Dear BYU-Idaho,
Please don't punish my husband if he submits his mid-term grades just a titchy bit late today. You see, in a fit of Halloween enthusiasm, fueled by guilt over my diminished capacity at 9 months pregnant (and not helped at all by the utopian bloggers who document every moment of their blissful Halloween family togetherness with professional photography), I sort of got mad and made my husband come home from work early to carve some dang pumpkins with the kids. Because that's IMPORTANT. And we WILL have family together time, even if it sets us all on edge. I may or may not have behaved slightly less than rationally about the importance of a carved pumpkin on Halloween. I also may have been a bit of a tyrant about trick or treating ("You aren't finished yet! Get back out there! I want those buckets overflowing with candy and I don't care how cold it is!" etc.) So please don't punish him for it. And please bring steak back to the all-faculty banquet. Oh, and please stop making professors submit mid-term grades around Halloween (or, ever).
Sincerely,
Carly Paul
Halloween enthusiast, lunatic.
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Friday, January 8, 2010
Just When You Think It Can't Get Worse, You Break Your Foot
Well, I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas. I know I did, which only makes the month of January an even harder pill to swallow. Ah, how I long for it to be the week leading up to Christmas again! I admit that it's nice to get the kids back on a schedule, and to get the crispy brown tree out of our house, and to enjoy the nice presents we received. Yet, for all that niceness, Christmastime is nicer. I love to see Main Street twinkling, and the lights from houses shining from the hill. I love the music, and the shopping, and the wrapping, and the busy-ness of it all. Christmastime is an excuse for unnecessary indulgences. Things like tinsel and lights, and snow in a can. We can be silly at Christmas. Think about it: what's sillier than putting a dead tree in your house--undergoing all the physical exertion, and sometimes pain, that it takes just to get the dang thing strapped to the tops of our cars, cut the bottom off, drag it into the house, and wedge it in that cotton-picking tree stand-and then adorning that tree with lights and completely useless balls of glass and handmade ornaments? It's downright insane. But we all do it, and not only that, we love to do it! We'd be shocked if someone didn't do it. Christmas makes us act a little nutty. It's an excuse for absurdity, and I love absurdity. Now, though, when I see the lights still twinkling from a few people's houses, and trees still shining in their windows, I don't think it's a wonderful sight to behold, like I did two weeks ago. Instead, I just feel a little ashamed. Did I really get into that last month? Did I really spray fake snow all over my house and cram a strand of 100 lights into a glass vase simply because I thought it looked pretty? This isn't relevant anymore! It's so two weeks ago. And I have to admit that I feel almost embarrassed to see dried up garlands and trees standing naked right in people's front yards, waiting to be taken away for recycling. It's like we have used them, taken everything we could from them, then left them out in the cold. So the end of Christmas is a bit of a psychological blow for me. But luckily my children are more well-adjusted than I am. They take it all in stride, actually showing excitement about going back to school, and gently telling me that no, I cannot just keep the garland up on my mantle for one more month. They move on with life, while I yearn for something exciting to break up the monotony (where is my free pie day when I need it?) And please don't try to cheer me up with a reminder of the poor excuses for holidays that are coming up. Presidents' Day? Please! does Presidents' Day cause us to upend our lives so much that we are willing to bring something dead into our home and decorate it to look pretty? No. Valentines Day? Give me a break! Valentine's Day is nothing more than a sadistic set-up for disappointment. I could get into St. Patrick's Day (being as Irish as I am), but as I am neither living in Boston, nor a person who drinks alcohol, it's sort of anti-climactic as well. Easter is all right, but the Easter Bunny has NOTHING on Santa when it comes to magicalness and lore. I don't even think my kids know about the Easter Bunny. No, there won't be anything good again until Independence Day at the earliest. Halloween pretty much kicks off the awesomeness, in my opinion. So, what do we do until then? We make ridiculous resolutions about "being better" and "getting thinner." We try really hard in January, and then we forget about our resolutions for the rest of the year. I wish it weren't true, but it is. It's a sad cycle. All of this--the post Christmas let-down, the empty resolutions, the dead trees in the front yards--combines to make January really depressing. So, how do I stave off depression in January? I don't. Instead, I revel in it. I sit by the fire, drinking hot chocolate and feeling sorry for myself. When the urge to make goals strikes, I rearrange my Netflix queue. When I want a holiday, I do some internet shopping, or I search for the lowest airline tickets to far away places like India or Thailand. When I feel guilty about all the food I ate during the holidays, I eat an apple. When I look in the mirror and see the result of my euphoric overconsumption of calories (mainly from chocolate), I put on a scarf. They are very slimming, like a tie is for a man. I lie in bed. I eat thick stews. It's kind of like hibernating. And that is how I get through the bleak stillness of January. If anyone out there is feeling the same as I am, come on over. We can cry into our thick stews together. Have a merry January and a happy Presidents' Day.
