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for your consideration
Feb. 22nd, 2007 06:34 amThe key to being a good people person is to not be someone who has the opinion of the last person you've talked to, and yet is always completely willing to listen to them with an open mind. I used to have trouble with the former, but now it's with the later.
The lack of quantity of something doesn't necessarily automatically get you to it's conceptual opposite: down is more than just the lack of up.
I miss my Great-Grandma. She lived in Pennsylvania with my Great-Grandpa and we'd drive out there a couple times each summer to visit. One year we drove out in the Cadillac. My parents had gotten into Amway. (They've since recovered.) The Cadillac was the status symbol du jour, and so my Dad reluctantly traded in the only new car he'd ever owned (or would own, so far), a 1966 Dodge van, for a couple-years-used Coup de Ville. This was back when van's weren't as popular as they are today. People at work would kid him about driving a truck. So now he's got this Cadillac that he really didn't like.
It was huge. It was wide and long and not just because there was an absence of thin and short. It was a land yacht. My parents would ride up front and the four of us kids would all be in the back seat. On this particular summer (I would have been eight or nine at the time) I scored a window seat, which was nice cause that meant I had the door and not a someone to lean against. However, that didn't prevent me from getting car sick. Which, once it was apparent to everyone what was about to happen, made the back seat even bigger. I swear I could have laid down and not gotten in anyone's way.
It's funny the stuff you remember. Like everyone in the car imploring me not to get sick, that we were "almost there!" and if I could just hold off until everybody had the opportunity to make their escape, things would be Much Better. Being eight or nine at the time, I was, alas, not quite as accommodating as people wanted me to be. And in the back of my head, as I'm throwing up into this little blue trash can that was the last tangible reminder of the van we had and loved and now everyone's also visibly disappointed that I've taken that away from us too, I distinctly remember thinking "Orange? Why is it orange? I didn't eat anything orange."
I also remember being completely embarrassed. When we got to grandma's, the car was vacated in record time. Except for me. I didn't want to get out. Now, when people are upset, the inflection and volume of their voice tends to go up. My parents were, understandably, upset. So there was quite a bit of inflection and volume being directed at me, which I mostly ignored by hanging my head lower, crying a bit more, and wallowing in my now sodden sneakers.
Then my Grandma came out to see why I wouldn't. At first she was stern, but then when she saw that I was embarrassed she was just grandma and it was All OK. I honestly don't remember getting out of the car. It's like I went from in the car to on the couch, jeans, socks, and shoes off and wrapped in a blanket and covered in an afghan with a thermometer in my mouth and a cool cloth on my head. She was good like that. She was, in her day, a nurse, and she loved helping people. By that point, in her 70's, helping mostly meant chicken and dumplings and cinnamon rolls. And as she got older it didn't matter that sometimes the only difference between the dumplings and the cinnamon rolls was the cinnamon, you ate them and were genuinely happy to do so.
Because she was Grandma, and she made everything OK.
The lack of quantity of something doesn't necessarily automatically get you to it's conceptual opposite: down is more than just the lack of up.
I miss my Great-Grandma. She lived in Pennsylvania with my Great-Grandpa and we'd drive out there a couple times each summer to visit. One year we drove out in the Cadillac. My parents had gotten into Amway. (They've since recovered.) The Cadillac was the status symbol du jour, and so my Dad reluctantly traded in the only new car he'd ever owned (or would own, so far), a 1966 Dodge van, for a couple-years-used Coup de Ville. This was back when van's weren't as popular as they are today. People at work would kid him about driving a truck. So now he's got this Cadillac that he really didn't like.
It was huge. It was wide and long and not just because there was an absence of thin and short. It was a land yacht. My parents would ride up front and the four of us kids would all be in the back seat. On this particular summer (I would have been eight or nine at the time) I scored a window seat, which was nice cause that meant I had the door and not a someone to lean against. However, that didn't prevent me from getting car sick. Which, once it was apparent to everyone what was about to happen, made the back seat even bigger. I swear I could have laid down and not gotten in anyone's way.
It's funny the stuff you remember. Like everyone in the car imploring me not to get sick, that we were "almost there!" and if I could just hold off until everybody had the opportunity to make their escape, things would be Much Better. Being eight or nine at the time, I was, alas, not quite as accommodating as people wanted me to be. And in the back of my head, as I'm throwing up into this little blue trash can that was the last tangible reminder of the van we had and loved and now everyone's also visibly disappointed that I've taken that away from us too, I distinctly remember thinking "Orange? Why is it orange? I didn't eat anything orange."
I also remember being completely embarrassed. When we got to grandma's, the car was vacated in record time. Except for me. I didn't want to get out. Now, when people are upset, the inflection and volume of their voice tends to go up. My parents were, understandably, upset. So there was quite a bit of inflection and volume being directed at me, which I mostly ignored by hanging my head lower, crying a bit more, and wallowing in my now sodden sneakers.
Then my Grandma came out to see why I wouldn't. At first she was stern, but then when she saw that I was embarrassed she was just grandma and it was All OK. I honestly don't remember getting out of the car. It's like I went from in the car to on the couch, jeans, socks, and shoes off and wrapped in a blanket and covered in an afghan with a thermometer in my mouth and a cool cloth on my head. She was good like that. She was, in her day, a nurse, and she loved helping people. By that point, in her 70's, helping mostly meant chicken and dumplings and cinnamon rolls. And as she got older it didn't matter that sometimes the only difference between the dumplings and the cinnamon rolls was the cinnamon, you ate them and were genuinely happy to do so.
Because she was Grandma, and she made everything OK.
