Scattershot

The blonde and the Mini Cooper

Some people just have a natural born sense of style. My cat Cassie is one of those, though she is not—strictly speaking—a person. She will sit at the top of our stairs in the sunlight, a leafy plant as background, her tail artfully wrapped around her, and I will marvel at her beauty. My sister calls it "posing," and the description fits. Cassie does pose, and she poses beautifully. I'm convinced she chooses her posing places carefully, so as to show herself in the best light.

    And so does the cute blonde I see most mornings, always dressed stylishly. She parks her dark green Mini Cooper on our street every day. She does not use the nearby employee parking lot. She does not choose a parking spot in front of the beige house, the gray house, the brick house, the house with the overgrown yard. No, she parks her dark green Mini Cooper in front of the beautiful white Victorian house with the dark green and maroon trim, where it looks simply fabulous. The car and the house coordinate, making it look as though the Mini Cooper is part of the design. It's amazing. I look out my front window and can't help but admire her sense of style. Like Cassie, she knows what's going to look good.

    I can't help but admire that in a person. Or, well, in a cat.

Bravery, schmavery

For some reason--maybe because I was walking alone in an area where I had once seen a badger--I was thinking about bravery yesterday. It's a quality I've always worried that I lack entirely.

    And yet I can't count the number of times various individuals have called me "brave" for quitting my job many years ago and starting a publishing company--with no money and no experience in business. "Naive" and "crazy" might be more appropriate terms, though I've never regretted doing it.

    Many of the same people who call me brave think nothing of para-sailing, bungee jumping, sky diving, or hurtling themselves down steep mountain slopes on skis at a gazillion miles an hour. I think of all of those activities as taking truckloads of bravery. They think of them as "fun."

    So what is bravery? People facing a serious illness are often described as brave, as in "her brave battle with cancer." But since the person has no choice in the matter, is facing the disease really brave? Or does it have to do with attitude? Is battling the disease cheerfully or optimistically what we mean by bravery?

    I don't know. Maybe bravery is just doing what you have to do in the moment. When I quit my job and started Cottonwood Press, I was doing what I felt I had to do. The desire to do something different and be my own boss was so strong that I didn't really feel I had a choice. If you are battling cancer, you're doing what you have to do. If you're marching into battle during war, you're doing what you have to do. If you are getting ready to leap out of a plane....well, okay, no one generally has to do that. So maybe that isn't brave. Maybe it's just exciting.

    I would not jump out of a plane, even if someone offered me ten million dollars to do it. But what if the only way I could save a loved one's life would be to jump out of that plane? I'd have to do it. Would that be brave? I don't think so. I would not suddenly be infused with courage. I would be suddenly infused with terror. I would be just doing what I had to do.

    Maybe bravery isn't something we feel ourselves. Maybe it's a word we use to express a kind of admiration for what someone else does, something we can't imagine doing ourselves--unless, of course, we have to.

A wonder of a salesman

Since I often complain about bad customer service, it's only fair that I praise great customer service. A couple of days ago my husband and I encountered it in a Verizon store. We're still marveling.

    We had gone in to replace our current cell phones and to look into buying a device that would allow us to have broadband access anywhere. I was dreading the experience, frankly. Salespeople who deal with anything technological can quickly drive me nuts.

    But not a young man named Matt. For over an hour and a half, he answered our questions completely and accurately, using no techno-speak. We understood him every step of the way. He made recommendations that showed that he was--wonder of wonders--actually listening to us and paying attention to some rather complicated needs we have. No matter how many questions we asked, he showed not the teensiest bit of impatience. His attention didn't wander. He was ours, all ours, until the deal was done.

    We actually left the store thrilled. We got everything we wanted and more, at a price that was a wonderful surprise, and all pieces and parts are working great. We especially love our portable wireless device called "Mi-Fi."

    Whoever hired Matt made a very good decision. It is so nice to deal with someone who is so good at his job. 

Billie Jean

With the death of Michael Jackson, we've been hearing a lot of "Billie Jean" on the radio and on television lately. Few people, however, have heard the truly unique performance of the song by a guy named Scott Dunbar. Dunbar is a one-man band, singing the song and accompanying himself with an accordion, a suitcase (yes, a suitcase), and a chain on what looks like an upside-down metal pan.

    Actually, the guy is good, and it's pretty interesting. Take a look on YouTube: Scott Dunbar. I found myself paying attention to the lyrics and the song itself in a totally new way.