The day this appeared in the newspaper I stepped on a toy and broke my foot. Thanks alot, Hazel. I had been stewing all day about how mad I am at my kids for their messiness, contemplating putting all their toys in a locked cabinet, and then I broke my foot. So, now I have January depression and a giant boot.
The day this appeared in the newspaper I stepped on a toy and broke my foot. Thanks alot, Hazel. I had been stewing all day about how mad I am at my kids for their messiness, contemplating putting all their toys in a locked cabinet, and then I broke my foot. So, now I have January depression and a giant boot.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Halloween Costume Retrospective
Well, it’s that time of year again—my favorite time of year. Friends, it’s the season of Halloween. I love Halloween way more than Christmas, even though Christmas is pretty great, too. Halloween is fun because you get to decorate your house for a full month (and for once it is acceptable to have thick, visible cobwebs in your corners), and you get to dress up and eat candy, but you don’t have to spend tons of money on presents and stay up all night assembling various toys that will be loved and played with for two days and then forgotten about. You don’t have to plan a big meal, and then spend your holiday cooking and baking by yourself in the kitchen. Dollar-for-dollar, Halloween is definitely cheaper than Christmas, plus it has a minimum input/maximum reward thing going for it that other holidays just don’t come close to reaching. And, as my sister told her church leaders, Halloween doesn’t have to be about scary, horrifying things, you can really just focus on the devil instead (ha ha! What a jokester).
I wondered a lot about what I could possibly write that would do justice to my love of Halloween. I considered a lengthy treatise on the negative effect of trunk-or-treats and how they are ruining the fabric of our society (come on, unless you live in a drive-by-shooting type of neighborhood or a foreign country, trunk-or-treats are just another way for parents to micromanage their children to the point of suffocation! Have a church Halloween carnival, but don’t mess with the time-honored tradition of trick-or-treating all over the neighborhood, taking the necessary safety precautions, of course).
I also considered a serious reprimand for those parents who don’t actually let their children consume the candy they work so hard to earn. I’ve heard of candy rationing, candy donating, candy experimenting (this one is the worst, in my opinion), and complex systems of withholding candy so that it becomes a burden and a punishment not only for the kids, but for the parents as well. Dude, be a stickler for the rest of the year, but on Halloween, let it all hang out! Your kids will learn from stomachaches and empty candy bowls that they should slow it down (or maybe they won’t, but who cares? It’s once a year!).
But, really, the best part of Halloween is not the trick-or-treating or the candy, it’s the dressing up. So, I hope you won’t mind indulging me in a little costume retrospective, just to put us all in the mood:
The first costumes I remember were, of course, princess costumes. I was a princess two years in a row, and my mother made me two very pretty pale blue dresses with white dots on them, and took photos of me doing angelic poses (my eyes and hands raised to the sky) in our orange family room.
Unfortunately, I outgrew the princess thing pretty quickly and from then on focused on the less attractive, more gritty, aspects of Halloween costumes: spiders, pumpkins, ghosts (that was an uncreative year), witches, and Pee Wee Herman. My friend Robyn once went out as Fergie (as in Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York). Clearly she was ahead of her time.
