Rants, various.

Once again it is budget time at our county, and I have been spending some time in finance committee meetings, trying to cut a couple-three million dollars from budgets that have already been whacked to the bone over the past few years.

There is some other sh!t going on there that I absolutely, positively cannot talk about, and it is making me crazy and angry.

So this post is definitely NOT all sweetness and light and pretty yarn.

* * * * *

Customer: “I thought I should let you guys know your phone isn’t working.”

Me: “OK - are you sure you’ve been dialing the correct number?”

Customer: “Yes, I’ve been trying 0800-2100 all week, and it never goes through.”

Me: “…0800-2100? That’s not our number - our number is ****. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get 0800-2100 from?”

Customer: “Right there, on your door.” *points*

Me: “Sir, that’s not a phone number…those are our business hours.”

Customer: “I’m going to see this on NotAlwaysRight.com, aren’t I?”

Me: “Yes… yes you will. Have a nice day!”

The above is from NotAlwaysRight.com. I am ashamed to tell you how many hours I have spent over the past couple days reading the anecdotes there. They confirm to me a fact that I try to ignore: that well over half the population is below average, at least in English-speaking countries in the industrialized world (that would be the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, the countries where these stories come from). Not only are an amazingly huge number of people stupid, they are also utterly selfish snd self-centered and pretty much a waste of space.

Thanks (I guess) to Dr. Mel for sending me the link. It has completely destroyed my hope for a positive future for the planet. Darwinism does not seem to be winning, and the idiots are about to take over the world.

* * * * *

Friendly neighborhood curmudgeon here. I am gonna make some people mad with this. If you are one of those people, please stop reading now. Go click over to lolcats or sneezingcow.com or someplace else.

It is September, the time of year when Americans (and Canadians) of a certain age go back to school. Even those of us for whom those school days are but a vague and distant memory clouded by time and too many illicit substances in the 70s, September brings a feeling of new starts. We evaluate our wardrobes. We pick out cozy sweater patterns and buy wool, even though the temperatures hover near 80℉ (27℃). We clean out the closets and have garage sales. We think about pots of soup simmering on the stove, the smell of wood smoke even though we live in a 12th floor apartment in Brooklyn, the crisp feel of autumn leaves beneath our feet.

And, if we have followed the American dream pattern (graduate from high school, graduate from college, get a full-time job, get married somewhere in there, have a couple kids, buy a house, acquire a mortgage and a minivan, etc., etc.) we may very well have children that we are sending back to school. "School" in this case may mean middle school, senior high school, or college. In any case, we are sending Our Preciouss out into a new-to-them situation where there may lurk peril. Or danger. Or mean people. Or even outright criminals.

And we fear for our children.

We have raised them from helpless infants into some vestige of independence, the degree of which will vary with the age and maturity of said offspring. We have nursed them, we have soothed their wounds, we have talked them through various episodes of trauma. We have encouraged them to venture forth, and (good grief!) they have listened and... gone forth.

We are proud of them, but we fear for them as well. Understandable: we have all experienced in some degree the unhappiness that life can bring.

So we blog about how hard it is to see them leave, how we fear for them, how we weep happy tears, yada yada yada.

I say, Get over yourselves.

What did you think would happen? Your kid would live in your basement until s/he has to cart you off to The Home?

Of course they are leaving. Celebrate it and Move.On.With.Your.Life.

Summer, 2002: #1 son is 17, I send him off to a six-week seminar at the University of Michigan.

August, 2003: #1 son is 18, I send him off from rural Wisconsin to New York University. Greenwich Village, Manhattan.

September, 2003: He tells me on the phone how a guy tried to pick him up at a blues bar, thinking that because he had an attractive face and long blond hair that he was a female.

August, 2004: I arrive home from working at the library to a message on the answering machine. "Mom, I borrowed someone's cell phone to call you. I'm standing in the middle of 29th and Broadway waiting to be arrested [for protesting at the Republican National Convention]. I'll try to call again when I know what is going to happen." He subsequently spend 40 hours in a wire cage in Guantanamo on the Hudson, an abandoned bus garage on a pier where all the protesters are housed; he slept on the gasoline- and oil-stained concrete floor using his shoe as a pillow.

August, 2005: I send him off for his semester abroad... in South Africa. Along the way the airline goes on strike and he spends five days in a hotel near Reagan Airport in Washington, DC, waiting for the strike to end and for his eventual transport to Pietermaritzburg.

November, 2005: I get an email from him telling me how he had been robbed at knifepoint in downtown Durbin.

July, 2007: I put him on a plane for Mexico, where he will live for the better part of a year among the Zapatistas. When we voiced some concern about his safety as a (relatively wealthy) American traveling and living among poverty-stricken revolutionaries, he responded that there hadn't been any murders for over six months. He spends his time in a remote village without sanitation, telephone, mail service, or electricity. He lives on beans and tortillas and, on a really, really good day, rice; he loses a pound of body weight every 64 hours for the first two months he is there.

At none of these partings, in any of the related events or traumatic emails, or while he was far away did I shed so much as one single tear. 

Do you want to know why?

Because I realized at some point that I was lucky. My son was going places he chose to go. 

There are millions of mothers, and sweethearts, and wives, and children, who have had to send their loved ones off to much worse places. Much, much worse places.

