Category Archives: Coffeehouse
In her look at the upcoming movie “Crash,” Becky broaches the subject of racism. The film apparently tackles the subject in a non-formulaic manner. It sounds like a breath of fresh air. I get nervous when the subject of race gets brought up in the same tired PSA manner context. Racism is bad. Racists are bad people.
Yawn.
Let’s look at the first statement (that racism is bad) first. Racism, narrowly defined, is indeed a bad thing. Calling people names or refusing to serve them because they look different is… good god… it’s bad. I feel like a dang Public Service Announcement voiceover for even having to say it. We’ve moved beyond that point in the debate. The point we’re at now is… a little more complicated.
The question is whether or not when an immigrant is shot 42 times was it because of his complexion?
The question is when we instinctively shift away from a black man as we walk down the street is it because he’s black or because he’s wearing chains and baggy clothes?
The question is when someone tells a racist joke do we take them to task?
The question is do we oppose government programs because we mentally see the beneficiaries as being… different from us?
The question is whether or not we should give preferences to people historically discriminated against when stacked up against a while or Asian with a better resume?
These are the questions we face, and while they’re serious questions we should recognize that we’re a long way from Jim Crow. The question isn’t whether or not people of different races should be treated with equal dignity and respect, it’s what exactly equal dignity and respect mean when say it?
I’m trying to avoid getting political here. To be honest, I’m not that interested in hearing differing views on affirmative action or Jesse Jackson or Pat Buchanan. Rather, I’m trying to say that the issues at hand are complicated, but popular entertainment almost never treats them as such. Nor does it treat the players of the morality tale.
That brings me to the second statement, that racists are bad people. As long as we perpetuate this myth, no one is going to be looking into themselves and wondering if some of their behaviors and beliefs aren’t informed by the percieved differences by ethnic and racial groups. Presenting every racist individual as a member of the KKK is simply not helpful.
A while back DC Comics had a series called The Kents that explored the history of Clark Kent’s adoptive family. I never read the series, but the premise itself put me off. The Kents, as it turns out, were ardent abolitionists and borderline-pariahs in their community because they fought the good fight against racism. As it turns out it has been established that the Waynes helped out in the underground railroad to free the slaves. It props up both the Kents and the Waynes, which is good, but it completely sidesteps the very complicated issue that a lot of otherwise good people had some very, very unfortunate beliefs and participated in an inhumane institution that destroyed families and lives.
And with that, there are story possibilities abound. The Facts of Life, of all shows, did an admirable job where one of the characters discovered her ancestor was a segregationist. Granted, they chose the least sympathetic character (Blair, the snob), but the treatment was very sympathetic. Roseanne also had a good episode where the characters were left to wonder if they had let racism taint their reactions to various events. Solid stuff and not preachy.
And what those portrayals would really accomplish is giving people the ability to investigate their own behavior without having to condemn themselves as bigots if they find out that their reactions to certain things are based on preconcieved notions based on racial perceptions. That would in turn allow them to change their behavior. But no one is going to alter their behavior a bit if it requires first admitting that they have horns growing out of their temples.
The truth is that we all treat those different from us differently. It’s human nature. A lot of people have generally negative views of other ethnic groups, often unconsciously. On the other end of the spectrum some people are extremely condescending. And in some ways it’s a catch-22 wherein however you treat people different than you you’re guilty of something in someone’s eyes. But most people are just content to say that they’re not a part of the problem and the la-dee-dah portrayal in popular media does nothing but reinforce that erroneous self-image.
Clancy and I spent the weekend at a friend’s place up in Shoshona. Dave and I have been friends since high school and we were attendants at one another’s weddings, so we’re fairly close. By pure chance we ended up moving within a couple hours of one another.
Dave is one of the best people I’ve known. Extremely intelligent, pretty charismatic, and he has moral aspirations far above and beyond what I would even attempt. Two of his moral stances are environmentalism and anti-materialism. All but the most rabid right-wingers like to consider themselves one or the other, but Dave walks the walk. To give you an idea, he said with honest lament that as much as he would really enjoy being able to take cold two-minute showers, a warm morning shower is his vice.
He doesn’t hold these ideas in a showie look-at-me kind of way like some. Which in some ways makes it harder.
