Letters

It is an interesting tradition to walk to the mailbox and peek inside hoping for a letter. With all the electronic communication and social media, there is still a thrill to find an envelope with your name written on it.

Someone has taken the time to put pen to paper and write down thoughts without wanting immediate response gratification. For letters take some focus to write without spell-check and a delete button. Even with an accomplished English vocabulary and firm knowledge of adjectives and adverbs, when a sentence doesn’t the piece of paper must be balled up and thrown in the trash and the message started all over again.

Receiving a handwritten letter is like a Christmas present. Inside that envelope is a mystery. Good news? Bad news? Random thoughts or a life changing comment could be within? You open the paper as if an ancient secret document.

To write a letter, you must have stationary and a pen (pencils are for notes) and a quiet place to gather your thoughts. Writing a letter is a reserved moment not a multi-tasking event. Each sentence is thought out before scratching ink to paper. A formal address and welcome plus  proper ending will format the page or two or three of reading for another.

A lick of a tongue like a kiss seals the message before delivering it to another who will promise to forward the stamped folder to the intended reader. Some will arrive on scented paper, some will posses small items of relevance, and some are just fluid message that can be read over and over again digesting each word with multiple meanings.

In most letters there are words not written between the lines to be deciphered by the reader. Replies must be thoughtfully written to ask the right questions without reveling too much of the answer.

Place in the post and await a reply. It is a strange game these letter present but when the long distant conversation is started can be most exciting and the possible return become a thrill to the mundane act of picking up the mail.

“To whom it may concern”

Toothpaste

It stopped raining today. There was still enough humidity in the cool air to give a chill. Not a chill like a Halloween night where there is still a late feel of a summer evening but a chill to the bone that lets you know the dark days of winter are on the way.

With little peeks of sunshine, the adventurous were out trying to get in the exercise that was missed yesterday due to the rain. The same is true for me. A day without riding clogs up my sinuses doesn’t unkink my aches and pains and doesn’t really get my motor running. I thought I’d missed the church crowd, but there was a lot of traffic in the neighborhood. I guess drivers have to move the cars to unkink them too? I seem to remember a time when people would get in their cars just to ride around on Sunday. No particular place to go, just drive around to get out of the house.

The folks at the Tummy Temple seemed fairly glum. No smiling faces under all their layers of wool that made me think it must be colder than I thought. Maybe all their school’s teams lost yesterday?

Reload, check out and return home awaiting big boy football in my sweats. It is pure comfort of a winter Sunday afternoon. Gather some music and try to figure out a bass-line for a friend.

So what does any of this do with toothpaste?

Part of my daily routine is to brush my teeth. I’ve always brushed my teeth. It is nothing different everyday, just part of the routine. It is a activity that most of us do everyday without a thought. Of course the mussel and bustle of the household usually distract us.

So what does this daily activity promoted to children as a must hygiene habit have to do with anything?

As simple as the act of unscrewing the cap and squeezing out some goo onto a colored one sided brush to rub all over your mouth and then spit become routine and automatic, except when you are old and alone.

Do you remember the time it took for your grandmother to get dressed and prepare herself for the day? Every little detail is important. Tying shoes becomes a major accomplishment. Combing your hair can bond parent and child but it takes forever.

So for brushing your teeth some may need assistance. If they are not already in a jar, the same pattern of squeezing the tub and running the water and up and down and up and down and all around until the drool is spit.

Our promise to our dentist to floss and brush to maintain our pearly whites goes out the window when we started to smoke and drink and thought the latest gizmo with twirling electric brushes or strips made us feel we were doing out duty, once we found someone else who didn’t mind our bad breath, we put all those utensils in the medicine cabinet to catch dust.

There is an entire aisle of dental products with fancy glittering packages and false promises of eternal beauty but I buy the bargain brand (being my mother’s son). I religiously maintain the habit before I go out everyday and will continue for the only other thing I do in the bathroom should not get a mention.

All I ask is when you are standing in your skivvies looking at that odd face in the mirror churning away at a frothy mouth, cherish the chore as a wonderful activity that will become memorable as you grow older.

Spit.

What is your agenda?

Everyone has one

What gets you going in the morning? Not the to-do list but the personal agenda you seek to accomplish. Besides the day-to-day chores, each of us has an agenda to drive us.

Our agenda may be to reach a goal or master a task or follow the heart. A meeting agenda can be a check off list of items to conclude before creating another agenda. A personal agenda may be a series of task to complete before watching the football game. An agenda can be self-defined or assigned by another.

 To become popular can be an agenda. To graduate from a prestigious school to impress a future employer can be an agenda. To buy a fancy car or watch or home can be an agenda. To make it thorough a hard workweek to party with your friends on weekends can be an agenda. To find the perfect mate can be an agenda. To please your parents can be an agenda. To get laid can be an agenda.