Iraq.

Afghanistan.

Places where other people will be actively trying to kill them.

And there are other mothers, etc., whose children are not sent anywhere, but who must watch their children grow up in wretched poverty and the disease and filth that accompany it, simply because they were born in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Rwanda or Chiapas or Somalia or Laos or India, or any of dozens of other places on the planet that are not as rich as the US.

I am lucky.

We are all lucky.

We are all incredibly lucky to have been born in relatively affluent circumstances in affluent countries. We did nothing to earn that. It just happened.

That is what is called "luck."

And so, in the words of Our Cookie, "Suck it up, Buttercup. I don' want to hear no more wailin' 'bout how hard it is to see your baby go off to middle school/high school/college.'

Just be glad there is no one shooting at them.

Comments

[mary lou]

Thanks for the time sucking link to not always right. And isn't county budget time a treat? I'm lucky for the time being that i have all federal funds.

[Carrie]

I mostly agree with your rant, but I will point out something that my priest (back when I had one) said: we identify with what we know. He pointed out how in an affluent neighborhood where he'd been assigned, they had a fundraiser for something overseas, like food and money for Africa. They really struggled to get much of anything for the drive. Then one of the local families' house burned down after Christmas, and the church was flooded with donations of Wiis and iPods and Polo clothes. The community understood that loss - people who live and blog around here don't often grok families in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and South Africa. We grok that we had our babies in our nests, and now they're leaving.

[Carrie]

And curses upon you (okay, not really) for that Not Always Right thing. Damn. Just killed almost an hour...

[deb]

I said I didn't cry - this year.

[Helen]

I sent my kid off to high school. She took the bus. The regular old public transportation bus ... without my help. I was too busy peering half-lidded over my cup of coffee.
She did fine. Duh.
I shed no tears. I felt a pang of "oh my, my little one is growing up". It lasted a minute or two. I got over it.
If, on the other hand, the whole getting yourself to school thing had failed -- I'd have cried. Tears of frustration.... sadness that I'd somehow screwed up something ... but not fear for her safety.

Not sure I'll be as brave as you if/when she wants to go half-way round the world to live where she loses that much weight, but if it's what she truly wants, I'm sure she'll get it done. She can be fierce, even if she is a scaredy cat at times.

[marianne]

Actually I quite enjoy your rants and yes, we are lucky to be living in this country. and I howled with laughter at that Not always right site.
Bobby and I have been having more than the usual 'how dumb is the 'average' American anyway' conversations lately.
Your boys sound wonderful :^)
I didn't shed a tear when mine left home, I was quite happy for them.
I will admit to this though... some photos of them when they were just wee'uns, make me ache just a little bit.. but I do this in private :^)

[Cookie]

Thank you for that.

Aren't they supposed to grow up and leave? Isn't that the point? Or am I just silly and clueless along with being childless?

xo

[Diane]

You go girl.

[Nora]

Awesome rant, Kat! Not that I won't shed tears or feel sad at times, because there's a place for that too - but we must move on and let our kids be the people we raised them to be. Thank heavens my parents did that for me, even though I know full well my mom freaked a little when I left home.

I have been glued to a Facebook exchange begun by a woman who decided to homeschool her little son because she wants to spend all her time with him and not send him off to school. There are many reasons for homeschooling - this one, to me, seems to be bordering on sociopathic.

You rock.

[lisa]

I didn't cry, and I think there's a world of good opportunity now that the City of Augusta has closed its remaining middle school (they closed the other maybe 4 years ago), and now the 7th and 8th graders are at the high school. Mine's in 8, and I think this will be good... maybe he'll actually take the HS computer class we wanted him to take last year (but that meant bussing away from his friends, and he wouldn't). But here's what I am a bit up about: busses... good god, can't they figure out the bus thing? The kid ends up not having a ride home from school because the bus drivers don't know what the district posted about schedules and who goes on what bus. AND WORSE the permission slip... I'm used to the one about newspapers and electronic media, but the one this year included military and college. With these instructions: You must check yes OR no for EACH of the four categories. And then they gave only two categories to check. And the small print said that if the boxes were not checked or the parent didn't return the slip, that we in essense deny permission for newspaper, electronic media, and colleges, but have GRANTED PERMISSION FOR THE MILITARY TO ACCESS OUR CHILD's INFO AND TO CONTACT OUR CHILD. Yikes! Patriot Act in action???

[Cindy]

Wow, I miss a couple of days of blog reading, and I miss all the fun. The rant was enjoyable. I'm sorry (though not surprised) that the budget process sucks.

[Guinifer]

Not to mention, our jobs as parents are to teach them HOW to leave us. If they can manage on their own, we should be so proud!

[Kym]

Oh, I love, Love, LOVE your rant! I have never cried (or even felt sad) about watching my children reach "milestones" ---- starting school, moving "up" the school-ladder, graduating, starting college etc. Instead, I'm happy that they're growing and developing and doing Just What They're Supposed to Do! (Leave me.) :-) Sometimes I get a little . . . alarmed . . . over the passage of time. But that's just me. Not them. There is nothing like a growing kid to mark the years!!!

What I want most for my kids . . . is for them to become independent, thinking, contributing, adults. I sure hope I succeed. . .