My elementary school years were an experiment in Halloween ugliness, and sadly, my high school years continued that trend. I guess I never got the memo that Halloween costumes for teenaged girls were supposed to make them look “hot,” and so I insisted on dressing like a crazy axe murderer with a pot belly, facial hair, a warty nose, and fake blood all over my flannel shirt and torn jeans. I went to the high school Halloween dances dressed in scrubs (you know, like a nurse!) or wearing a grey wig, a cardigan, a tartan skirt, thick tights, black tennis shoes, and reading glasses perched on the tip of my nose. What costume could be hotter than an “old person”? During my sophomore year—or the year of the perm—I could part my hair down the middle, put on a denim vest and a pair of bell bottoms and I was the spitting image of Robert Plant in his early Led Zeppelin years. I took full advantage of this resemblance.
Then of course there was the disco era, wherein I thought it was fine to dress as “a person from the seventies,” complete with bell bottoms, butterfly collars, and feathered hair. You have to remember that this was before the age of Harry Potter and I didn’t have the option to be Minerva McGonagall, Gilderoy Lockhart, Severus Snape, Dumbeldore or Bellatrix Lestrange. I had to work with what was given to me.
In my post high school years, when I was more interested in gaining the attention of the gentlemen, I dressed as Olive Oyle from Popeye. Then I found a charming set of cat ears and a tail, and used them as my emergency costume. Those ears and tail served me well: the first time I wore them was one of the first times I talked to my future husband. So that wasn’t too shabby.
As a married woman, I was thrilled with the costume possibilities: Shrek and Fiona, Lumberjack and Tree, Bumblebee and beekeeper. The options were endless. And once I had children of my own, the options compounded: The Beatles as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Shrek and Fiona and their triplets, an ensemble cast of Harry Potter, the Wizard of Oz, etc.
Unfortunately, my oldest son isn’t much for dressing up, and prefers to go trick-or-treating as either a lumberjack (minus the tree) or a welder. Considering his penchant for all things Carhartt, he pretty much dresses like a welder or a lumberjack every day anyway. It’s very disappointing. And my daughter always wants to be some impossible thing, like a bird. So I will have to get a dozen feather boas and sew them onto some footed flannel pajamas and make a beak out of cardboard. If she would let me be a power line or a worm, then we’d be cookin.’
Nowadays, my fall-back costume is an orange and black striped witch’s hat complete with long orange wig. I am hoping to inherit my mother’s inflatable witch costume that has a built in air pump, but for now, she isn’t giving it up. This year I have considered dressing as Michael Jackson in “Thriller,” but I wonder: is it too soon?
I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween season, and that you make the most of whatever celebrity/serial killer/Harry Potter cast member you may resemble. I know I will.
Happy Halloween!
I wondered a lot about what I could possibly write that would do justice to my love of Halloween. I considered a lengthy treatise on the negative effect of trunk-or-treats and how they are ruining the fabric of our society (come on, unless you live in a drive-by-shooting type of neighborhood or a foreign country, trunk-or-treats are just another way for parents to micromanage their children to the point of suffocation! Have a church Halloween carnival, but don’t mess with the time-honored tradition of trick-or-treating all over the neighborhood, taking the necessary safety precautions, of course).
I also considered a serious reprimand for those parents who don’t actually let their children consume the candy they work so hard to earn. I’ve heard of candy rationing, candy donating, candy experimenting (this one is the worst, in my opinion), and complex systems of withholding candy so that it becomes a burden and a punishment not only for the kids, but for the parents as well. Dude, be a stickler for the rest of the year, but on Halloween, let it all hang out! Your kids will learn from stomachaches and empty candy bowls that they should slow it down (or maybe they won’t, but who cares? It’s once a year!).
But, really, the best part of Halloween is not the trick-or-treating or the candy, it’s the dressing up. So, I hope you won’t mind indulging me in a little costume retrospective, just to put us all in the mood:
The first costumes I remember were, of course, princess costumes. I was a princess two years in a row, and my mother made me two very pretty pale blue dresses with white dots on them, and took photos of me doing angelic poses (my eyes and hands raised to the sky) in our orange family room.
