Turn It Off!!!

Are there some places where you just should not carry on a cell phone conversation?  Are there some people who have absolutely no sense of privacy or shame?  If the answer to this question were "no," would I be writing this?  

I entered the ladies' room in a Marriott hotel the other evening and saw a woman with a cell phone pasted to her ear.  She was apparently in the middle of a conversation but told her caller, "Hold on a minute, I have to go to the bathroom."  Now, at this juncture, I would have hung up the phone and called back after I had finished in the ladies' room. Not this woman, though! She went into a stall and then proceeded with her conversation! 

Imagine what the person on the other end of the phone must have thought as he/she was treated to sounds of women eliminating, toilets flushing, and water running while trying to converse with this woman! YUCK! To add to the weirdness, it seemed to be a business call.  I overheard the woman saying things like, "What was that last transaction again? How much? What about the other loan?" Much repeating was apparently necessary on both ends of the conversation due to the noise in the restroom (hey, ladies, can you keep that toilet flushing down, please, I'm trying to make a business call here?!!)

People seem to think they're surrounded by a cloak of privacy when they're on their cell phones.  They behave as if they're invisible to those around them and that their activities aren't apparent to whoever is on the other end of the phone.  They'll even go so far as giving a dirty look to someone they catch listening to them.  NEWS BULLETIN!!! Everyone is listening!  If you're going to air your business in public, have the courtesy to make it interesting for the rest of us!  No one wants to listen to your financial transactions while we're in the ladies' room! We want drama! Let's hear about your affairs, your husband's perversions, your children's addictions.  Let's hear some dirty, little secret that we can tell our friends at a party!

And as for the woman who thought it was appropriate to discuss her money matters in the restroom at the Marriott last Friday evening, I hope your finances and your cell phone go down the toilet!

Are You Jewish?

Are you Jewish? I don't care! Why is someone's religion or the church he or she attends (or doesn't attend) such a BFD to some people?!! If you're a decent, kind, interesting person, then I'm happy to know you.  If you're a schmuck, get lost. Very simple.  Just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I'm going to like you if you're Jewish, and I hope that you won't dismiss me because you're Christian or Muslim or Zoroastrian.  Alas, I am so often disappointed.

"The Look" maybe I'm a Vampire?

So much of the social machinery runs on church affiliations.  If I had a dollar for every time someone asked upon meeting me what church I go to, I'd have enough money to treat myself to a nice massage, maybe even 60 minutes with some hot stones! Then, when I say that I don't go to church, I get "the look." It's bad enough that I don't attend their church, but to eschew church altogether? What could this mean? I must be a blasphemous sinner, a demon, or (whisper) a Jew.

When I lived in South Carolina, a woman I worked with actually asked me if "you Jews celebrate Thanksgiving?"  Then they kept inviting me to their Wednesday evening Baptist services, telling me that "some Jews do believe in Jesus."  Did they ever just invite me over for coffee? Nope.

Then there's the opposite phenomenon, which is just as annoying.  It's the "we love you because we think you're one of us" maneuver.  I experienced this one the other day.  I was introduced to a woman at a volunteer event.  She was pleasant but not overly friendly.  Then during the course of the morning, I happened to mention that I did not want to work on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday. Boing! My new acquaintance sprung to life as if someone had just given her a blood transfusion.  She fixed her gaze at me and excitedly asked if I was Jewish. I said I was but that I didn't attend services.  No matter; there was no stopping Jew Woman now!  She was my new instant best friend. She reached out her hand to high five me and began to happily chatter away about the Jewish congregation in the county, who I knew, who I was married to, whether I had kids, blah, blah, blah.  Suddenly I was the most intriguing person in the room!  What utter BS!

If you find your faith gives you comfort, that's great. I don't mean to disparage religion.  I just find that it's one facet of who a person is (perhaps).  There is so much more to know about people than their religious affiliations, and it really ticks me off that people use religion to band together like a pack of jackals and exclude those who don't "belong."  So join me, High Priestess Lolamouse in my Divine Temple of the Unaffiliated. Or don't; I don't care.

Glenn Beck's Dreck

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bitchy-Waiter/112430746683

If only I hadn't scheduled that Saturday morning high colonic, I could have joined Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and their minions of teabaggers for their awesome "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Darn. What a great way to salute Dr. King's dream! Hijack the National Mall by booking it on the 47th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech for a group of right wing wackos whose idea of racism is our current president! Of course, Mr. Beck claims that it is a total coincidence that his rally falls on the same day as the anniversary of Dr. King's famous speech and that the rally is a nonpolitical gathering to support our troops. And that babies are made in cabbage patches and the check is in the mail.  However, I am an American, so I do support Mr. Beck's right to free speech, however offensive and idiotic I may find it.  I just hope that people will stop listening to him.

How To Talk Like a Southerner

Just returned from an awesome lunch of shrimp and grits, which got me thinking back to my years in South Carolina.  I was there for grad school and boyfriend (not necessarily in that order), and discovered that Southerners don't talk like you and I.  I don't mean the drawl either; that's obvious. I mean all the little turns of phrase which I had to learn to decipher and to acclimate my ears. That was an education in itself!

In this post, I'm fixin' to tell y'all about the funny things Southerners say.  Did you catch that subtle example?  They use the phrase "fixin' to" to mean "about to" or "I will."  I never did hear anyone say he was "fixin' to fix his car," but I suppose it would be possible.  Of course, y'all is really used in the South for the plural of "you."  I must say, I prefer hearing "What can I get y'all to drink?" from a waiter than "What can I get you guys?" which is what I hear most of the time here.  I'm not a guy, and I'm 46.  I really don't think "you guys" applies to me.

One annoyingly redundant grammatical construction I heard in SC was "might could," as in "I might could use that there gasoline to fill the tractor, but I'm fixin' to go behind the shed and huff it instead."  I guess the words "might," "could," or even "may" aren't iffy enough on their own to express the speaker's ambivalence or indecision, so the compound "might could" was invented.

In my work as a school psychology intern, I quickly learned about the phrase "showing his butt."  I got a call to come to a school to assist with a student who had been "showin' his butt all day."  I hurried to the school expecting to find a kid mooning in the hallway.  After a look around and finding no uncovered rears, I was thoroughly confused.  Turns out, "showing your butt" is a Southern way of saying causing trouble or being disrespectful.  Geez! That's SO much less interesting than a crazed student mooning everyone in the halls!

My favorite Southernism, though, is the way they insult someone.  No matter how nasty the comment, it's always said with a heavy coating of sugar and followed by a blessing.  For example, "Thank the Lord she found herself a fiance who doesn't need a pretty girl to make him happy."  Or "That poor child is dumb as a bag of rocks, bless his heart!"  Now that's a classy way to pone someone!  And who'd expect such class from such an unsophisticated region of the country, bless their hearts?!!