#HOLLER BACK!
Life lessons at McDonalds.
I started this blog with a flurry of French Toast breakfasts in response to my non-eating middle son's trials with Crohn's disease. He is now eating pretty well and says he OD'd on carbs during the French Toast era, so I have backed off the creative carbification for the time being. Still, I think the complexities of parenting in general bear exploration even when they don't involve food. SO….
It was Memorial Day weekend. The ants were marching 2 by 2 along the highway (this is how I picture we'd look from an airplane), carrying more than our body weight in provisions for a long weekend with a bit of well-earned sunshine after the winter of ice and gloom. The weekend passed nicely…warfare among my kids was at a reasonably low ebb. Grateful for the hint of summer to come, we spent the time together, mindful of all the small moments of beauty and calm. (world-class sunsets, laughter with family, sand in toes, etc.) And then, last night, we piled what remained of our weekend provisions in the car and headed back home.
My husband and I often talk about world events with our kids. We even try to explain the shades of gray (NOT the 50 shades, people!!!) in the realpolitik world where "Is he a good guy or a bad guy?" can never seem to elicit a clear answer. My 12 and 13 year old sons find this especially confusing. They still really just want to know which leaders are good and which bad, who is scary and who is safe. As a mother, I WISH I could give them that gift of clarity and simplicity, along with a clear roadmap of how to determine who's on "our" side. But I can't.
We fight the Taliban. We arm the Taliban. We end the cold war. We see its chill sauntering right back in the buff, bare-chested form of a saber-rattling crazy person on horseback in Crimea. We do nothing to stop him. After all, he's our ally. When our allies do bad things, we look the other way. What are we teaching the next generation?
I struggle to teach my children that this is called political expediency and that while I don't like it, it is the way things work. We are clear about right and wrong in our home, but fuzzy about it out in the world: If there's a bully in the playground: you must stand up to him and protect the victim. But good examples are hard to find on the international stage.
"Why don't we just go in to Crimea and make them give it back?" my 12 year old asks.
"It isn't that simple, honey".
"But arent we the good guys?"
"Yes".
"Then shouldn't we speak up for the Ukrainians?"
"Yes…but it's complicated."
At once illuminated and befuddled by geopolitics, the boys shift conversation to matters closer to home. And yes, though I hoped to avoid the subject, we talked about "that guy", the one whose name I will not dignify whose face is all over the media; the one who got rejected by a bunch of girls in high school and decided that was a reason to open fire on innocent, helpless citizens in an American small town this weekend. We discussed "what is it that makes a person snap? How can than kind of sustained pain be better channeled? Could a slightly more polite "no thank you" to the dance have changed the course of events? Or are these deranged and retaliatory mass murderers just irredeemably broken?"
I wonder how to frame this for two adolescent boys who will, no doubt, face rejection by a girl at some point in their lives. I tell them his kind of crazy is not contagious. I tell them:
"Don't be a bully"
"Don't keep anger pent up.
"Deal with your feelings when you hurt
, but do so constructively."
"Seek help if you ever feel out of control"
I make it clear this young man is NOT like them or almost anyone; that the world is NOT the sort of place where they need to live in fear. It is a place where people, in general, observe the rule of law and the rules of etiquette. I tell them most people are kind enough and good enough. I tell them to be respectful of others and play fair, keep their eyes open for crazy people, and that's the about the best we can do. I hold my breath and pray that what I say is true.
And then, we pull into McDonalds.
The line for the drive-through went around the bend. I could have gone straight and hopped the line as the car in front of me did, cutting off the folks who'd been waiting patiently in line. Like everyone else, I'd been crawling in maddening traffic on the highway and my nerves were shot. But instead, I drove the long way around and got in the queue as you are supposed to do, as signs everywhere direct you to do, and I waited my turn. We waited…a while. My boys began to fight out of boredom and impatience. I was exasperated. Finally we got within sight of the the ordering box. But just as I was rounding the corner towards it, a man drove in from the road you're not supposed to take, and cut me off, nosing in front of me in line. Alright, I thought, if he's blind to the signs or simply arrogant enough to think he is more important than everyone else…fine. I can let one more person delay my time in this place further. I let him in. But then yet another man in a wannabe sports car edged his way in too, quickly and definitively cutting me off in a clear and irrefutable act of selfishness and aggression. I was angry. But since I am basically pretty polite, I honked briefly to alert him to the fact that he was not in the line, and that he should go around to the back of the line like the rest of us did. I intended to politely, but firmly let him know that I was not going to look the other way when he was doing something bad. Diplomacy. But the mannerless menace ignored this. Instead, he steadfastly pushed ahead, angling his forward incursion to my place in line while pretending he didn't notice me in my giant mom van SUV towering over his Buick wannabe with a horse name to make it sound tough. I ceded no turf, closing in on him, hoping to intimidate him out of being a jerk. He fully cut me off. That's it!! Now I honked hard! This time, I SAT on that horn. He wasn't taking his turn. He wasn't even alternating with other the cutter-offer and those of us legitimately in line. I blasted him a good 5 seconds which is a LOT of horn honking. BRINKSMANSHIP. And that selfish hothead bully jumped right out of his car with a red face and a clenched fist and stormed toward me, all twisted fury and righteous indignation.
