2024

      My experience with the opposite sex has been, as the Brits might put it, a bit wonky. Having been born in the generation between “up with respectability” and “up with free love,” the males who made up the generation I would be dating didn’t seem to know what they were doing.

      Part of the problem was with our parents deciding whether we should learn about the birds and bees the factual way, the rumor mill way or no way. Whatever false information that came to us, the risks of “bad things” happening became more severe, from the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and venereal diseases to AIDS. These were serious complications of life we were forced to contend with.

      Yet nobody wanted to be the odd person out who hadn’t lost what has become known in modern lingo as “the V card.” For males especially, some magical edict says that they should know what they’re doing, and that it’s okay to learn with a partner who either knows what she is doing and can guide them along the way, or is exactly like them and one can simply stumble through that first go-round.

      Women, on the other hand, are supposed to “save themselves,” and their magical edict states that a dip in the deep pool prior to marriage is also okay, because at least then one supposedly knows what they’re doing and there will be no surprises on the honeymoon night.

      So if you want somebody with experience, you must also contend with the sociological baggage that comes with knowing your partner has been with at least one other person before you. If they still don’t know what they’re doing, it can be a deal breaker for some.

      You may be wondering why I’m on this notion in the first place. Well, there was a prescription ad on the TV about an HIV prep method to allow people with the condition to engage in sex without worrying about disease transmission. That’s the problem with those first nervous moments when you commit to hooking up with somebody: you can’t see their history. You rely solely on their honesty.

      When you have watched multiple decades of your best years, and “bad things” happening, passing you by, it’s with mixed emotions when you see a commercial saying it’s okay to engage in pleasure when you have a serious disease.

      So the question goes out to the men: how do you deal with the baggage of being expected to know what you’re doing in this world we’re living in? What is a deal breaker for you?

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    • Common(er) Courtesy

      Posted at 3:17 pm by kayewer, on October 12, 2024

      Recently I did something out of the ordinary and attended a concert featuring a chamber orchestra and a concert pianist playing one of Beethoven’s piano concerti. When I read about the upcoming performance, I looked at the seating chart for the small, intimate venue, and noticed a single unoccupied seat available in the front row. That spoke opportunity to me, so I clicked and bought the seat.

      The stage was set up for the orchestra without the piano for the first portion of the event, and I soon realized that my seat would not afford me the view of the pianist, as the instrument would take up the middle of the stage and block my view, but I was there to hear the concerto more than to watch the performer’s range of emotions (or lack of them) while their fingers flew over the keyboard.

      Soon the place began to fill up, and an elderly woman came and sat next to me, clad in a boiled wool jacket with a scarf, pillbox hat and typical jewelry for somebody her age. Now, I am also considered an old lady, but I’m talking generational older, as in she could have passed for my mother older. After the nodding pleasantries of acknowledgment were exchanged, we settled in while I looked over the program.

      After a few minutes, the lady looked over at me and asked, “May I see the program?” I obliged. She proceeded to turn the pages, and then wiped noticeably at her sniffling nose before returning her fingers to the paper. Feeling slightly sickened, as she closed the program to return it to me, I replied, “Why don’t you keep that one, and I’ll just grab a new one.” She thanked me. I thanked my sense of manners that enabled me to avoid taking somebody else’s microbiome home with me, while not letting on that I felt a bit grossed out.

      The concert started, and we got to the second piece of the scheduled four when, from next to me, came a ring tone. It was my seat partner’s cell phone, which was in a side pocket of her purse. It went off three times at intervals, as she struggled to turn it on and do something with it to shut it up. Somebody was calling her, unaware that she was unavailable.

      Now, I admit to having trouble with a device in the past, but it was not my cell. I set it to mute and vibrate only for at least three hours at the start of any concert event. I did, however, have the misfortune of leaving a security device (a combination alarm and bug finder) in my purse which decided to signal me toward the end of a concert. I didn’t know how to turn it off, because the instructions didn’t include that. I hadn’t heard a peep from it before. Thankfully it was not a screeching loud signal, so I simply buried the device deep in my purse and rolled its fabric up in my lap, squelching it long enough for the start of the finale, which drowned it out altogether. My next move would’ve been to say the heck with how much it cost and smashing it to kingdom come with my shoe.

      I don’t know if this lady had just returned to concert attendance, had bought a new phone, had just emerged from a cave or simply didn’t care, but when the second piece was finished, two of the musicians spoke to my seat partner, naturally concerned that repeated eruptions would ruin the concert. They couldn’t know, of course, that she wasn’t with me, and their eyes kept switching between us. I was mortified. I didn’t want to be banned from this venue on my first time there.

      I offered to help find the mute on her device, only to be outvoted by a seated patron behind us who simply took the phone and turned it off. I don’t know if she was a friend or relative, or just a local with the perfect balance of street smarts, techno savvy and a politeness filter set to “slightly brazen.” I bless her in my prayers every night.

      The rest of the first act went off without so much as a cough, and during intermission I received a fresh program from the usher. I explained to her what happened, and she said she would make sure it was addressed.

      So the moral of the story is, know your device and how to keep it quiet. Don’t get any of your bodily fluids on other people’s things. And finally, when faced with public humiliation, be slightly brazen.

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      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged concert, concerts, music, news, reviews
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