Unfortunately, I outgrew the princess thing pretty quickly and from then on focused on the less attractive, more gritty, aspects of Halloween costumes: spiders, pumpkins, ghosts (that was an uncreative year), witches, and Pee Wee Herman. My friend Robyn once went out as Fergie (as in Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York). Clearly she was ahead of her time.
My elementary school years were an experiment in Halloween ugliness, and sadly, my high school years continued that trend. I guess I never got the memo that Halloween costumes for teenaged girls were supposed to make them look “hot,” and so I insisted on dressing like a crazy axe murderer with a pot belly, facial hair, a warty nose, and fake blood all over my flannel shirt and torn jeans. I went to the high school Halloween dances dressed in scrubs (you know, like a nurse!) or wearing a grey wig, a cardigan, a tartan skirt, thick tights, black tennis shoes, and reading glasses perched on the tip of my nose. What costume could be hotter than an “old person”? During my sophomore year—or the year of the perm—I could part my hair down the middle, put on a denim vest and a pair of bell bottoms and I was the spitting image of Robert Plant in his early Led Zeppelin years. I took full advantage of this resemblance.
Then of course there was the disco era, wherein I thought it was fine to dress as “a person from the seventies,” complete with bell bottoms, butterfly collars, and feathered hair. You have to remember that this was before the age of Harry Potter and I didn’t have the option to be Minerva McGonagall, Gilderoy Lockhart, Severus Snape, Dumbeldore or Bellatrix Lestrange. I had to work with what was given to me.
In my post high school years, when I was more interested in gaining the attention of the gentlemen, I dressed as Olive Oyle from Popeye. Then I found a charming set of cat ears and a tail, and used them as my emergency costume. Those ears and tail served me well: the first time I wore them was one of the first times I talked to my future husband. So that wasn’t too shabby.
As a married woman, I was thrilled with the costume possibilities: Shrek and Fiona, Lumberjack and Tree, Bumblebee and beekeeper. The options were endless. And once I had children of my own, the options compounded: The Beatles as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Shrek and Fiona and their triplets, an ensemble cast of Harry Potter, the Wizard of Oz, etc.
Unfortunately, my oldest son isn’t much for dressing up, and prefers to go trick-or-treating as either a lumberjack (minus the tree) or a welder. Considering his penchant for all things Carhartt, he pretty much dresses like a welder or a lumberjack every day anyway. It’s very disappointing. And my daughter always wants to be some impossible thing, like a bird. So I will have to get a dozen feather boas and sew them onto some footed flannel pajamas and make a beak out of cardboard. If she would let me be a power line or a worm, then we’d be cookin.’
Nowadays, my fall-back costume is an orange and black striped witch’s hat complete with long orange wig. I am hoping to inherit my mother’s inflatable witch costume that has a built in air pump, but for now, she isn’t giving it up. This year I have considered dressing as Michael Jackson in “Thriller,” but I wonder: is it too soon?
I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween season, and that you make the most of whatever celebrity/serial killer/Harry Potter cast member you may resemble. I know I will.
Happy Halloween!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
I'm Going to Rome
So, lately Mike has been trying to finish his dissertation, which apparently has to involve my editing skilz--curse you, editing skilz! Look, if Mike is going to be gone every night and weekend finishing his dissertation for a year and a half, I at least want to be able to watch netflixed Office, Extras, Flight of the Conchords, and 30 Rock episodes while lying in bed eating candybars! But those days are over. Now I have to HELP him. Ugh. So I've been busy with that lately. And in case any of you are prayin' folk, please pray for Mike on October 23, around 1pm. That's his defense date. No pressure or anything, but you know, a shout out on our behalf would be nice.
Anywho, so I also turned 31, which was good. I have no problem with aging. In fact, I welcome it. When you are in your thirties, it matters less whether you are cute and thin. People's expectations of you plummet, and that is a nice feeling. I can wear black sweatpants and no makeup and people just look at me and think "how brave of her to even leave the house AT ALL!" It's very freeing!
