Tales from the Shark Tank

An especial blessing on Dorothea.  She heard of a situation that has me deeply worried, and did a search for resources available to Jewish seniors in Indianapolis, and found things that hadn’t been there even as recently as a year ago.  I hadn’t even thought to look, and I’m not sure I’d have known what to look for if I had.  She thought of it, and did it for me, and now I’ve got a place to start making calls.  And I can’t say how much I appreciate it.

There are some confused door-to-door evangelists in my neighborhood right about now. Usually I just say “this is a Jewish household” or “No, thank you” when they come calling, but for some reason today I was feeling playful. So when the older of the pair asked me if she could discuss the bible, I asked her in turn if it was their belief that anyone not of their sect was going to hell. Yes, she allowed, that was the case. “That means my whole family and everyone I’ve ever loved has gone to hell, or will when they die” I told her. “Why would I want to go to heaven with a bunch of strangers?” I shut the door while she was still gaping.

I have been following an on-line role game with great interest. I have also been following the GM’s blog at intervals. No more. It raises my blood pressure too much. He seems to get his exercise by jumping to conclusions and then bashing other bloggers. He names and links to the blogger he’s bashing. I have intentionally not linked to nor named his game or his blog. Besides, this way I can say I think he’s an arrogant, judgmental jackass who can’t hear anything but his own braying.

What has me so irritated? Let’s see: his utterly disrespectful denigration of a conservative religious group that makes no attempt to try to turn others to their way of life. His assumption that anyone who is annoyed by a child should withdraw from the society of parents. His assumption that if discipline is not currently effective, it’s pointless. Equating a dislike of bad manners in children and adults with advocating 19th century child-rearing techniques (“spare the rod and spoil the child”) and/ or child abuse. The list goes on.

Children have to begin to learn that actions have consequences sometime, and sooner keeps them safe far better than later. His son is a toddler; driving adults crazy is in the kid’s current contract. So is being an adorable dynamo. I had a child of that age, not so long ago. If he was making the adults crazy because he was overtired at someone else’s home, we thanked our hosts and left. If it was our home, then one of us excused ourselves to take our son upstairs at bedtime. If he was climbing on someone, unless they actively encouraged him (picking him up into a lap, smiling and talking to him, or something similar) we didn’t lock him in his room, but we would quietly lift him away and try to interest him in a Barney video or a favorite toy.

That is all Dorothea wants or expects. I know; I asked her. Even those who have no child tolerance would deal with the video, because it kept kidling occupied. And no, of course he didn’t always listen to us then, but we made effort none the less. Now, at 5, he is a polite, mindful, mannerly little boy. He has not had his psyche stunted nor does he quail in fear of us; quite the contrary. If another child is in distress, he will pull his very own mommy over to help them (even if their mom is right there), because he is absolutely certain that no one, including that other mommy, can do it as well.

Dorothea, whose comments started all of this, has spent time with my son when he was rather smaller and does not have a major problem with him. And just because she doesn’t want children of her own doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand or make accomodation where appropriate. She does. And she thinks about it. And I notice she did not say anything to her hostess; she vented her ire at the combination of poor behavior and parental inaction in her blog, which this woman is unlikely ever to see. On the same principle, I’m unabashedly venting here, so that I can quit running over my response to this individual in my head.

A person who does not want children or enjoy their company is not automatically an asocial monster who advocates child abuse. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; very little is. And I really wish the person who started me on this tirade would try to perceive the shades between absolute black and absolute white.

Dorothea spoke about losing one of her prejudices when she met someone whose very existence was incompatible with the prejudice. I have had that experience from the other side. It was quite a shock when I learned of it.

I have a long-standing practice of finding and mentoring people who, for one reason or another, need it. One of my friends nicknamed these folks collectively my “fledglings”, and the name has stuck. One of my first fledglings was (at the time he came under my wings) a college freshman. He was dealing with all sorts of things: his mother’s death from cancer, a bout of malignant melanoma on his own back that darn near killed him, and his father’s remarriage to a woman who didn’t want to deal with him or his brother.

He had been raised in a very conservative fundamentalist protestant sect, and taught, among other things, that Jews were damned and a great source of evil in the world. He’d never, to his knowledge, met anyone who was Jewish, and he did not question the teachings.

And then he met me. I am Jewish breath and bone; it colors my outlook and actions in darn near everything. I took him in, held him when he needed to grieve, listened to him at 2:00 a.m. many nights, affirmed that he was a good and generous soul (which he is, decidedly) who had done nothing to deserve the things that had happened to him. I gave him permission to be angry at his father by being angry on his behalf, saying that no, his father should not have left him and his brother to live alone in their father’s house while he moved into his new wife’s home.

Some ten or fifteen years later, apropos his letting me know that he had become Pagan, I asked him what had brought him to leave the religion in which he had been raised. The answer shocked me. It was me. He said that he could not reconcile the woman who had mentored him and been his friend with what he had been taught about Jews, and that it led him to question everything else he had been taught. It wasn’t anything I ever said, he told me, but just what I am. I am still stunned and awed by that.

Dorothea and Li both talk about the merits of unionization for TAs. I have little enough to add to what they say, except to note that where there is no union conditions do not change. I was a TA at the same university as Li something over a decade before she was. There was, at the time, a fledgling attempt to organize a TA union for just the reasons Li gives. Obviously it had not yet taken root 10 years later, and the problems were exactly the same as when I was there.

Do I believe in the necessity for unions? You better believe I do.

I’ve just learned something about blogging. It needs a handle. If I’m going to rant or ramble about something topical, I need to tell y’all what prompted the thought.

So — what prompted the last entry was a news report on CNN last night. Somebody on the town council in a New England town (I missed where exactly) decided to put yellow ribbons on the light poles in support of the troops. An irate member of the community filed a petition for injunction with the court, protesting that the display did not accurately portray “community sentiment”. Interviewed, he said that he did not want his tax dollars used in a display of support for “mass murderers”.

That characterization of the troops actually on the ground fighting this thing annoyed me mightily, which in turn led directly to the bloggery.

Wow! Shark Tank has been up less than half a day, and already I have a welcome from someone I hadn’t met, as well as the friend I told I was doing this. That’s totally unexpected. Thank you both.

Addendum: Having gone to check what was up today, I found Dorothea’s welcome on CavLec. Thank you muchly, both for letting me ride on your coat tales (as it were) and for the welcome.

Thanks for the greetings, Ginger and James. Now I have more reading to do.

And just to make it official, Li, thanks for suggesting the name.