A comment thread walks into a bar.

Disclaimer:  Some people who leave comments in a thread, myself included, are perfectly gracious, thoughtful people. 

To my writer-friends who have been mauled by the others, have you ever wondered what would happen if people talked to each other in real life like they do on a comment thread? 

Let's! Let's imagine.

Let's say, you are new in town and you've just been invited by some co-workers to a bar-party. You will not know anyone there, you don't even really know your co-workers, and you don't know what to talk about. 

But earlier today you saw something that could be worth mentioning.

A man was standing on the median holding a sign in one hand while he used the other to talk on a cell phone. He yelled angrily into his phone and waved the sign around so you couldn't really tell if he wanted to work for food, or needed a few dollars, or what. 

What are the public and private views we could have of this scene, you wondered at the time? Your natural response might be sympathy but here is this person screaming at someone and now, your compassion is fighting with your fear.  

Good. You'll bring this up.

You arrive at the party. You're at the bar, and so is everyone else. You start talking about this man and his behavior. What do you do when you feel both compassionate and skeptical, you ask?

The person closest to you says, "I don't know. I figure they have enough problems. I usually hand them a five." He takes his drink and walks away.   

Two persons who have overheard this come over. 

Person 1 says, "I heard what you were saying and I see this all the time and my opinion is, GET A JOB. Then talk to me."

"That's so insensitive," Person 2 replies. "You have no idea why he's not working." 

"Really! Insensitive?" Person 1 replies. "Are you also the type who'd like to raise taxes to help him buy beer too? And go back to school for a college degree that I never even went? Snowflake." 

"That's not what a 'snowflake' is and name-calling is a sign of low intellect, my friend," says Person 2.

"I believe," says Person 3 who is nearby, "the question was how to resolve the cognitive dissonance. It is false to say that we don't have mixed emotions when we see an unusual display of mixed behaviors. But I would say to our guest, that you are more likely to regret acting on fear, than on compassion. " 

"We're not friends," says Person 1 to Person 2.

You notice that two new people are looking at you.  

"That's stupid, what you said," says Person 4.

"He reminds me of people who didn't like me in school because I had bad skin," says Person 5 to Person 4.

Person 4 agrees with person 5 and says, "I had to stay in the classroom because of bullies who made fun of my birthmark." 

"People like you who trash-talk other people who don't have money disgust me. Maybe you don't have their toughness," says Person 5 to you. 

"Despikabel," says person 4.

"That's not how you say 'despicable'," says person 2. 

"This is so first world," person 6 says to you, "how you sound sympathetic, but really don't like people if they aren't like you. I see it all the time." 

"Yeah," person 7 says to you, "Cry me a river, I can tell from your shoes that you never had to work a day in your life." 

"The man on the median is why Trump got elected," says person 8 from the edge of the crowd where there isn't much light. 

"Trump is an ass****" person 9 shoots back. 

"Trump knows our country has forced people to stand on the median. And he's going to fix that. You watch," says person 1, who is drunk. 

"You people who think Trump even knows who you are," says person 2, "are the problem." 

"There is no unity in proving another wrong so that you can be right," says person 3. "Let's stop talking fault, and start talking solutions!" 

"You're an idiot," says person 9. 

"You're all missing the point," person 10 says, "did you even listen to what our new friend was saying?" 

"Trump," says person 1, "we're talking about Trump." 

"I had really bad skin in high school, but I took medication for it and it was fine!" says person 11 to person 5. 

"That's really irresponsible," says person 2 to person 11. "The side effects include insanity." 

"You're insane," says person 1 

"You're all in a dark basement. In the dark," says person 6

Everyone looks at Person 6 with expressions of WTF.  

"Ass**** Trump supporter," says Person 9 to Person 1.

"Snowflake," slurs Person 1. 

"That's not what 'snowflake' means," says Person 2.

The conversation is now taking place without you. It's as if you're already home in bed while persons 1 -11 are becoming Lord of the Flies.   

The next day, you mention this to your co-worker, the hostile nature of the conversation, the name-calling and attacks, the off-topic departures, and the absence of real discussion after you launched such a great ice breaker.