"Oh now I've done it. He's going to kill us all.", I thought. Visions of this crazy guy unloading his assault weapons were dancing in my head.....
His face was beet red and seemed like it was just going to burst from rage. He was big and muscular and looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym punching things.
"Open the window" he ROARED at me.
I ignored this and kept it closed. Great! Right after I tell my kids that this kind of thing doesn't happen, it happens. Another crazed lunatic was waiting to snap and I just gave him his shot. I checked for firearms as he approached.
"You honked at me!" he bellowed, breathing fire, ignoring the fact he had provoked this, going out of his way to break the rules of inter-human behavior and road etiquette, and bully his way into a long line without waiting. THIS was why I honked at him.
I did not back down.
"Why did you cut me off?" I shouted back.
" I drove all the way around to take the right path. I waited my turn. WHY DID YOU CUT ME OFF??? DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT?? What happened to common decency? Do you need that hamburger more urgently than my hungry children do?" I screamed every bit as loudly as this menacing 20 something man had shouted at me. "Take the RIGHT path!"
I was terrified. I gulped.
He was stunned. He was pissed He stared me down and I stared right back…He seethed and turned, and left in a huff. In the speed movie that flies through your head in times of acute danger, I thought. 'This can go either way. He could have a knife on him and stab me in front of my children. He could be going to the car for his brand-spankin' new AK47. Great, now I've done it. What if he opens fire?".
These are insane thoughts to have in a 20 second dustup in a rural McDonalds. But world events and the focus paid on violence in the media have brought these kinds of thoughts to the forefront of our attention to the point that they now don't feel so crazy. These unreal things happen in the real world now. And for all the attention they get, it feels like they happen often. Anticipating my imminent demise, my crestfallen final thought was that my message to my children that they were safe was now a lie. Time stood still.
But somehow, he went back to his car....and just got in it. He stopped himself. Perhaps he saw the small-framed woman with her two children in the car, and reason kicked in. He walked back to his car in full puffed-up ruffled feathers combat mode, saving face. Since he'd already edged me out, he now pulled up to the ordering box. Ahead of me.
At that point, all I cared about was seeing that guy pull out of the parking lot ahead of me before he changed his mind again and made my children orphans...so I wrote down his license plate number and watched him move on...closely.
"Hello?!"
In my terror trance, I did not realize that the woman in the food paying window was talking to me.
"Ma'am. The gentleman in the car ahead of you paid for your dinner and sends his most sincere apologies. He said he's so, so sorry and embarrassed about what happened and he hopes you'll accept his apology"
THAT was not what I expected!!
As I watched him get his food at the window ahead of me, worried watchfulness melted into stunned relief. I felt overjoyed. Mark one down for the good guys: he saved me from being a liar to my children. He showed that he was one of the "most people" who are "mostly good" after all. He avoided the nuclear option. He extended an olive branch in the form of a bunch of burgers. NOW I opened the window I wouldn't open to him before and I waved and shouted again....this time "thank you". He waved back several times and then drove off into the sunset. I breathed finally.
Cognitive function returned. I wondered what would my kids take away from this whole thing? "Do the right thing or your fellow humans will set you straight? Stand up to bullies? Mommy is crazy?"
I know they understand a little better now how the world isn't as simply divided into good guys and bad guys as they'd thought. But what else would stay with them?
"Good people occasionally lose themselves and do things they think better of when cooler heads prevail?
You take your life in your hands if you stand up to bullies??"
How did the world get to a place that unhinged raging rampages seem well within the possible?
Or were they maybe, possibly thinking: "Sometimes when you take the right path and do the right thing, you win?"
I just don't know. This is one of those things they'll just have to make sense of for themselves. I thought all those things as I handed out the peace offering burgers and fries to my sons, but as we pulled out of that parking lot, I found myself smiling. Sometimes the buff saber-rattling crazy guy on the horse actually does turn around and go home if you make enough of a ruckus.