When you’re a guest in someone’s home, the last thing that you want to do is offend. If in the home of conservative Christian sorts, I try not to use the Lord’s name in vain even if I don’t consider it a big deal to do so. It’s a matter of respect.
But unfortunately, we both kind of spent the weekend worried that we were offending by taking too-long showers or eating or drinking too much or what-have-you. I also bit my tongue before mentioning that some of what I was wearing was bought at Walmart. That’s the last thing that Dave would intend, but it’s kind of hard not to think about it when confronted with someone that’s constantly striving to live up to his value system.
On the upshot, it’s people like those that propel you to take stock of who you are in comparison to who you would like to be. He retouched me with some of my younger hippier beliefs. He and I disagree on an awful lot of things, but it makes me even look at those ideals I have that doesn’t in a more intense way. In a good way, though. Because he doesn’t take a holier-than-thou posture, he doesn’t make me defensive or make me feel like I’m lacking. Taking stock means not only looking at the distance between where you are and where you would like to be, but also the distance between where you are and where you started out from.
It was one line in an otherwise uneventful email:
“Sergei and I are getting a divorce, but we’re ending it on good terms.”
Ellie and Sergei were married by a JP at three in the morning. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Her parents found out a year later in an equally spur-of-the-moment fashion.
They were staying at her parents for the weekend. They came home a little earlier than expected and caught them in bed (door closed, thankfully). “We’re married,” actually, turns out to be a good excuse when trapped in such a situation.
The circumstances and the man were the least surprising part of it. Ellie had always had a disdain for anything remotely conservative, so the surprise was that she married at all, much less married young (before her older sister, my wife Clancy).
Sergei is a Ukranian/Russian (born in one, spent more time in the other), and given Ellie’s disdain for anything American, it made perfect sense. The Russian capitalist and American socialist complimented each other quite well. The Himmelreichs will always be greatful that he got her on anti-depressants, a move which has made her a much more tolerable person.
Clancy and her younger sis have quite a bit in common, temperamentally, though you wouldn’t know it meeting them. A lot of the aspects of Clancy that I butt heads with are those she has in common with Ellie.
Though Ellie and I have limited interaction with one another, I feel like I am facing off with her regularly. It feels like tug-of-war wherein I am pulling Clancy towards my more conventional ways and she, represented by the temperamental aspects that they share, is pulling her in a different way altogether.
In many ways, Ellie’s marriage with Sergei is the type that I do not want to have.
Up until recently, they lived in different states. She was adamantly against children (which for her is for the best, though it was a shame that he wasn’t going to be a father because he would make a good one) and needed so much space that it may have been living together that did them in. Or maybe it was the has-been rust-belt city where he is doing his residency.
But since finding out yesterday it’s been a cause for reflection. Just as in many ways Ellie is a very extreme version of Clancy, their relationship is a more extreme version of ours. Some of the “problems” there (at least I would consider them such, they apparently did not) are some of the areas that Clancy and I need to work on.
I think one of the biggest fears I have is that of a professional marriage, which is in many ways what I considered theirs to be. Couples without children tend to drift apart. Couples that have children can allow children to be their only common bond. Whichever route Clancy and I go, I don’t want the result to be a non-intimate affair where we live our lives more in parallel than together.
This is not commentary on where my marriage is now. Right now she’s a resident and I am a residency widower. There isn’t terribly much that we can do about that, our lives have to be as much in parallel as together. The biggest questions – and biggest fears, I think – involve what happens when that curtain is drawn and we get to see what we are like when we’re less pulled apart. Will we need distance and pull back to a parallel existence or will we have the kind of marriage I’d always intended?
For someone that liked things nailed down, the notion that “time will tell” is disconcerting.
A post over at Becky’s place about television stereotypes spun off into a discussion between AndiePandie and I about children, marriage, and decisions. I take the position that the decision to have a child ought to be made before one gets married and should be made with a degree of certainty that your mind will not change later.
It’s an ironic position for me to take because neither my wife nor I are sure about the subject. We have both decided, however, that we can go either way and that if either of us doesn’t want them, we won’t have them. I could go on and on about it the factors in our personal decision, but right now I’m thinking more about the decision in general and the decision-making process.