I've also started teaching my online class. I thought that this class would be a perfect fit for my already jet-set online schedule. But I am realizing that when a class is online, it's hard to set a limit on the amount of time you spend freaking out over student emails and podcasts. Don't get me wrong, I love making podcasts (I've been using the Rushmore soundtrack as background music), but it just never seems to end! At least when I teach in the classroom, I can go a day or two without obsessively checking my email. We'll see how this semester shakes out.
Furthermore, Mike is sending me to ROME. I am so excited I don't know what to do with myself. Unfortunately, I will be gone for Halloween and you never know what may happen when Mike is in charge of Halloween (trick-or-treating to five houses only!) But it's a sacrifice I am willing to make so I can finally see Italy after all those years of studying Italian and buying a special "Italy Dress" and "Italy Passport Case" and then only ever getting to go to China and Taiwan. It will be nice to be in a country that believes in the power of the pastry, and that does not subscribe to the red-beans-as-dessert philosophy.
I would post my last newspaper article, but it may be offensive to some of my readers. So I will post my newest one next week, after it comes out in the paper. Intriguing, eh?
Dat all. Peace out.
Anywho, so I also turned 31, which was good. I have no problem with aging. In fact, I welcome it. When you are in your thirties, it matters less whether you are cute and thin. People's expectations of you plummet, and that is a nice feeling. I can wear black sweatpants and no makeup and people just look at me and think "how brave of her to even leave the house AT ALL!" It's very freeing!
I've also started teaching my online class. I thought that this class would be a perfect fit for my already jet-set online schedule. But I am realizing that when a class is online, it's hard to set a limit on the amount of time you spend freaking out over student emails and podcasts. Don't get me wrong, I love making podcasts (I've been using the Rushmore soundtrack as background music), but it just never seems to end! At least when I teach in the classroom, I can go a day or two without obsessively checking my email. We'll see how this semester shakes out.
Furthermore, Mike is sending me to ROME. I am so excited I don't know what to do with myself. Unfortunately, I will be gone for Halloween and you never know what may happen when Mike is in charge of Halloween (trick-or-treating to five houses only!) But it's a sacrifice I am willing to make so I can finally see Italy after all those years of studying Italian and buying a special "Italy Dress" and "Italy Passport Case" and then only ever getting to go to China and Taiwan. It will be nice to be in a country that believes in the power of the pastry, and that does not subscribe to the red-beans-as-dessert philosophy.
I would post my last newspaper article, but it may be offensive to some of my readers. So I will post my newest one next week, after it comes out in the paper. Intriguing, eh?
Dat all. Peace out.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Movin' On
I am so glad this election is finally over. I hope that people can stop making (subconscious??) racist comments about the results and get on board with the positivity. Cause that was a great moment, yo. And if you are still wondering where I stood since I was so cryptic on my blog, just know that I felt so happy that for the first time in my short voting career, the person I voted for actually WON. What a moment for ME!
But I want to move on and stop talking about all this, because I have even MORE important things to discuss. Here are just a few issues I hope President-Elect Obama will address when he moves into the white house:
1. Corn Syrup: I really hope Obama perpetuates this new push to clear high fructose corn syrup of its nasty reputation. Cause, hey, it's natural. And it's FINE in moderation (see the ads).
2. Hamburger: all my life ground beef has been a staple. Now suddenly normal people are telling me that they "rarely" or even "never" buy it. How the hell are these people making tacos? How are they making lasagna, spaghetti, meat loaf, Hamburger Helper, for crying out loud? Obama needs to bring this gross oversight into the public eye and start passing some pro-burger laws (and if anyone needs some tips for browning themselves up a little hamburger, you can call on me).
3. Trunk-or-treats: hey, I get it if you live in a scary city. Otherwise, stop trying to control your children's entire LIVES. Let them get their candy the old fashioned way on Halloween: by trick or treating on foot in a neighborhood you know and trust. Trunk or Treats are ruining the fabric of society. In my day, we walked miles. Then we came home and ate our candy at whatever pace we saw fit. If that meant consuming the entire bag that night, our parents did not stop us. We didn't have candy fairies, candy taxes, or any candy rules. We learned from stomach aches and disappointment when we ran out of candy too soon. 'nuff said.
