Taunts & Tears: In Which I Wonder About Humanity Whilst Shopping

March 7, 2017August 5, 2020 / Ally Bean / 77 Comments

“Do you want $13.47?”

That’s the first thing she said to me.

I told her “no” and explained that I had money.

I was in Best Buy in an upscale part of town and after a long wait in line I’d finally made it to the cashier, a pleasant efficient girl, a bit on the plain Jane side, probably college age– totally confused about what to do next.

“But what do I do with it?”

She was holding the change from the transaction that had just taken place in front of me when two Kardashian-esque high school kids had purchased some candy with a twenty-dollar bill– and refused to take their change.

“I tried to give them the $13.47 back, but they wouldn’t take it. They told me to keep the change. But it’s theirs, not mine.”

I’d been watching and listening to these kids directly in front of me while standing in line. I knew them for what they were. Troublemakers. Snotty rich kids wasting Daddy’s money. Pointing at the cashier, snickering about her looks.

“But what do I do with the money? It’s not mine.”

As if on cue, we heard a car engine outside the front window of the store and turned to see the two high school kids in a convertible Mercedes, top down, driving by the window laughing and waving at us.

With that my cashier began to cry. Somehow being mocked by these two had really gotten to her.

So there I stood, waiting for the tears to stop and for her to look at me. When she did, still sniffling, I answered her question about what she should do. I said:

You’re ok. You did everything right. This is not your fault, no one is going to blame you. After your shift when you turn in your till tonight you explain that there’s $13.47 too much in there because some rich idiotic spoiled kids wouldn’t take their change. You’re ok. This is not your fault, no one is going to blame you.

And you know what? My words calmed her down so that she stopped sniffling, rang up my sale– and was back to her cheerful self quietly saying her newfound mantra.

“I’m ok. This is not my fault. No one’s going to blame me.”

The Beginning Of My Life As A Purposeful Procrastinator

March 2, 2017August 5, 2020 / Ally Bean / 97 Comments

screen-shot-2017-02-01-at-8-15-02-am Twenty years ago this month Zen-Den and I bought a dial-up modem that we used to connect our home computer to the World Wide Web– and our lives changed forever.

For a few years before this, we’d been using a home computer to keep track of finances and to make a recipe book– well, one of us was making a recipe book. These uses of a home computer seemed modern enough to us, but with a snazzy new modem we had the luxury of the WWW in our home. Imagine!

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I knew about email because in college I had an email address. That was only because I was part of an early academic study on how strangers interact with each other on the World Wide Web.

[Back then, the answer would be formally, as if writing a letter and responding back to each other on a weekly basis.]

I also knew a little bit about getting information from the web, although my experience had been with college librarians who were the only people with direct access to computers that connected to the WWW.

[Back then I’d give my query of keywords, perfectly parsed a la Boolean logic, to a librarian who then input my query into a computer. Hours later I’d get a printout of where to go in the bricks-and-mortar library to read whatever it was I was researching.]

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But what I didn’t know about the WWW was how much I’d fall in love with it, and its ability to provide information and conversation instantly.

Now, of course, it seems completely normal. Pedestrian.

But I tell ‘ya when we first went online at home in 1997, I never dreamed that the World Wide Web would be the making of me. And that the screechy sound of our dial-up internet connection was heralding my quirky future as a purposeful procrastinator with a blog.

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Questions of the Day

When did you first get connected to the WWW in your home?

How has your life changed because of it?

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What To Do When The Gift Of Your Attention Is Thrown Away

February 7, 2017August 5, 2020 / Ally Bean / 84 Comments

[Subtitled: When Expectations & Reality Do Not Align In Interpersonal Communication Exchanges]

[Sub-subtitled: People Suck, Don’t Take It Personally]

• • •

A CONVERSATION WITH a genuinely nice friend who is snitified about, of all things, Christmas cards. Sending of said. Receipt of said. Subsequent action taken [or not taken] as result of receipt of said.

