Personsplaining

My pies don't look like this. Pie by Bob.

Mentally I'm scrolling through all the couples in my book group Rolodex (remember those?) to see if I can find a "traditional" male. It's not enough to say that my own husband is not afraid to stop and ask someone for directions (while I cringe) and has all our important dates at the tip of his tongue ( I do remember his birthday, but because he was born on a distinctive date: Friday the 13th - can't quite recall what year). Just about everyone I know has a husband capable and often willing to do cooking and other housework. No one complains about channel-surfing or any of those other alleged traits that I can't even remember at the moment. At this moment, I am at work and my husband is doing the laundry. It was all I could do to sneak in and change the bed linens.

That doesn't mean I haven't seen traditional types, but there simply aren't many in my circle. And I'm not a young person.

This prompts me to rise to the defense of men in general and not forward Man Jokes that crop up in emails or on Facebook. You know the ones, the ones that are like Blonde Jokes - perpetuating an unfair stereotype. Stereotypes that don't even line up with my own dad, born over 100 years ago.

Blondes can forward Blonde Jokes if they want. If men can write some funny Man Jokes, they can share them among themselves, but I'll be no party to them. They just don't speak to my experience. People just aren't that simple. We're all nuanced.

I get that, despite decades of women's liberation fol-de-rol, men are still in power. They're getting nervous about it, for sure, and the pendulum has to swing back and forth before it comes to rest in the middle, but they still have the majority of power. Ridicule is a potent weapon the powerless wield against those above them. I just think it's time to put that WMD aside. Use it surgically on a specific individual instead. Don't use it to further divide us.

The Director's the Thing

F. Molnar

The names have been changed to protect, I dunno, somebody.

Many, many years ago, I was in a show. I wouldn't even have remembered this incident if Marlene's imminent visit had not caused me to drift back to the bad old days where we did not tread in case someone asked us, "Are you sisters? Well, then, how did you meet?"

Anyway, I was in a show. The director was a lawyer, but thoroughly trained as a director at a regional professional theatre. He just sort of drifted into the law by accident. Sort of. The show was a fluffy summer comedy of two seasoned playwrights manipulating the lives of those around them, unless you were one of the other actors, in which case it was a romantic comedy about a young man whose heart is broken and whose antics are observed by two cynical, middle-aged non-entities. I was one of the cynics.

The director is fascinated by stage business. He claims that one of the hardest things to do on stage is eat. One of the playwrights orders a huge breakfast, eats very little of it, and leaves the rest for the hungover playwright to finish. And my instructions were to finish the whole deal: beef, chicken, fish, eggs, etc. It is a point of pride for me that eating on stage is a mere nothing. The only thing I seem to be unable to do is whistle in front of an audience, but eating! Ah! Eating is my forte. While eating, I was to listen to the romantic lead moan on and on about his the loss of his love and how his life was over blah-blah, select lines that were particularly catchy, and write them down. I was, of course, a playwright, and all human drama is but grist to my mill.

As the scene rolls on, I go from hungover to delighted with my discovery of a vein of pure gold issuing from the mouth of Mr. Romantic Lead. I am no more than a yard from the nearest audience member in a small, semi-round theatre. I'm not mugging at them - just eating and jotting notes through this whole scene.

Mr. Romantic Lead apparently (according to the denizen of the Box Office) was lying on the carpet in the lobby, pulling at the skin around his eyes and thinking sad thoughts before his entrance into the scene. [Mr. Hoffman, next time try acting.] He was put out during performance by the laughter in the audience. He simply could not reconcile this laughter to the tragedy that was, at that point of the play, his life. He could not figure it out. My back was to him. So he invited his then partner to watch and see what was going wrong. His partner told him. I was making notes and eating.

Now, to this day, this whole incident upsets me - not as much as it did at the time. At the time, I was enraged, furious, impotent, and nigh-on murderous. Today I merely make my eyes ache with rolling them. In order to keep me from doing anything that caused laughter, Mr. Romantic Lead came up behind me and clamped his hands on my shoulders. He was then able to do his scene (part of which had involved going up to the back wall and resting his forehead against it, which he dropped because that got a laugh as well) of misery without me distracting the audience from his scene chewing.