"That's how they are," says your co-worker. "They're always there but they're not there for the conversation. They just want to be somewhere at all. And even when they pick on each other, they're still engaged in the same activity."

You know you'll come back to this bar. You'll take a seat, throw out a topic and enjoy your adult beverage while the crowd devours it. You'll understand that commenters are looking for one thing more than anything else which is another person that appears to be listening. 

You may or may not elect to be that person. But you'll know that what's most important is that you didn't elect to go home and stay there. 

The end.

How Trump made me a better person

My old sign.

Worse than not knowing what to post on the blog on Sunday, was not posting anything. 

It happened or didn't happen because I had so many topics, I didn't know which one to develop. On my Word doc where I leave posts in progress until they are finished, I have six – SIX – half-written posts. 

I opened the news yesterday to read about Trump's rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend. "Orgiastic" is the way Frank Bruni of the Times describes any gathering of Trump and his supporters and this one was no different. He swayed and bellowed and bathed in the glow of glory days.

There was President Trump and his followers, trashing the "elites" who, Trump has convinced his fans, are any people who shine a truth light on him. There was President Trump railing against the "liars," who report what they see in that light. 

It reminded me of bully-cops I've known who leave their small town, only to be seen and treated for who they are in bigger towns of bigger people, and can't wait to come home and tell smaller people how much better smaller is for everyone, because of how it's served him. 

That was the subject of my post of choice, but it was too big. 

I decided to no-show instead of half-post.

But that was yesterday. 

Back when Donald Trump was running for President, as much as his bawdy appearances on the trail offended me, I never feared he'd be elected. His lack of experience and demonstrated lapses in character and humanity, I was sure, would be answered with a loss. I did my part. I posted things about him on Facebook and didn't vote for him.  

I should have done more. 

But I didn't.  

"But" is an important word. 

I decided to give him a chance, but however appealing his reforms are to the population that overlooks "the rest," his flaws fight with my core values and I wind up just feeling depressed when I listen to him.

He is unkind.

He is cruel.

He is hedonistic.

He is narcissistic.

He is immature. 

He may have sober-thinking, cool-headed people to plant him in front of cartoons where he can't be too destructive, but in the ways I can't abide, he is a flawed human being. 

Supporters, or even non-Trump supporters but optimistic non-Hillary people, are tempted to believe that "well, yes" he is all of those bad things, but... 

He isn't Hillary

He is standing up to North Korea

He punched Syria in the face after Ivanka showed him pictures of what was going on over there.

He...tax reform

He...immigration

He...health care 

But.

Trump is dishonest. If we wished once to give him a chance, how is that possible when you feel you either have to fact-check everything he says, or stick your fingers in your ears and sing to deal with the toads that leave that man's mouth.  

Here is the rest of the post.

I've considered that I'm predisposed at this point to reject anything that Trump says or does. But he could be Mister Rogers and he still would have carried out an act that I've come to see in my burgeoning political view as a "last straw." 

Nobody was surprised, but on April 13, Donald Trump closed the door and signed legislation, allowing states to refuse Medicaid reimbursement to Planned Parenthood or any organization which provides abortion services, regardless of whether they provide other essential health care, and regardless of the fact that abortion is never funded by Medicaid anyway unless in cases of rape or incest or threat to a mother's life. 

Planned Parenthood  serves millions of women, men and children, mostly the poor, who will have no other access to health care in states where Planned Parenthood can't survive.   

Here are the services they will lose:

• STI/STD Testing & Treatment for women and men
• Contraception 
• Female and male  sterilization procedures
• Cancer Screening and Prevention Pap Tests
• HPV Vaccinations
• Breast Exams/ Breast Care
• Pregnancy Tests
• Prenatal Services
• Adoption Referrals to Other Agencies

But. 

They can just go to another state, right?

They can just go to the community health centers that will continue to be funded, right?

They can just go to a private doctor, right?

Private donors will make up the lost funding, right? 

No, 2.5 million women, men and children won't be absorbed into existing, already over-burdened community centers. And no, private donors will not make up the 40% of Planned Parenthood's budget that comes from state and federal funding. And no, poor women in rural areas where Planned Parenthood is the only provider of family health care will not find the funding and transportation to just go elsewhere, and many private OB/Gyn clinics don't accept Medicaid. 