    And now Billie Jean is stuck permanently in my brain, looping and re-looping, looping and re-looping, looping and re-looping....

Banking brilliance

Yesterday I got a scary notice from Public Service Credit Union. It said "NOTICE OF PAST DUE PAYMENT" in giant letters. Since I don't have any past due payments, I was puzzled, but I opened the letter. It said:

Your loan 03 is now 8 days delinquent. Your payment of $. is due on the 14th of each month. We send this reminder to help you avoid a late fee of $. that will be charged on your account at 11 days past due.

    I shook my head at this piece of brilliance. The credit union spent forty-five cents to warn me that I owe nothing and if I don't pay it promptly, I will have a fine of nothing.

    Still, I accessed my account online to see what the heck was going on. I knew that right before my paycheck one week, my overdraft account had been accessed. I also knew that I had repaid the account, transferring exactly the amount that the credit union had said was the pay-off. Over. Done. That was it.

    Or so I thought.When I went online, I saw that I still owed fifty-four cents. So once again I transferred the amount indicated for the pay-off: fifty-four cents.

    Still I wasn't successful in paying off this account. One cent remained on the balance. So I made another transfer: one cent.

    After all, I don't want to get another warning that I owe nothing and will be fined nothing if I don't pay it.

Shallow Cheri

I am so shallow. I admit it.

    The other day I was listening to a speaker, and I spent most of the talk mentally giving her a makeover. Oh, I tried to listen but, honestly, she wasn't a very good speaker, so my mind kept wandering. I tuned in now and then, but it seemed that everything she was saying boiled down to this:

    The sun is good.

    Okay. Yes. I agree. There's only so much thinking I can do about the sun, so I found myself focusing on her. What would Stacy and Clinton on the show "What Not to Wear" say about her?  I was sure they would take one look at the beige hair, beige shawl, and beige skin and say, "Sorry, honey, but beige is not working for you. You need a pop of color. Actually, a lot of pops of color."

    I knew they would tell her to shorten her long skirt and lose the vintage hippie look of her parted-in-the-middle, straggly (beige) hair. And I'm sure they would send her in for not new make-up but some make-up.

    "I'm being mean," I thought to myself, trying to tune in again.

    The sun was still good.

    So then I started wondering what Stacy and Clinton would say about me. After all, I'm not exactly a fashion plate, either. I figured they would insist that I have shorter hair and that I go bare-legged at all times. (They are big on bare legs. I always wonder if Stacy has ever gone anywhere in winter in other than a taxi or limousine.) And I should not run to the grocery store, ever, in jeans and a T-shirt. I should embrace high heels and pointy toes...

    My mind wandered to Clinton. Okay, he is effective. Women always look better after he and Stacy are done with them. But I have to wonder about his own outfits. If he ever showed up in Colorado in some of those prissy outfits he sometimes wears, he would be laughed off the street. Luckily, he generally sticks to advice for women....

    Speaking of women, I tried to check in with the speaker again. Yep. Sun. Good.

    I am so shallow.

    

Flipping

This morning on my morning walk, I stopped at a four-way stop and started across the street in the crosswalk. A car zoomed up, skidded to a momentary stop, and then raced through the intersection. The driver looked neither direction and didn't even notice me right ahead of her.

    I was mad, and I thought of flipping her off. Then I remembered that (a) I'm not the kind of person who flips people off, (b) I don't believe in flipping people off, and (c) I can't ever remember exactly how to flip someone off. (I have to think about where my fingers go and how they are arranged.) So I just kind of raised my arms in a "Whaaaaaaa.......?" gesture and moved on.

    I confess that I flipped someone off once in my life, more than 25 years ago. I was riding my bicycle on a one-way street, obeying all traffic rules, doing absolutely nothing wrong, and a car pulled up beside me and yelled, "Get off the $#*@()#!!! road!" It scared me to death and I almost fell off my bike. I was so mad that, after eventually arranging my fingers properly, I flipped off the driver. She was long gone by then, of course.

    I've had mixed feelings about my actions ever since. Part of me was a teeny bit proud of myself for doing something so out of character and brave and scandalous. The other part of me was ashamed of myself. The ashamed of myself part won, and I haven't done any flipping off since.

    But I confess I did feel like doing it this morning.

Walking into our consciousness

I've written before about what I'll call the "walking into our consciousness" phenomenon. We learn the meaning of a new word, and suddenly we see and hear it everywhere. We find out a relative has a disease we've never heard of, and suddenly we see references to it everywhere. The word and the disease existed all along, of course, but we weren't conscious of them.