Of the three Truman boys, the middle brother Mitch has the makings of the best father. He is also the one of the three of us that – absent a divorce – is certain not to be a father. His wife announced that she didn’t want kids and he accepted it with such grace that it surprised all of us (he had the kids named!).
Of all the issues that a couple faces, I think that the two most uncompromisable ones are marriage and children. If they don’t agree as to whether or not marriage is a sacred vow or a piece of paper, that’s not something that’s going to go away. But even bigger than that is the issue of children. If you have always or never seriously pictured yourself with children, then you really should think twice before “compromising” on that. Even more important, though, is that if someone has made their view to you on the matter clear, listen to what they’re telling you because not only is their mind unlikely to change, but even if it does do you really want to raise children with someone that doesn’t want them or feel the resentment of someone that sacrificed them to be with you?
But the question of whether or not to procreate is a serious one and I’m rather surprised at those that d0n’t take it very strongly in to consideration when choosing a partner. Someone (Mitch, I think, actually) told me that the four pillars to any marriage are money, family, religion, and sex. There has to be some harmony on all four or the relationship will collapse in due time. Of the four, family is the only one that a compromise cannot be reached on. It is, in my mind, the most important.
Yet a surprising number of people I know are willing to jettisen their instincts on the matter for the right person. Usually in some sort of very strange “But I’m in love” kind of way that defies logic, common sense, and long-term happiness. But if the composition of your future family (if you have feelings predominantly one way or the other, of course) isn’t something you’re willing to take a stand on, what is?
The more controversial view that I have here, I suppose, is that I believe that once you make a decision, you are making a commitment on the child issue just as surely as you are on the spouse issue. If you get married saying you want children and change your mind, you’re agreeing to father or bear children. If you get married to someone that doesn’t want kids, you’re committing to spending the rest of your life without children. Things like illness or infertility/sterility happen, of course, but barring that if you change your mind on that subject, the fallout (not including anything criminal, of course) falls more-or-less on your head.
When I think of Mitch and my sis-in-law, I can’t help but really, really hope he meant it when he said that not having children was a sacrifice he truly is happy to make. Cause if he changes his mind on that (or worse, thinks he can change hers), he won’t really have anyone to blame but himself.
I was reading this post by Witty Sex Kitten where Over-educated Nympho said:
Clueless Engineer sounds like the type of guy who pisses off most of womankind–then when we meet nice guys they wonder why the hell we’re so damn bitter and cynical.
From personal experience, I have a couple issues with that. Namely that the assmunch and the guy her bitterness if being projected on are often very different people. I’ve had the dating formulation of the following conversation more than a couple times:
Cat: Hey, pet me.
Lady: I don’t know… last time I pet a cat, it bit my arm and I had to go to the emergency room.
Cat: I’m sorry about your experience. Tell me more about it.
Lady: Well I was out in the woods and I ran across this wild cougar. I decided to pet it and it nearly bit my arm off!
Cat: Wait… a wild cougar?
Lady: Yes, and it bit me from here to here. It hurt so bad…
Cat: Lady, I’m not a cougar, I’m a calico.
Lady: Well you’re both cats.
Men and women both tend to repeat mistakes in relationships. Both also tend to project their relationships that failed in the past to future ones. Often – very often – when it’s least appropriate to do so.
There are absolutely instances where a man or woman’s selfish or mean streak only becomes apparent after some time. Usually, though, you can see these things pretty early on if you’re looking. Frequently, however, we ignore those signs and proceed. The succeeding burn scars into a shoulder-based chip that we tend to take out on everyone indiscriminately and then, indiscriminately, we let go and leave ourselves wide open to get hurt in much the same way again.
I know that for a while in my life, the mistake that I was not going to commit always seemed to be whatever one I had committed most recently. I’ve seen this over and over again in women. And men, of course.
On the other hand, “tend to my wounds” is a great posture for women to take. Guys are generally willing to for ladies that they dig and unwilling to for ones that they want to use for sex, companionship, and whatever. It doesn’t work quite as well for men, so I advocate taking all that hurt and rage to the gun range or use it to smash stuff. Or you can take vicarious pleasure in seeing stuff shredded. A guy can’t really go wrong watching an industrial shredder at work.