What will happen is that the number of unwanted pregnancies and children will rise.What will happen is that the tax burden to fund Medicare will grow heavy with maternal, prenatal and pediatric services, not to mention the way poverty alone will further warp these lives with crime, drugs, violence. 

I've never been an activist, in a march-joining, megaphone-seizing, in-your-face way, not even at a dinner party after wine. It's been enough to exercise my right to vote, maybe pen a letter, place a call to my congressperson. 

It's not enough, anymore. 

Sooner or later, you have to write the post. You have to get your supporting data, and crystallize your ideas, and figure out what you need to say, even if you don't know how. 

I've never been that political. 

But President Trump has convinced me to change that.

I don't know how or what I will do to raise my voice.

But.

I know I am a pro-choice woman with sons and daughters and grandchildren in my future. 

I know that at this moment, federal funding for Planned Parenthood will remain in place through September and that beyond that, families trying hard to prevent the worst things from happening to their lives will face new obstacles and risks.

I know if I don't loan my talents, spend my time, research and educate myself and others about what this could mean to them, and to us all, and how I can make some difference, I will be guilty of this: 

I should have. 

But.

I didn't. 

And that's as no-show as it gets.

Pet Peeves #9, featuring hot dogs, the food I hate to love.

Hot dog, I will always love you.

The other day, I was kind of anxious about something and then I was more anxious, and finally I was on the brink of going to to McDonald's for a drive-thru cheeseburger. 

I persevered and chose a healthier stress-food option with half the calories, which was a hot dog, Fritos and a Tab. 

Half is half. 

I don't do this often. But I do it when I need to, and I don't feel bad about it until I see a catastrophic headline in my newsfeed which says something  like, "Why you still eat the foods that are killing you RIGHT NOW." 

It brings me to the first of this month's Pet Peeves, which is clickbait, a thing that can break your happy, and even make you anxious if you are careless.

Herewith: 

1. Clickbait. Whether it's a tragic headline or a "Why people don't like you," survey, clickbait, meant to generate advertiser revenue, is only after your eyes. Likely, it will lead you to a story you don't need to read, and probably shouldn't because, like an accident scene, it will only make you sorry you looked. Clickbait is a guy in the alley with a trench coat saying, "Pssst, look. Here's why you aren't married yet."  

And, as any hot dog fan knows, it doesn't make you want a hot dog less to read that they're killing you RIGHT NOW, it just makes you enjoy it less after you go and make yourself one. 

2. Self-imposed, yes, but this one is rabbit holes, or, looking up kind of interesting things while you avoid work that you're not in the mood for. Like Fritos are a good idea before you eat them, some things you want to know are only interesting before you know them.  

This week, I learned that:

• Harrison Ford is twenty-two years older than his wife, Calista Flockhart.
• Cats like running water because they don't trust non-moving water because they know you don't change it in a timely fashion.
• Introverted people aren't unhappy people. I already knew that, but I did not know that they include: Albert Einstein, Rosa Parks and Steve Spielberg.
• Hotdogs are not as bad for you as everyone thinks they are.

3. The near over-use of the term "sweet spot." I know we like bringing sports terms into the vernacular, but I liked it when "sweet spot"  meant "the point or area on a bat, club, or racket at which it makes most effective contact with the ball,"  and wasn't the new way to refer to achieving balance.

4. The current over-use of the term "spot-on." Did England ever really say we could use that?

5. Vitalyrulesgoogle.com, the Trump blog hacker from Russia. If you have a blog, know about this. If not, skip to Reader Peeves, below.

From his slimy little hacker site in Russia  Vitaly Popov uses bots that hit, but don't actually view your blog. It is enough to register the hit as a visitor however, and because it happens over and over again, it keeps raising visitor stats, making you believe that your mother was right about your little stories, because look at those 900 people who have come by just since Sunday!

Eventually your inner realist says, "I don't know about this. Look a little further," and when you do, you see that reptile-Vitaly's site has been referring the fake visitors. When you click on it, because you're a real person, it does open his  page which says this:  TRUMP! YOU DID IT! 