I'm sure Obama will address these issues once he is done sewing us all traditional Communist Mao suits and implanting microchips into our heads.
But I want to move on and stop talking about all this, because I have even MORE important things to discuss. Here are just a few issues I hope President-Elect Obama will address when he moves into the white house:
1. Corn Syrup: I really hope Obama perpetuates this new push to clear high fructose corn syrup of its nasty reputation. Cause, hey, it's natural. And it's FINE in moderation (see the ads).
2. Hamburger: all my life ground beef has been a staple. Now suddenly normal people are telling me that they "rarely" or even "never" buy it. How the hell are these people making tacos? How are they making lasagna, spaghetti, meat loaf, Hamburger Helper, for crying out loud? Obama needs to bring this gross oversight into the public eye and start passing some pro-burger laws (and if anyone needs some tips for browning themselves up a little hamburger, you can call on me).
3. Trunk-or-treats: hey, I get it if you live in a scary city. Otherwise, stop trying to control your children's entire LIVES. Let them get their candy the old fashioned way on Halloween: by trick or treating on foot in a neighborhood you know and trust. Trunk or Treats are ruining the fabric of society. In my day, we walked miles. Then we came home and ate our candy at whatever pace we saw fit. If that meant consuming the entire bag that night, our parents did not stop us. We didn't have candy fairies, candy taxes, or any candy rules. We learned from stomach aches and disappointment when we ran out of candy too soon. 'nuff said.
I'm sure Obama will address these issues once he is done sewing us all traditional Communist Mao suits and implanting microchips into our heads.
Monday, October 31, 2005
My First Halloween Away From Home
This is my very first Halloween away from Provo, UT. I think it's almost worse than missing Christmas. I don't know what I will do without Vincent the Living Skull.
We've had him since I was in seventh grade, see. He's been in every Halloween movie I've ever made. When you walk by him and the light changes, his eyes glow red and he laughs like Vincent Price (or Vincent VAN Price, if you are a 12-year-old Carly). We have some sort of a strange, mystical connection, Vincent and I.
And I will really miss my mom's witch costume with the built-in air pump.When she wears it she looks a little like Violet Beauregard as a giant blueberry on Willy Wonka. Oh, how I'll miss the gentle whirring sound that accompanies her as she makes us delicious Halloween food and frightens small children.
And the worst part is that I don't have a costume because I always rely on my mother's collection of hats and noses. I'm LOST! And furthermore, I do NOT appreciate the "whimsy" of jack-o-lantern cactus plants. It's 86 freakin' degrees here. Why even bother to leave the house at all?
I thought it would be fun to go as Brooke Shields (on account of my postpartum condition) and Mike could be Tom Cruise and I could be stabbing him with a phony knife or something. But it's not like we have a big party to go to. Maybe I'll just wear a brown paper bag over my head. Or, better yet, stay home and hand out toothbrushes and toothpaste to the weird kids in my neighborhood.
And could somebody send me a darn fall leaf? Just one!!??
We've had him since I was in seventh grade, see. He's been in every Halloween movie I've ever made. When you walk by him and the light changes, his eyes glow red and he laughs like Vincent Price (or Vincent VAN Price, if you are a 12-year-old Carly). We have some sort of a strange, mystical connection, Vincent and I.
And I will really miss my mom's witch costume with the built-in air pump.When she wears it she looks a little like Violet Beauregard as a giant blueberry on Willy Wonka. Oh, how I'll miss the gentle whirring sound that accompanies her as she makes us delicious Halloween food and frightens small children.
And the worst part is that I don't have a costume because I always rely on my mother's collection of hats and noses. I'm LOST! And furthermore, I do NOT appreciate the "whimsy" of jack-o-lantern cactus plants. It's 86 freakin' degrees here. Why even bother to leave the house at all?