This past weekend was the annual retreat for Beck State’s residency program. For the second straight year her father had a convention in the area and so her parents went with us (last year her youngest sister came, but not this one). I’ve got a few posts coming up on various observations that I made over the weekend. This is the second.
During the retreat I got to meet Lex Rogan, a soon-to-be-second-year resident from Delosa that I’ve heard quite a bit about. I also got to meet Brit, his freshly-minted wife.
One of the little interesting tidbits of medical school is the gender-relationship disparity. Most of the men in medical school are either married or engaged while most of the women are not. The reasons for this are many.
In some quarters, young ladies are still explicitly or implicitly taught to seek in a man the ability to provide. At least moreso than men, to be sure. The ability of a man to financially take care of himself and a family is just higher on the average female than the average male. Chalk it up to evolution or antiquated societal norms or however you like, it remains generally true however not universally so.
Inversely, guys are conditioned, trained, or inclined to look for other traits. Birthin’ hips, beauty, grace, whatever. While I believe the alleged intimidation that men generally feel when confronted with a woman with higher income is greatly exaggerated, it remains true that a woman’s wealth and income potential won’t mean as much to the average man as it would for the average woman. Sometimes it does indeed work in the negative when a particular man has a machismo streak, a man figured (per previous paragraph) that a woman wants a man with equal or greater income (or “ability to provide”), or a man figures that a career-oriented woman is not interested in starting a family. While the latter two erroneous assumptions can be disproven, it becomes a lot less likely because guys are less inclined to approach an unknown female that they are not romantically interested in as readily as they would approach one that they are.
So rightly or wrongly (which is the question, explored below), a male doctor gets more mileage with the opposite sex than does his female peers. Armed with that, a lot of financially successful men that are not otherwise extraordinarily generally date upwards in terms of beaty, grace, background, etc. Dr. and Mrs. Rogan struck me very much along those lines. So the question of the day is how we, as a society, should look at this.
Not long ago I was talking to a coworker who was frustrated with his lack of relationship success. It was a not-atypical girls-only-like-jerks rant. He’s 20. Girls at that age – particularly the type he is interested in – often do have an unhealthy preference for jerks or are at least indifferent to jerkitude. That subsides (as does men’s indifference to a woman’s intelligence) as they get into their twenties, but that’s small comfort to the frustrated 20 year old.
It reminds me a bit of the movie Reality Bites, among others. In Reality Bites, Winona Ryder is left to choose between the authentic, unemployed, and intemperate Ethan Hawke and the responsible, personable Ben Stiller. She choses the former and we’re supposed to applaud her decision because Hawke’s character is authentic and real while Stiller’s is a sell-out. Poppycock. Hawke’s character is lazy, arrogant, and generally worthless. Stiller, meanwhile, actually contributes to society and and the arts (if one can call the MTV-knock-off he works at the arts). He also demonstrated the ability to care a little more about her than himself.
Which brings me back to Mrs. Rogan and the tendency of male doctors (and other rich males) to go the trophy-wife route. I can’t say that I’m particularly keen on that, either. A man is more than his pocketbook. I can’t imagine someone marrying for money being happy in the long-run just as I can’t imagine being happy having married someone that doesn’t appreciate my personality quirks. My authenticity. But in my single days I certainly did feel that the work I put in to school and my career should count for something and would get agitated at times when it seemed not to. And shouldn’t the time and effort they put in to medical school or Harvard Business School or whatever count for something?
In other words, if Stiller’s chances with Ryder should be positively reflected by the fact he holds down a full-time job (”can provide”,”is responsible”) over Hawke (”lazy”), shouldn’t then Wall Street Banker man’s chances with random female be positively influenced by his wealth when compared to earnest-but-middle-class civil engineer man? If not, why not? After all, he probably worked a lot harder to get where he is than the civil engineer. If sufficient employment is good, shouldn’t super-employment be super-good?
Am I drawing the line where I am simply because to my left are the super-authentic slobs and my right the stiff shirt accounting wizzes? Oftenly convenient, don’t you think?