Reader Peeves

6. From Reader Gina, the expression "love-on," as in loving-on your kids, spouse, cat, friends. I agree, Gina. It just makes me think of people who hug too hard. 

7. From Reader Jan: people who leave shopping carts wherever they feel like it, often in the middle of a space, requiring you to leave your car and  roll it out of the way, or, make a game of outsmarting the carriage by edging into the space without making contact. 

8. From Reader Larry: people in expedited, VIP or priority lines who arrive at the head of the line, hand their drink to someone and stark frisking themselves, looking for the I.D. they knew they'd have to present since, well, before that moment.    

You'll notice people like this never, ever glance at people behind them, which is good because I've seen those faces and they aren't friendly.

 9. Last but not least, from Reader Mark, a peeve over the issue of cashiers who can't actually make change. 

I'm going to allow this guest peeve, but I'm a little in both worlds here. I agree that there are some basic transactions we should understand without having to consult a machine. On the other hand, my first job was cashiering and it took an uncomfortably long time to understand change-making. I think I cried.

And, the moment I did learn, a cranky asshat came in and gave me something like $5.02 for a $3.42 bill, and said to my panicked expression, something like, "I'm out of singles and I don't want pennies." 

Some of you out there know exactly how I felt, and what I said which was, "Oh, okay," before I did the math in my head and then went home to practice the crap out of change-making. 

And that concludes Pet Peeves #9.  I'm probably not the only one who would like a hot dog and some Fritos now, but I'm not nearly anxious enough for that. 

See how that works? Stay happy, stay healthy.

Love, 

Susan

Kids off the street

This is not a picture of my old
boss Frank's hand. It's a picture
of  writers getting their
"kids off the street."

My first serious boss, Frank, used to say, when he was getting ready to shake up management for some reason, "Okay, kids off the street." 

Maybe he meant it was time to get those hooligans back in line. But I prefer to think he was getting ready to duel in front of the executive management saloon. 

"Kids off the street. This is going to get serious."

I don't get enough opportunities to use that fantastic expression. I search for them. 

It's challenging for me to write some perspective pieces and not feel I'm oversharing. As much as I love to write "worked for me" or "what I learned" stories, I hate oversharing. However, I know that insight you want to share often comes from experience you'd rather forget. You have to find the "sweet spot" (a term that will be featured in next week's pet peeves post). 

It doesn't always mean discussing the underwear of your life (parents, kids, husband, friends or anyone who done you wrong), but what you do choose, you have to write in full if you don't want your followers to be only blog hackers in India and family members who have loved you since your teeth were too big for your face.  

I see some writers do this as easily as they breathe. Not me. My writing leans toward the anodyne, a word I'm pretty sure I also learned from Frank.

Still. As life shows you more about what really affects people, and as you gain confidence in your skills to write about it, you can grow tired of being so close to the vest. 

Write real, or stay home, right?

You want those kids off the street so you can duel it out with the person in the way, which is writer-you.

I faced this recently when I wrote about the empty-nest marriage, which, in my opinion, rivals new parenthood and retirement in terms of shared events that can affect two participants differently. The empty nest marriage, for better or worse, is not the one you started with.  

Ask me how I know. 

For twenty-five percent of couples, the empty-nest marriage doesn't even occur at all. The kids leave Mom and Dad and Mom and Dad leave each other.    

For the other seventy-five percent,  the empty-nest marriage is a new town. It can change everything from the way you eat and entertain yourselves, to the type of conversations you'll have, to the friends you see more of because your kids no longer have to be in the same math class for you to find common ground. 

This topic is close to my heart because one of the finest things my husband and I have accomplished was to make our lives into a story of us again. But I appreciate it most because it didn't happen without our share of, as my daughter would say,  "honest moments." 

Those moments did not urge us back to the center of our old relationship, but to the middle of a new one. 

The new one  is better. We have more fun. We laugh more. We have new jokes. We go to Lowes together to buy plants. He talks to the dog to entertain me, and I do small things to make his life nicer. We both look younger. 

It's lovely.

But the happy ending wasn't what readers wanted to know about who contacted me after I wrote that piece. They wanted to know about those "honest moments."

What's my point? 

I have two.