I thought it would be fun to go as Brooke Shields (on account of my postpartum condition) and Mike could be Tom Cruise and I could be stabbing him with a phony knife or something. But it's not like we have a big party to go to. Maybe I'll just wear a brown paper bag over my head. Or, better yet, stay home and hand out toothbrushes and toothpaste to the weird kids in my neighborhood.
And could somebody send me a darn fall leaf? Just one!!??
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Rate My Most Tactless Moments
I have a special knack for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, back pedaling, then saying something like "well, good to see you again" and walking off. Here are a few highlights. Please rate them according to degree of humiliation:
A) When I didn't remember the name of this highly sensitive, quiet girl who was in our Halloween Dance group my junior year in high school, I came up with this clever idea on the spot: "How do you spell your name again?" I asked. She gave me a quizzical look and said "R-o-s-e" in a louder, slower-than-usual kind of voice (the kind of voice you use when speaking to non-English speakers or people in a coma). "Oh, right. Well, I knew someone once who spelled it differently," I back-pedaled, "so now I always ask!" Exit the room in shame...
B) I worked at the Richards Building info desk at BYU. In my office, there was a big cahuna named Lee. Lee was one of the most important bosses. There was another Lee in our office, who was a new freshman, a new employee, and cute as a button (but that is beside the point). One day, a man with a southern accent called and asked for Lee. "He's not in, can I take a message?" I asked, assuming this man meant big boss Lee. "Just tell him his pa called," the man said. With a smile, I wrote the note and posted it on Lee's office door--the word "pa" included. Do you see where this is going? Was the message for big boss Lee? No. Was big boss Lee's dad no longer living? Yes. Did confusion, humiliation, and pain ensue? You betcha. Could I look big boss Lee in the eye after that? No way.
C) My aunt has a talent for ceramics. She makes all kinds of figurines, paints them, glazes them, etc. Sometimes, her projects border on being a little . . . oh, how do I put this?. . . well, let's just say ODD: ceramic boots get paired with silk flowers to make a nice arrangement, and, occasionally, a Santa Claus kneels at the manger of the baby Jesus. I find the latter ceramic figurine particularly garish, and have said so many, many times--to my husband, mother, and sisters, of course. It always appeared on my mom's table the day of the family Christmas party, and then sort of went away just in time for Christmas. In the back of my head, I knew my aunt had made it, but it had been around for so long that it became an entity in itself, with no maker, no origin. It just existed for a couple of weeks. I have always hated it, because I have a problem with mixing the secular part of Christmas--Santa--and the sacred part--baby Jesus. I feel that the two types of decorations should not be juxtaposed in any kind of lawn arrangement, painting, or, in this case, ceramic figurine. Having established the background, let me take you to the moment of total tactlessness: there we were at the family Christmas party. My mom and my aunt and I were all chatting, and my mom brought up my intense dislike for sacred/secular pairings. This intrigued my aunt, who said, "give me an example." "Oh, you know, like santa kneeling at the baby Jesus" I said, completely without thinking. My mom, who was standing behind my aunt, frantically started to do one of those cutting motions across her throat, mouthing the words "no, no, no." My aunt got really pointy-mouthed and squinty-eyed and said "well, what's wrong with that?" in a very angry voice. "Nothing!" I said. "I mean, in that case, it is okay, because it shows that Santa is supplicating to the baby Jesus," I went on, "so that is actually a very, very good representation of what Christmas is all about. . . yes, I like it. I like it very much indeed. . . " I left the house feeling rotten, but my mom reassured me: "she won't remember what happened by this afternoon. She can't remember anything since her stroke." Comforting thought.