The night that Clancy and I had met, I’d had a few drinks and she, obviously, hadn’t. I was already sort of in to her when she told me that she didn’t drink. My ex-girlfriend Julie didn’t drink either, and in fact that had caused some problems between us. So I was relieved when Clancy told me that she didn’t have any moral objections to drinking, she just knew that the deck was stacked against her genetically.
It was something that I could instantly relate to.
My mother had a younger sibling that drowned at fourteen. I won’t go in to the details of what all happened after that except to say that Mother no longer really had parents after that so much as she had alcoholic stand-ins.
While attending Carolina State University, she met and married a young engineer. Mom being Mom, she doesn’t blame anyone but herself. She knew the signs, but she didn’t really care. After a year or so, she help maneuver a move far away from home where she could discreitly get a divorce. Not long after that she met my nigh-teetotaling father.
Whether or not my mother became an alcoholic depends on how you define the word. But even when I no longer had a curfew I stopped leaving my room after 10 because I knew that she’d be out there, smoking cigarettes and drinking scotch. Enough scotch that I wanted to avoid her at all costs. At some social occasions where alcohol was served my brothers and I would set up Mom patrol, where we’d basically be around her so that we could step in if she was about to say something offensive.
But then, at the point we’d really start worrying, she’d stop drinking for several months before we’d say anything.
Clancy’s father was a similar borderline case except that while my mother is a gregarious drunk, her father is a mean drunk. Not physically abusive, but mean. Alcohol, combined with depression, almost cost him his marriage at one point.
Though in similar circumstances, Clancy and I seemed to react quite differently. She, like her cousin now, went completely dry. I, on the other hand, took a bit more from Mom’s example. I started stealing her scotch when I hit sixteen, I was illegally buying beer at seventeen.
But even as I was going to drinking parties at seventeen, I was almost insane about always being in control. I would play these games with agility games with myself to prove that I wasn’t affected. I constantly asked my friend if I was slurring. At one point I started a conversation with a police officer just to prove to myself that I was still in control.
Which is kind of funny because part of the reason I drank was to lose control. It was to to take the edge off. I can be pretty uptight and neurotic and the alcohol fixes that. But I never intentionally let myself go. My drinking career climaxed at three different nights that I don’t remember and a one kiss that I’d really like to forget. But those were the exception. The rest of the time I was dutifully asking my friends if I was slurring and walking a straight line with my eyes closed. I wanted to lose control – just not like Mom lost control.
From what Clancy tells me, the medical definition is pretty lax. I’d break the 14-beer-a-week limit using just half the week (Thur-Sat). I even chose one of the apartments I did because it was within walking distance of my favorite bar.
My brothers Ollie and Mitch got their drinking done in college and have simmered down somewhat since. I was dating Julie throughout most of college which limited my intake, but I actually had most of it out of my system before I met Clancy.
And for all of its faults, Deseret has been a really good influence on me. Drinking isn’t a social activity here. The social pressure against it is as strong as the social pressure for it in Delosa is.
Which is good. I don’t think I have any reason to worry about me following in the Hertzog footsteps, but you never really see that sort of thing coming. If anyone had told me at ten I’d be a smoker, I’d have laughed. One of the real upshots of our shared experience is that if Clancy tells me that I’m drinking too much, I know that she knows what she’s talking about. And she knows that I don’t want to go that route.
-{This post was inspired by Barry’s on the subject of addiction. As it’s bad tact to try to steal the spotlight of someone with a dilemma, I decided to hold off on posting on it}-
-{Confronting the Inevitable, A Man’s Gotta Do}-
I got a traffic ticket on my way to work this morning. The Mocum cop caught me fair and square. As is usually the case when I’m pulled over, I was speeding on cruise control rather than being in a hurry (I was at least half-an-hour early for work). It was probably the nicest cop I’ve ever had. I have a temporary insurance card that had expired by two days and he didn’t seem to sweat it. I was hoping to get off, but he’s got a job to do and what’s really surprising is that the ticket was for a measly $53. Going 13-over in Colosse (most of Delosa, I’d actually say) would get you closer to $200.
But that’s neither here nor there. The biggest even of this ticket is that I don’t care. Part of me really wants to worry about it, but the biggest reason that I’ve always worried is no longer an issue. Let me explain.