Balance is everything. I mind my own business the way I don't let my undergarments show. But once in a while, someone will need to know you understand their discomfort because you've talked about your own.   

Someone will make you remember you have good reason for the thing or two you have to say. 

Someone will need you to get the kids off the street. 

You know who you are. Thank you, and you're welcome.

And second, if you really want to, you can find a way to use the expression: "Kids off the street," and you really will feel a little like a badass.

Ask me how I know.

Write like nobody's going to read it.

I love this book more
every time I write it and
my book knows it.

Recently, I was talking to my husband about the novel I began submitting a couple of years ago, and then put on hold pending I don't know what; maybe one of those epiphanies I have when I'm applying mascara.   

I just stopped sending it out. 

It didn't seem worth the trouble.

But, it didn't seem right to desert it, either.

"Why don't you take out everything that wasn't fun to write and start over?" asked my husband. 

As many of you know, I have been writing this novel for – I'm not kidding – ten years. 

It is my third. It has been the most difficult to write. It is the most well written. It was the least fun to write and rewrite and rewrite again. 

The first novel was squeaky clean. There was not a single F-word, not the hint of a sex scene. The plot, a stretch to begin with, was layered with so many contrived, improbable twists it was like one of those houses with too many additions that sprawl in all directions.  

The second novel was better but had "pacing" issues which, for a reader, is like a non-reader watching a moderately interesting two-hour movie for eight hours.   

But book 3, this is the one that has been there all along saying, "Hot! Warm, no, no, COLD! COLD! Here! I'm RIGHT HERE!"

I dance with it, I fight with it, I yell at it, I ask it what it wants from me, I stare at it, and then I say  "Maybe we need to take a break,"  and I put it away and think about non-fiction. 

I tell everyone I've-stopped-writing-fiction-and-this-time-I mean-it, and they look at me the way you look at someone who's finally broken up with an asshat and say,  "It's probably just as well." 

Then I write it some more. 

Why can't I stop?  

I took my husband's advice. I dumped a third of the book including characters that even I started to dislike as I wrote them. I started over, writing it like I was creating a movie one scene at a time. The process seemed too easy. It seemed novice. It seemed unsophisticated. 

But mostly, it was fun. 

It was fun to play with an idea, and not develop it, and then delete it. 

It was fun not to wonder who else would like this story. 

It was fun to write like nobody would read it. 

It was fun the way skiing or driving with the top down is. It doesn't make you richer or more attractive, it's just easy. You don't do it because you hope to be famous or competitive. You do it because it's fun.

It's fun. 

I've been having more fun than I expected to since that chat. I'm happier, I look better and have been laughing more. This made me think of people who don't have enough fun. Is that you?

If it is, consider this:

If you were told that a person you love needed to have more fun for their mental health, would you not do everything to be sure they did? You'd be creative. But you'd try. Because it was important.

Be the person you love, have fun before you forget what it feels like.

But mostly, have fun before it becomes not worth the trouble.


Love,
Susan 

What's happening to us?

"Really?"
                   ---Gus Bonifant

"The final straw was a little girl using an iPad with the volume on high, a device her parents refused to turn down despite repeated requests from the staff at Caruso’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C."

---The Washington Post, reporting on a restaurant that banned children under five, and doubled its business.

There are people, many of them, who feel the restaurant's position is anti-child. There are, or will be others who will feel this is a violation of a child's rights. 

There are others, like me,  who know small children should be allowed to be small children, and see this as a ban on inconsiderate parents who don't care if you planned your expensive date night two weeks ago and hired a sitter. 

What happened to the rights of people who are just minding their own business, or maybe just trying to steer clear of the ones who demand their rights and some of everyone else's?

Not long ago, I sat down on a plane next to a man who had already taken off his shoes, opened a fragrant stir-fry meal of steak and peppers, propped open his tablet and tuned into an episode of Orange is the New Black which featured a protracted scene of prison you-know-what, right there for me and the small children across the aisle to behold.

Last week, I ate lunch with my father in a bar, a nice one with windows and landscaping. A man was at the bar with friends telling a loud story so laced with the f-word, I started to think I wouldn't mind being punched if I could just go over and say,  "Excuse me, every woman here would like to meet your wife who 'makes a big f****** case out of everything,' and fix her up with a guy who at least knows how to act in public."