We came out of that scene with me ready to shred him and he as pleased as punch - grinning. No amount of explaining swayed him. He had won. He had, in fact, killed the scene and removed business given to both of us by the director.

At this point in time, the director was spending as little time with the production as possible, probably suffering from depression. I didn't want to bother him and we had another performance coming up. I did the only thing I could think of: I moved the chair so that I was at an angle partially facing him. If he tried anything else, he would have to upstage himself. I continued to eat and make notes, but this time having to turn to get my food or make my notes.

When the director did finally learn of this, he was more than slightly perturbed. "Why didn't you tell me?" he said. Well, we didn't want to bother you. And it was fixed.

Amazingly enough, Mr. Romantic and I did another show together, along with his partner. And his partner cast me in another show. And thereby hangs yet another tale, but one for another day.

The Famous Club Sauce Recipe

Pretty as a picture! 

This is the family recipe for Club Sauce (according to my notes, it originally came from a nice lady named Rose Petz who had 2 Siamese cats called Si and Pinkie. Pinkie was the one with a big pink lipstick mark smeared on the top of its head every other day ... Okay, that wasn't all in the notes, but I remember her. She was a housekeeping mentor for my mom. Mom stopped by on Christmas day to bring her a gift and Rose was baking Christmas cookies. "A little late," my mom ventured. "I like my cookies fresh," snapped Rose.)

I'll start with the half recipe, in case no one has 20 lbs of tomatoes on hand.

10 lbs of tomatoes peeled and diced (or 10 of the what-used-to-be 1 lb cans but are now 14.something oz.)

3 cups of sugar

2 cups of vinegar (I used cider vinegar because I like the flavor)

2 T salt

4 onions (keep in mind that this is an old recipe that comes from the time when onions weren't the size of grapefruit)

6 red and/or green peppers

Cook all but the peppers 2 hours or until thick. Add peppers, cook 10 minutes. Might make about 6 quarts and a bit.

Getting ready to can.

1/4 recipe

5 lbs or cans of peeled, diced tomatoes (I love those petite diced ones)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 T salt

2 onions

3 red or green peppers

It only made 6 1/2 quarts, but I needed to fill
the middle space to use less water and the
measuring cup was to hold the half-filled
quart down.

The "Marf, I only have 2 cans of tomatoes in the pantry" recipe:

2 cans of peeled, diced tomatoes

3/4 cup sugar (can't you people do math?)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 T salt (I have a 1/2 T measure, but a heaping teaspoon also works)

1 onion

1 big green pepper (for color)

Now, the cool thing is, you can throw in anything else you think might add to the flavor, like some jalapeños or whatever. And then you can call it "salsa."

Brats with the homemade Hot Sweet Mustard Sauce
as well as the Famous Club Sauce. No bun. Buns
are "edible" napkins. Use a knife and fork like a
person.

Photo is the Serving Suggestion. The brats are from the hot dog section of Publix and I like them better than the Boar's Head ones because 1. they're slightly cheaper and 2. you get 6 in a 1 lb. pack instead of 4. Also pictured is my family's famed hot, sweet mustard sauce. Recipe for that on request.

How To Ruin Someone's Day

Gage and the iron rod that was blasted
through his skull.

Yesterday my day was ruined when I didn't get my senior discount at a grocery store that shall remain nameless so I don't get any more tweets from the Employee Retribution Department - and it "ruined my day." That's what I told my husband, anyway, and proceeded to do some serious moping because what is the point of getting old if you don't reap some minor benefit of sixty cents off or something.

Anyway.

My husband said, "Don't let this ruin your day." I pouted more. "Well, only let it ruin your day for a little bit," he amended. "Like an hour or two?" I bargained. And really, if I hadn't embarked an hour later on nattering about my reading of an article about Phineas Gage, my ruined day would have continued with sullen silences and meaningful sighs, even in the face of BBC Radio Comedy and All the Jigsaws In the World.