The last time I got a ticket was a few years ago. I was caught in a speed trap on a rural highway. When you see a “reduced speed limit ahead” sign and see the speed limit go down ten miles an hour you feel pretty safe until you reach the top of the hill and are heading down when the speed limit decreases another 10 mph for no more than a 50 feet. I was on my way to Smyrna to visit my friend and it really ruined my weekend. Not because of the $200 fine or because of the inevitable insurance hike, but because my parents were going to find out about it.
Unfortunately, about two weeks before I had moved in with the folks for a few months while I worked and saved up for our trip out here. I also viewed it as an opportunity for Mom and I to mend our sometimes spotty relationship. With the ticket, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Sure enough, despite having taken care of myself financially for a few years and being many moons past eighteen, I was grounded. Mom and I did not speak for a couple of days and within a week I decided I didn’t need to save up that bad and made alternate living arrangements. That’s how bad it got.
Before getting married and moving out here, I’d lived my whole life in the greater Colosse area. It was very convenient in a number of ways. My folks’ house in Mayne was my permanent address so that I didn’t need to keep changing my drivers licenses, billing addresses, and all that every time that I moved. It all went to her. My bank account also had Mom’s name on it because it got me a better interest rate. So while I was paying for everything myself, my parents (Mom specifically) had access to more information than was probably appropriate. I’m not a particularly private person so it never bothered me… except when it did.
When I got my drivers license, nothing was more serious than the prospect of getting a ticket. I lived in regular fear of it. My folks would take my car away for a whole month and I’d have to ride the big yella to school. Uncool. But it worked: I didn’t get my first ticket until I was in college. And outside the city of Phillippe (long story), I never got more than a ticket a year and up until this morning’s ticket, I was eligable for the good-driver discount. They also taught me early and often the value of money. I was taught to live below my means and save up. This was very effective, too.
But in neither case do I worry about it quite as much as my parents. When working I try to put away 25% of my salary and more often than not that leaves me with a little spending room. Computers are my think and that’s where most of my money went. Courting Evangeline was also my thing, so a lot of money went there, too. But Mom would see my Discover bill and I’d hear about it. And Mom would certainly see whether I sent $200 to the Podunk County Sheriff’s Office. But for my part, one of the reasons I save money is so that I don’t have to freak out when some extra expense comes my way.
Mom and Dad were both raised poor and up until recently buying things that weren’t important were more than bad money management, it was a moral bad. They liked to spend money on trips and I liked to spend it on computer stuff (and didn’t mind spending it on eating out or high-speed Internet). Dad and I eventually came to terms with that (one of the most heart-melting things he ever said to me was that I am pretty good with money), but Mom and I never did.
Since getting married and moving away, I’ve had to take more responsibility for things. We have everything we can on autopayments. It kills Mom that we spend $10 a month on what she considers an unnecessary service, but I actually prefer it to the situation when I lived back there. I always figured that while doing all these things myself would not be hard, it would be somewhat stressful. But with the all-important exception of the credit card, I was actually paying most of my bills there (water, electricity, phone go straight to the apartment that’s getting it). And really, until Clancy pointed out how unnecessary some of these head-buttings between Mom and I were, I never thought a whole lot of it.
And until today, when I have no one to answer for my ticket but me, I never quite realized that it was taking a bigger toll on my life than taking ownership of the rest of my bills was.
On my Good Boys & Girls post, Becky made an astute observation:
My parents were kind of overly strict in many ways, and I think part of that backfired in a couple ways. One is that my siblings all went completely rebellious. Two is that although I followed the rules, I still have a slight trepidation whenever I’m around them.
That’s a subject I should have gotten to, but didn’t. And a real concern for any parent who wants to instill any discipline on their children.
The success of the Himmelreich girls took its toll on family relations in a such a serious way that they’re only now recovering.
Dr. Himmelreich can be a pretty forceful man and his relationship to his daughters (particularly his older two) suffered a great deal because of that. In fact, one of Clancy’s great motivations for academic success was the ability to get a full-ride scholarship so that she could get out of the house, the city, and the state.
And, compared to her middle sister, she was the more moderate one. Someone recently remarked about the sister that she’s spent so much time being “not Dad” that she’s only recently begun figuring out who she is.