What's happening to us?

Everyone – male, female, child, adult, gay, straight, big or little, of all colors – deserves the right to be who they are in peace. But too many assert their right to do what they wish, irrespective of the needs and comfort of others who share their space. It's always been that way, but now we have the opportunity to sound off from the stands, whether we understand the whole story or not.  

Last week, the United Airlines leggings issue hit the internet because of a bystander's swift and incendiary tweet which reported, falsely, that two passengers were refused passage because of their wardrobe choices. Quickly, we learned that these were family members of an employee who are, like the employee is, expected to represent the airline in behavior and dress while traveling (for free) on an employee pass. They had violated the dress code.

This went on for days. Delta made fun of them, celebrities weighed in. There was abundant talk of body-shaming, and discrimination, and unfair this, and unfair that, and rights, rights, rights. 

I wondered, why are we still on this?  I have no doubt that this confrontation at the gate happened between an unknowing traveler and the kind of recalcitrant gate employee so many of us have had the misfortune to observe, but it's still beside the point. 

It is the airline's "right" to project what the airline considers a professional image. Employees or family of employees traveling (for free) are not told what to wear, but what not to wear. Have a problem with the gate agent for not seeking an exception if it was called for, but don't have a problem with an airline's stated expectations that their professional image be upheld by anyone acting as a representative. 

I sat next to a pilot once who was traveling to see family.  He had a few days off, he was looking forward to seeing his old neighborhood. He was dressed in his uniform, and he was unfailingly sweet to his seatmate, man who talked for several years (in a monotone) about how to make maple syrup. 

Shouldn't he have been able to wear jeans and an every day shirt, have a few pops, talk too loud on his cell phone, and let his hair down on this first day of his vacation? His airline-employer says no.

How is it different from banks who want their male employees to wear ties, or doctor's offices that don't want their employees to have facial piercings, or restaurants who don't want their employees to come to work unwashed with dirty hair?

We have become so preoccupied with self-centered living, so concerned that our own needs are met first and foremost, and so willing to believe we've been discriminated against when we've simply not been given our way. We are becoming a nation of spoiled, entitled, pajama-wearing, stir-fry-eating plane people. And, I'm not just saying that because the power went out this morning.

It isn't that examples of genuine consideration for others aren't everywhere. If you look, they are. What's happening to us, is that you have to look past so many other me-first behaviors to see them. 

You only have one of you

I don't know who said this but we
could be friends.

The writer Anne Lamott says about inner critics: “Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent.”

Inner critics are a universal problem among writers; one of my inner critics was in my office before I got there the other day to remind me that 85% of the agents I submitted my novel to a couple of years ago, said "No."

"I wasn't sure you remembered that," said my inner critic.

When my kids were  younger, and they were leaving to go back to school, or away on a trip, or to the store for hot sauce, I used to say: "Be careful out there. I only have one of you."

Be careful out there. You only have one of you.

Be careful when you talk to yourself in reproachful, doubtful, reprimanding ways. Be careful when you feel small next to the fortune of others, or pummeled by fate, or unable to see past obstacles. Remember that while you have an inner critic, you also have an inner butler-defender who carries your tray of weapons: grace, resilience and your good glasses. 

Life is hard enough, already.

Don't make it harder.

You may not need more.

You may have enough, already.

You probably don't need attention.

You may just need to like your own company more.

Life is hard enough, already.

Don't make it harder.

Our libraries of intuition and instincts grow more powerful by the day

Learn to trust your own judgment.

We are more likable when we are being who we are without explaining.

Don't try to organize what others think of you.

We make it about avoiding mistakes, but we forget:

Normal life requires we understand the flaws in order to enjoy the improvements

We want to look back on a perfect present in the perfect future, but we forget:

It is not possible to do or know all the things we'll wish we did or knew in hindsight.

We shape and knead life, like bread dough until it looks like we want it to, but we forget:

We can't live inside a life we've put on display, we can only stand to the side of it.

You only have one of you. Be who you are.
Notice the things you are, that you once wished you could be. 

Know when it's enough, already.