Our personality can be altered by our agenda. If our agenda is to promote a cause, for or against, our rationally thinking can be overwhelmed by our narrow focus to achieve our agenda. Like a one-trick-pony, we struggle to stay the course and not waver, for then our agenda would crumble.

Agendas can change as one after another is accomplished or they can be a constant reach for the golden ring that never comes. Two can have the same agenda causing friction, jealousy, stress and sometimes violence.

Like your day planner, make a list of what is most important to you. Then compare that with people who are close to you. Now zoom in on the number one point that keeps you going everyday. Is that your agenda?

War On Terrorism

Or how can we beat up the bullies?

Terrorism is any act designed to cause terror. BOO!

Is this Halloween?

Terrorism has been practiced by right-and left-wing political parties, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and ruling governments.

What about the movies? What about amusement parks?

Maybe these bad guys are just bullies?

Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. Bullying is repeated and habitual. Bullying asserts domination uses verbal harassment, threats or physical abuse. Differences of social class, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, behavior, body language, personality, reputation, lineage, strength, size or ability can be rational for bullying. Bullies can form groups to become gangs or mobs. 

So are bullies terrorist?

If someone, a stranger, parks outside your house every night, is it an act of terror. If someone reports your dog barking to the police, is that an act of bullying?

There are so many examples when you feel fearful in a location that is not comfortable or see some people who radiate danger, real or unknown or become involved in a situation out of your control. It is all terrorism. 

Popeye used to open his can of spinach to beat up Blutto. How big is your can of spinach? With so much fear…. Excuse me terrorism, how will you protect yourself and your family against these bullies?

I’m not sure anyone I know believes themselves a terrorist, much less a bully….BUT….

Reading some of the comments on websites and responses to news stories astonishes me. How can there be so much hate? How can people throw around such anger? Are they bullies? Is this a form of terrorism?

Airing out your dirty laundry

 

It seems we like to do that. The juicer the conversation the more interest there is. It is in every checkout lane. There are magazines dedicated to it. Books, movies, songs and even plays are written to do it.

There is something about airing out our dirty laundry we all adore. If we are good at gossip we can hang out other’s dirty laundry. Sometimes the dirty laundry is real and sometimes it is just a factoid expanded upon by word of mouth.

No matter what a candidate for public office astounds to, the media digs through trash to find dirty laundry. Like skeletons in the closet, we all have some. Some have built a sizable wealth on displaying their dirty laundry.

So why do we love it so much?

Does it make us feel better that someone else has bigger problems than us? Knowing someone has had dirty laundry but has come through it and survived an admirable quality? Does sharing our dirty laundry bring us closer together?

Just be proud to air out your dirty laundry. It is what makes you interesting.

Turning out the light

Last night was Halloween…a night of wonder and pretend…a night of make believe and dress up… a night of fantasy.

Halloween, a made up holiday part religious and part excuse to celebrate silliness. It is also an excuse to feed your child (or inner child) with sugar just as the industry told you to do.

Last night I heard the laughter of the children. The neighbors were ready to receive a new batch of youngsters in a family setting that was protected from the woes and fear of this night.

Once upon a time, I’d sit on the porch and welcome the costumed kiddies with treats and enjoy their continuous parade, but something changed. It was not the pranks of Halloween but the constant pressure to provide for the dentist and doctors who must care for the overstuffed and obese youngsters.

There was a time when the holiday was reversed and it was called ‘Treat or Trick’. A group of older than children would go house-to-house and when the door was answered would give away treats instead of begging for handouts.

So as the kiddies get hyped up on candy and looking forward to the feast of Thanksgiving and then the opulence of Christmas, I turned out the light.

Word of Mouth

What is the truth?

Where do you get your information? You listen to people on the radio or television. You read newspapers, magazines, and books. You get bombarded with advertising, campaigns and questionable facts and figures supporting statements. You talk to friends and family and overhear strangers.

So much taken in and few filters to establish fact from fiction. What will you believe? How will you form your opinions?

Much of it is who do you believe. Does the person who is telling you information look like you? Do they fit into the acceptable genre? Do you trust they have presented their statement with reliable research? Do your friends confirm your interpretations of the information?

There are lots of comments on web-links agreeing or disagreeing with articles from established reporting sources. Some of these comments can be very rude and vulgar fogging the reader from the thought at hand. Like a Pavlov dog, enough of this nonsense can persuade someone to believe all sorts of crazy.

My advice is to listen closely to what is being said and who is saying it. Check out the facts if you question or scroll on for tomorrow there will be a whole new set of talking points.

Just smile, nod your head and move on, for in the long run, it just doesn’t matter.