So, if I don't want the careless clerk tracked down and lectured/humiliated/docked/fired, then how do I intend to remedy this situation? Well, by golly, next time I will repeat my demand for the senior discount right there at the till even if there is a line behind me. If I want that discount so badly, I will just have to keep insisting on it, despite the embarrassment entailed and the annoyance of people behind me. If the company does anything, it should be to tell everyone how this seemingly minuscule slight causes pain and suffering all out of logical proportion. I mean, look at Phineas Gage! His iron rod was blasted through his skull one day and did he whine about it? Did it ruin his day? Well, it may have ruined that day. And maybe a few after that ...

Most of my job is customer service (that which isn't playing with puppets, singing songs, and making simple crafts with children), and I have to rain on someone's parade every day. I get no pleasure out of telling people they can't have a laptop because they don't have a child with them. It would make my work life easier and more pleasant if I could just hand out the laptops willy-nilly without having to check to see they 1) have a child with them, 2) have a clean library account, and 3) don't run off with it. But it does give me pleasure to find a book for someone and put it right in their hands in a timely manner. I don't give up after looking for one minute or pausing to answer someone's question. I will stick with it until I have either found something or determined that what the patron was looking for just plain isn't there. I would be mortified to discover I had done less.

So, unnamed clerk, you are forgiven. I'm sort of over it. Some day when you look in the mirror and see your parent's face looking back at you and you reel in horror, that free coffee (ew!) for being over 55 or sales tax forgiveness of 1% for being over 85 may be all there is to make you feel better and you'll understand.

By the way, Sam Kean's book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons sounds delightful!

Torn

I consider awarding myself a new badge.
Which one is for Existential Dread?

A mom with two toddlers in tow (riiiight, like they aren't bouncing off the walls) brings a woman to the library to help her with a résumé. 

My mind starts running like this:
Gosh, those kids are bouncing off the walls. Is the Children's Room the right place for this? This is a loud adult conversation - will this intimidate the children whose space this is? They're doing this right at the coloring table. Oh, never mind. That other little girl is going to color there anyway.

Then it moves on:
You know, we all sit around wishing we could help someone and thinking we have no time for it, but this mother, who has her hands full of toddlers, is making the time and is actually doing something. I should be doing something. She is actively helping someone get a job. I should be teaching someone English in my free time.

And then I get all angry:
Why? Why does this mother have to do this? She's making a  résumé for this woman and doing a practice job interview (that the woman is floundering around in). Surely some of my taxes are going to pay some people to do this. In fact, the Jobs place is barely two blocks away from here. I've been there myself when I was looking for work. 

I have actually asked my co-workers about this. Why do the people come here instead of going to the Job Connection? Someone there sat down with me and went over my résumé and gave me advice and showed me how to look for jobs on what passed for a search computer in 1990. A co-worker's response was: We're nicer. 

Really? We are?! OMG, how horribly must those people be treating the job searchers over there?! I know we get really cross with patrons gaming the system and we are not supposed to help them too much (we can get them started, but we cannot sit with them and walk them through using computers and getting an email address - we have classes for that), but despite all our sighing and frowning and glowering and such, we're nicer than the people at the Jobs place?!

I don't believe this.

In the end, the mom watched her kids' puppet show and made them pick up the amazing messes they made before they left. But I am still "so utterly fussed and rattled and torn." I don't want to deny the nice mom her good feelings of helping someone - a specific someone - in distress (no job, nowhere to live). I like being helpful, too. It feels nice. It feels much better than glowering at someone for perceived transgressions. And most of that comes from dealing with the public day in and day out. 

So, perhaps this is what has happened over at the Jobs place. Day after day they deal with people who have no computer skills (and most jobs have to be applied for online these days) and less and less desire to actually get work. 

I remember how frustrating it was for me. You just want to give up. I was out of work for four years. Eventually I took poorly paying positions, one after another, until I was able to get this library job. But being unemployed is disheartening, even when you are in a comfortable situation - I was living with my parents and had plenty of money saved. Sure, living with my parents put me back in the Child Role again, and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I had no utility bills and didn't have to wonder where my next meal was coming from. There's a big difference there, and I was still dispirited. 

In the end, the experience of both the unemployed and the people tasked (and paid) to help them wears them down and breeds a dull hostility. At least I get to help a little kid find a book and I get to watch the excitement when it's something he really, really wants. The Jobs people don't get that. I guess. So it's up to us at the library to take up the slack. 

But should it be?

I don't know.