D) Speaking of Christmas, just yesterday I was helping my cousins--who recently converted to Judaism, one of whom learned to read and speak Hebrew for her Bat Mitzvah, which I attended, and both of whom are very devout and very serious about their beliefs--go through some of their mom's boxes. I came upon two boxes full of Christmas lights and decorations. "Oh, I may be interested in these," I said, "But wait, you guys should have these CHRISTMAS decorations. Don't you want these CHRISTMAS decorations?" There was a moment of awkward silence, during which I searched my brain for a reason why these decorations could possibly be undesireable. "Uh, we don't really need those anymore," they said. "Oh, RIGHT! DUH!" I said. "But do you guys still give gifts and stuff?" "Yes, it's a little thing called Hannuka." They said. "Oh, right. Well, I guess I'll be taking these . . . "
A) When I didn't remember the name of this highly sensitive, quiet girl who was in our Halloween Dance group my junior year in high school, I came up with this clever idea on the spot: "How do you spell your name again?" I asked. She gave me a quizzical look and said "R-o-s-e" in a louder, slower-than-usual kind of voice (the kind of voice you use when speaking to non-English speakers or people in a coma). "Oh, right. Well, I knew someone once who spelled it differently," I back-pedaled, "so now I always ask!" Exit the room in shame...
B) I worked at the Richards Building info desk at BYU. In my office, there was a big cahuna named Lee. Lee was one of the most important bosses. There was another Lee in our office, who was a new freshman, a new employee, and cute as a button (but that is beside the point). One day, a man with a southern accent called and asked for Lee. "He's not in, can I take a message?" I asked, assuming this man meant big boss Lee. "Just tell him his pa called," the man said. With a smile, I wrote the note and posted it on Lee's office door--the word "pa" included. Do you see where this is going? Was the message for big boss Lee? No. Was big boss Lee's dad no longer living? Yes. Did confusion, humiliation, and pain ensue? You betcha. Could I look big boss Lee in the eye after that? No way.
C) My aunt has a talent for ceramics. She makes all kinds of figurines, paints them, glazes them, etc. Sometimes, her projects border on being a little . . . oh, how do I put this?. . . well, let's just say ODD: ceramic boots get paired with silk flowers to make a nice arrangement, and, occasionally, a Santa Claus kneels at the manger of the baby Jesus. I find the latter ceramic figurine particularly garish, and have said so many, many times--to my husband, mother, and sisters, of course. It always appeared on my mom's table the day of the family Christmas party, and then sort of went away just in time for Christmas. In the back of my head, I knew my aunt had made it, but it had been around for so long that it became an entity in itself, with no maker, no origin. It just existed for a couple of weeks. I have always hated it, because I have a problem with mixing the secular part of Christmas--Santa--and the sacred part--baby Jesus. I feel that the two types of decorations should not be juxtaposed in any kind of lawn arrangement, painting, or, in this case, ceramic figurine. Having established the background, let me take you to the moment of total tactlessness: there we were at the family Christmas party. My mom and my aunt and I were all chatting, and my mom brought up my intense dislike for sacred/secular pairings. This intrigued my aunt, who said, "give me an example." "Oh, you know, like santa kneeling at the baby Jesus" I said, completely without thinking. My mom, who was standing behind my aunt, frantically started to do one of those cutting motions across her throat, mouthing the words "no, no, no." My aunt got really pointy-mouthed and squinty-eyed and said "well, what's wrong with that?" in a very angry voice. "Nothing!" I said. "I mean, in that case, it is okay, because it shows that Santa is supplicating to the baby Jesus," I went on, "so that is actually a very, very good representation of what Christmas is all about. . . yes, I like it. I like it very much indeed. . . " I left the house feeling rotten, but my mom reassured me: "she won't remember what happened by this afternoon. She can't remember anything since her stroke." Comforting thought.
D) Speaking of Christmas, just yesterday I was helping my cousins--who recently converted to Judaism, one of whom learned to read and speak Hebrew for her Bat Mitzvah, which I attended, and both of whom are very devout and very serious about their beliefs--go through some of their mom's boxes. I came upon two boxes full of Christmas lights and decorations. "Oh, I may be interested in these," I said, "But wait, you guys should have these CHRISTMAS decorations. Don't you want these CHRISTMAS decorations?" There was a moment of awkward silence, during which I searched my brain for a reason why these decorations could possibly be undesireable. "Uh, we don't really need those anymore," they said. "Oh, RIGHT! DUH!" I said. "But do you guys still give gifts and stuff?" "Yes, it's a little thing called Hannuka." They said. "Oh, right. Well, I guess I'll be taking these . . . "
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