The conversation covered the following points:

sending a card is optional;
sending a card is giving the recipient the gift of your attention;
sending a card does not obligate the recipient to send one back to you, but it’s delightful if they do;
discovering that recipient has sent cards to other people, but not you, is your cue to ______ ?

• • •

screen-shot-2017-02-02-at-1-37-41-pm WHILE THE SPECIFICS of this conversation were about Christmas cards, as we talked I realized that this gift of attention scenario plays out in other areas of our lives.

For instance, what do you make of someone, a friend &/or family member, who you send friendly texts to, but they never include you in the texting and photo sharing that they do with everyone else in your group?

Or to put it in blogging terms, how do you deal with someone who allows your comments to show up on their blog, then never bothers to respond to you, while publicly talking with all the other commenters on their blog?

To be fair, I truly don’t know if these people who throw away the gift of your attention are even aware that they are doing so. They could be clueless. They could be crazy. Who know?

• • •

screen-shot-2017-02-02-at-1-38-27-pm BUT THE THING is, people like my friend notice this sneaky ungrateful behavior, and it hurts them.

She’s a person who sincerely believes that you need to model the behavior you want to see in others, so that they may learn from your example. This means that for her, when someone ignores her, she is flummoxed about how to react.

That is, in this specific case, should she continue to send the card because she is remaining true to her values by showing the recipient the way to live?

Or should she acknowledge that the recipient doesn’t care about their relationship, as shown by the recipient’s behavior– and give up on this person altogether?

I know what my answer is, but for some people this is a difficult decision to make.

• • •

What Was This Week All About? Anxiety, Awareness, Acrimony, And Adjustments

January 14, 2017August 5, 2020 / Ally Bean / 55 Comments

This has been a ridiculous week. MY MIND AND SPIRIT ARE WHACKED, ON EDGE. In fact, so much so that I’m going to write a listicle instead of a proper post To Remember It all.

• • •

In no particular order…

√ ANXIETY: Our normal temperature for this time of year would be 39ºF. However, on Monday morning it was 7ºF here with a wind chill close to 0ºF, a light dusting of snow everywhere. By Thursday morning, after 65 mph winds on Wednesday night that took down many tree limbs, our temp was 65ºF. Right now on Saturday morning it’s 35ºF outside with gray skies.

These extreme temperature fluctuations make me nervous– and put a wrinkle [pun intended] in my early morning “what to wear?” decision-making process.

√ AWARENESS: I’ve always said that I believe that education is everything. I was naively referring to learning about language and history and math and science and critical thinking and how to get along with people. I was not thinking about learning new terms for sexual deviancy, but thanks to our PEOTUS I now know more about said topic. Unless you’ve been visiting Mars this week you do too, right?

Perhaps we should change the aforementioned acronym to mean Pervert Elect Of The United States.

√ ACRIMONY: I’m disappointed to know that one member of the board at LL Bean, a woman who is a descendent of the founder, has used her vast wealth to fund The Donald’s campaign. I agree in part with the current LL Bean Executive Chairman’s FB message [instead of a proper press release?] reminding us that this woman is free to do whatever she chooses with her money, but I disagree with him about how her behavior does not reflect upon the company.

A company’s board of directors, chosen for their acumen, is the brains behind a company, and as such whatever a director values will influence [obviously] his or her input into how the company operates. Thus any connection to anything or anyone dodgy [Hello Donald] casts doubt on the way the whole company is run.

Not saying I won’t shop there in the future, but it’ll no longer be the first place I go to when I need clothes, bedding, sporting equipment, outdoor furniture.

√ ADJUSTMENTS: My iPad, which by techie standards would be a great-great-grandma, is doing wonky things. It has taken to tweeting not what I write, but a link to the last article that I read. Fortunately I’m not ashamed of anything that research and read, so that aspect of this problem isn’t what worries me. No, it’s the fact that great-great-grandma seems to be on a tweeting bender. The poor dear just can’t help herself. Nor can I.

So I deleted my Twitter app from my iPad and this week have lived a life in which I only see Twitter when I’m using my desktop computer, which means not so often.

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