    Two weeks ago, I had never heard of Swedish author Henning Mankell. A friend recommended him, so I checked out The Fifth Woman from the library and spent and entire Sunday unable to put it down. I was delighted to find that the author has been around a while, so I've got a whole series of his books to enjoy. (I'm almost finished with One Step Behind.)

    Fast forward to last night. My husband and I were having dinner with friends, and I was looking forward to telling them about Mankell. I knew they would like him, and I knew Tedd loves to find a good writer and then read everything he's written. I even confess to deleting an email I was going to send them recommending Mankell because I was afraid, if I did, Tedd would get to the library before me and check out all the Mankell books. I wanted to get another book first.

    Last night my friends arrived carrying some books to share with me. The first words out of their mouths: Have you heard of Henning Mankell? I think you'll really like this one. And they handed me a Henning Mankell book.

    I find this so strange. Out of all the books in the world, they handed me one by the author I was just going to recommend to them, an author who has been around for years.

    I suspect Mankell is going to be turning up a lot lately, now that he's walked into my consciousness.

    

Phone phun...

Last night I got a call asking me to take a political survey. Since I'm interested in politics, I agreed—after getting the young woman to swear she wasn't selling anything and that the call wouldn't turn into a pitch for something.

    But after I agreed, she asked if there were a male in the house who could take the survey instead of me. "Not right now," I said, annoyed. I'd been so magnanimous in agreeing to take her survey, and now she wanted a guy? "Why does it have to be a male?" I asked. Was the assumption that a man would know more about politics? I wondered to myself. How unfair.  

    "We're supposed to get a male if we can....but I'll take you." The young woman was not endearing herself to me.

    She started asking the questions, and many involved the European Union and NATO—only she pronounced it NATTO with a short "a." The first time I heard her use NATTO, I had no idea what she was talking about. I had her repeat the question.

    "Oh.....do you mean NATO?"

    "Yes....well, maybe....N-A-T-O," she spelled.

    "Yes, that's NATO."

    Twice more she asked me questions involving NATTO. Twice more I repeated the word correctly.

    Then she did it again. I found myself stopping the survey and saying, "If you're going to do this job, you really need to learn to pronounce the word correctly so we know what you are saying. It's NATO."

    From then on, the questions would start out, "What do you think about N-N-N-N-NATO'S role in....." She was careful, but the correct pronunciation was clearly very hard for her. Unfortunately, there were a lot of N-N-N-NATO questions. I started to regret ever agreeing to the survey. I also started to regret that it turns out I really don't know a whole lot about either the European Union or NATO.

    But what I regretted the most was the thought that came to my mind next: My husband—a male—would probably know a lot more about the EU and NATO than I do.

Paying attention

Recently a friend of mine was at a local park with her two small children when a man started making her very nervous. He sat in a parked car, twisted around in his seat and staring, just staring at the children and parents in the park. 

    She approached another young woman in the park with a child. "Do you know that guy?" she asked.

    "No. But he is creeping me out!!!!"

    She approached the other parent, a dad. "Do you know that guy?"

    He glanced over, shrugged, shook his head, and went back to playing with his son.

    And there it is: an important difference between men and women. Women are generally very aware of their surroundings because they grow up learning that they need to be. Men are often oblivious.

    Okay, I overstate it, but there is a difference. I walked home from a yoga class at 7:00 a.m. last week and saw a man sitting on a bench in the block ahead of me. Without even thinking, I turned and took a different route. It wasn't until after I reacted that I thought of my reasons. Why was he sitting there? He wasn't in workout clothes, looking as if he were taking a rest. What was he doing there at 7:00 a.m.? Something seemed off. Yet I know my husband wouldn't have taken the same action I did.

    Women learn to pay attention. We see a group of men on a city street corner, and we cross the street so as not to pass by them. We are aware of guys paying too much attention to us, guys looking out of place. We know that we are vulnerable.

    That's why, I think, the father in the park was oblivious to any danger. He hadn't grown up learning to pay attention.

    And he was wrong not to pay attention. My friend and the woman memorized the man's license plate number, took their kids and left, then calling the police. It turns out their description perfectly fits the description of a man who got out of a car at a different park recently, wearing no pants, and approached a nine-year-old girl. He lurks near parks, and the police are hoping to catch him. The women's observations have given them a real lead on the guy.

   It pays to pay attention.