#hollerback
Life lessons at McDonalds.
I started this blog with a flurry of French Toast breakfasts in response to my non-eating middle son's trials with Crohn's disease. He is now eating pretty well and says he OD'd on carbs during the French Toast era, so I have backed off the creative carbification for the time being. Still, I think the complexities of parenting in general bear exploration even when they don't involve food. SO….
It was Memorial Day weekend. The ants were marching 2 by 2 along the highway (this is how I picture we'd look from an airplane), carrying more than our body weight in provisions for a long weekend with a bit of well-earned sunshine after the winter of ice and gloom. The weekend passed nicely…warfare among my kids was at a reasonably low ebb. Grateful for the hint of summer to come, we spent the time together, mindful of all the small moments of beauty and calm. (world-class sunsets, laughter with family, sand in toes, etc.) And then, last night, we piled what remained of our weekend provisions in the car and headed back home.
My husband and I often talk about world events with our kids. We even try to explain the shades of gray (NOT the 50 shades, people!!!) in the realpolitik world where "Is he a good guy or a bad guy?" can never seem to elicit a clear answer. My 12 and 13 year old sons find this especially confusing. They still really just want to know which leaders are good and which bad, who is scary and who is safe. As a mother, I WISH I could give them that gift of clarity and simplicity, along with a clear roadmap of how to determine who's on "our" side. But I can't.
We fight the Taliban. We arm the Taliban. We end the cold war. We see its chill sauntering right back in the buff, bare-chested form of a saber-rattling crazy person on horseback in Crimea. We do nothing to stop him. After all, he's our ally. When our allies do bad things, we look the other way. What are we teaching the next generation?
I struggle to teach my children that this is called political expediency and that while I don't like it, it is the way things work. We are clear about right and wrong in our home, but fuzzy about it out in the world: If there's a bully in the playground: you must stand up to him and protect the victim. But good examples are hard to find on the international stage.
"Why don't we just go in to Crimea and make them give it back?" my 12 year old asks.
"It isn't that simple, honey".
"But arent we the good guys?"
"Yes".
"Then shouldn't we speak up for the Ukrainians?"
"Yes…but it's complicated."
At once illuminated and befuddled by geopolitics, the boys shift conversation to matters closer to home. And yes, though I hoped to avoid the subject, we talked about "that guy", the one whose name I will not dignify whose face is all over the media; the one who got rejected by a bunch of girls in high school and decided that was a reason to open fire on innocent, helpless citizens in an American small town this weekend. We discussed "what is it that makes a person snap? How can than kind of sustained pain be better channeled? Could a slightly more polite "no thank you" to the dance have changed the course of events? Or are these deranged and retaliatory mass murderers just irredeemably broken?"
I wonder how to frame this for two adolescent boys who will, no doubt, face rejection by a girl at some point in their lives. I tell them his kind of crazy is not contagious. I tell them:
"Don't be a bully"
"Don't keep anger pent up.
"Deal with your feelings when you hurt
, but do so constructively."
"Seek help if you ever feel out of control"
I make it clear this young man is NOT like them or almost anyone; that the world is NOT the sort of place where they need to live in fear. It is a place where people, in general, observe the rule of law and the rules of etiquette. I tell them most people are kind enough and good enough. I tell them to be respectful of others and play fair, keep their eyes open for crazy people, and that's the about the best we can do. I hold my breath and pray that what I say is true.
And then, we pull into McDonalds.
The line for the drive-through went around the bend. I could have gone straight and hopped the line as the car in front of me did, cutting off the folks who'd been waiting patiently in line. Like everyone else, I'd been crawling in maddening traffic on the highway and my nerves were shot. But instead, I drove the long way around and got in the queue as you are supposed to do, as signs everywhere direct you to do, and I waited my turn. We waited…a while. My boys began to fight out of boredom and impatience. I was exasperated. Finally we got within sight of the the ordering box. But just as I was rounding the corner towards it, a man drove in from the road you're not supposed to take, and cut me off, nosing in front of me in line. Alright, I thought, if he's blind to the signs or simply arrogant enough to think he is more important than everyone else…fine. I can let one more person delay my time in this place further. I let him in. But then yet another man in a wannabe sports car edged his way in too, quickly and definitively cutting me off in a clear and irrefutable act of selfishness and aggression. I was angry. But since I am basically pretty polite, I honked briefly to alert him to the fact that he was not in the line, and that he should go around to the back of the line like the rest of us did. I intended to politely, but firmly let him know that I was not going to look the other way when he was doing something bad. Diplomacy. But the mannerless menace ignored this. Instead, he steadfastly pushed ahead, angling his forward incursion to my place in line while pretending he didn't notice me in my giant mom van SUV towering over his Buick wannabe with a horse name to make it sound tough. I ceded no turf, closing in on him, hoping to intimidate him out of being a jerk. He fully cut me off. That's it!! Now I honked hard! This time, I SAT on that horn. He wasn't taking his turn. He wasn't even alternating with other the cutter-offer and those of us legitimately in line. I blasted him a good 5 seconds which is a LOT of horn honking. BRINKSMANSHIP. And that selfish hothead bully jumped right out of his car with a red face and a clenched fist and stormed toward me, all twisted fury and righteous indignation.