That, obviously, is something that any parent wants to avoid. With the help of time, distance, and medication things have gotten a lot better recently. But even so, it’s a tragedy all its own.
I think – or I would like to think – a lot of it has to do with style more than demands. Clancy and I each have a parent that we’ve had rocky relationship with. In both cases I think a lot of it had more to do with attitude than strictness. At least in our cases.
A case-and-point, we’ve both resolved never to yell at our children. More than just damaging to our relationship with our respective parents, it wasn’t helpful. My father solemnly saying “I can’t trust you after this” had ten times the effect of Mom yelling “What the hell were you thinking?!”
Given some of the problems that run through the Himmelreich (her father’s) family and Hertzog (my mother’s) families, some of the problems were unavoidable. It’s possible that Clancy’s sister, a provocateur by nature, would have rebelled against any rules she didn’t fully understand (and what 16 year old really understands why the rules are what they are?) no matter how they were expressed. It’s something I think any parent would have to keep an eye out for.
But kids like Clancy’s sister can also get a rise out of bombastic conflict. Kids like Clancy and I are more likely to wilt and retreat into a more depressive state. I’m not sure how many cases yelling and screaming helps anyone except as a release valve for the parent (which, if that’s its own purpose, is not sufficient).
Backlash can also come in the form of secrets. Kids will always necessarily have secrets from their parents. A truly honest and open relationship is practically impossible (and actually could be indicative of problems, a subject for a later post perhaps?) throughout the teenage years.
A parent that says his 16 year old kid can’t go out after 8:00 runs the risk of the kid sneaking out. One problem becomes three: the kid is out late, the parents don’t know where the kid is, and once people ‘cross the line’ they’re more likely to be cavalier about their actions because they’ve already crossed the line.
On the other hand, the answer to that is not to let them go out whenever they want because that’s giving way too much power to kids who are not yet ready for that power.
To use the sex example, a parent that refuses to acknowledge that their kids are sexually active are more likely to discover that their kid has been sexually active under unfortunate circumstances (pregnancy, for example). But there is an unavoidable wink-wink aspect to sex education and giving twelve year olds condoms and the pill.
The less you expect, the less you’re going to receive. The wider you put the boundaries out, the further they will explore.
Between Clancy and I, I’m likely to be the more permissive one. Some of my most important lessons in life were learned doing things that Clancy wasn’t allowed to do. On the other hand, she’s a doctor and I’m a $9.50/hr codemonkey.
But Becky is definitely right. You don’t want to build up too much resentment. Not just because of the developmental problems a constant state of rebellion cause, but because I don’t think any parent wants to wake up and realize that while their kid may love them, he or she doesn’t like them very much.
Becky has a post on relationships and stuff. I have mixed and unintelligable thoughts on the subject itself, so I will instead throw my two cents on one little portion:
Receiving Gifts – Gifts are visual symbols of love, whether they are items you purchased or made, or are simply your own presence made available (ahhhhh…I do believe I hear a massage in there).
I have some bad experiences with this one that ultimately caused some bad blood in a previous relationship. So I’d like to yell this advice from the highest mountaintop:
If a guy gets you a gift, do not criticize it!
If he gets you jewelry, don’t immediately point out what would have been a better pick. If he gets you flowers, don’t get angry cause he didn’t know that yellow roses were symbolic of non-romantic love. If he gets you a coke, don’t complain that he should have gotten you caffeine-free instead.
There are ways to communicate how he can do better rather than pointing out what he did wrong (particularly within an hour of the gift presentation). If yellow roses are inappropriate, let him know at some point in the future. Instead just assume that he didn’t know and be appreciative that he was thinking of you.
And that’s the big thing about gifts: it doesn’t matter what they are, it only matters that he was thinking of you when he got it.
A guy finds out enough times that getting her a gift will result in something negative (a lecture on what color roses mean what, for instance) or why flowers from this shop are better than flowers from that one), he will eventually stop doing it. Then you’ll wonder what’s wrong. Then you’ll start to pine for the days that he got you gifts that you used to criticize.
[I’ll probably tell the story behind this one, which is a little less one-sided than presented above. And in case anyone is concerned this has nothing to do with Clancy]