"Oh now I've done it. He's going to kill us all.", I thought. Visions of this crazy guy unloading his assault weapons were dancing in my head.....
His face was beet red and seemed like it was just going to burst from rage. He was big and muscular and looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym punching things.
"Open the window" he ROARED at me.
I ignored this and kept it closed. Great! Right after I tell my kids that this kind of thing doesn't happen, it happens. Another crazed lunatic was waiting to snap and I just gave him his shot. I checked for firearms as he approached.
"You honked at me!" he bellowed, breathing fire, ignoring the fact he had provoked this, going out of his way to break the rules of inter-human behavior and road etiquette, and bully his way into a long line without waiting. THIS was why I honked at him.
I did not back down.
"Why did you cut me off?" I shouted back.
" I drove all the way around to take the right path. I waited my turn. WHY DID YOU CUT ME OFF??? DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT?? What happened to common decency? Do you need that hamburger more urgently than my hungry children do?" I screamed every bit as loudly as this menacing 20 something man had shouted at me. "Take the RIGHT path!"
I was terrified. I gulped.
He was stunned. He was pissed He stared me down and I stared right back…He seethed and turned, and left in a huff. In the speed movie that flies through your head in times of acute danger, I thought. 'This can go either way. He could have a knife on him and stab me in front of my children. He could be going to the car for his brand-spankin' new AK47. Great, now I've done it. What if he opens fire?".
These are insane thoughts to have in a 20 second dustup in a rural McDonalds. But world events and the focus paid on violence in the media have brought these kinds of thoughts to the forefront of our attention to the point that they now don't feel so crazy. These unreal things happen in the real world now. And for all the attention they get, it feels like they happen often. Anticipating my imminent demise, my crestfallen final thought was that my message to my children that they were safe was now a lie. Time stood still.
But somehow, he went back to his car....and just got in it. He stopped himself. Perhaps he saw the small-framed woman with her two children in the car, and reason kicked in. He walked back to his car in full puffed-up ruffled feathers combat mode, saving face. Since he'd already edged me out, he now pulled up to the ordering box. Ahead of me.
At that point, all I cared about was seeing that guy pull out of the parking lot ahead of me before he changed his mind again and made my children orphans...so I wrote down his license plate number and watched him move on...closely.
"Hello?!"
In my terror trance, I did not realize that the woman in the food paying window was talking to me.
"Ma'am. The gentleman in the car ahead of you paid for your dinner and sends his most sincere apologies. He said he's so, so sorry and embarrassed about what happened and he hopes you'll accept his apology"
THAT was not what I expected!!
As I watched him get his food at the window ahead of me, worried watchfulness melted into stunned relief. I felt overjoyed. Mark one down for the good guys: he saved me from being a liar to my children. He showed that he was one of the "most people" who are "mostly good" after all. He avoided the nuclear option. He extended an olive branch in the form of a bunch of burgers. NOW I opened the window I wouldn't open to him before and I waved and shouted again....this time "thank you". He waved back several times and then drove off into the sunset. I breathed finally.
Cognitive function returned. I wondered what would my kids take away from this whole thing? "Do the right thing or your fellow humans will set you straight? Stand up to bullies? Mommy is crazy?"
I know they understand a little better now how the world isn't as simply divided into good guys and bad guys as they'd thought. But what else would stay with them?
"Good people occasionally lose themselves and do things they think better of when cooler heads prevail?
You take your life in your hands if you stand up to bullies??"
How did the world get to a place that unhinged raging rampages seem well within the possible?
Or were they maybe, possibly thinking: "Sometimes when you take the right path and do the right thing, you win?"
I just don't know. This is one of those things they'll just have to make sense of for themselves. I thought all those things as I handed out the peace offering burgers and fries to my sons, but as we pulled out of that parking lot, I found myself smiling. Sometimes the buff saber-rattling crazy guy on the horse actually does turn around and go home if you make enough of a ruckus.
#hollerback
