More Miscellaney

I’ve had two instances in the past few days that made me just shake my head and wonder how the human race has continued to survive, or maybe wonder why it is that we haven’t evolved more.
Then I look at my daughter, and hear her talk about this same topic, and I think, well, okay, maybe we are evolving. It just takes time. W says it takes X number of generations for a new attitude/philosophy/belief to take hold (the X being however many he said, I can never remember.) It makes sense…you have to wait for the old generation to die off and quit teaching the younger ones the bad ways.  I’m doing my part (by (hopefully) teaching my kids a better way, not by dying off.) 😉 And okay…maybe we are starting to see a sea change.
(Hmm, wonder where that saying came from….oh wait, here it is (gotta love the internet, right?) from The Tempest:
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Some many wonderfully evocative sayings and phrases came out of Shakespeare’s works. I don’t care what W and the Boychild say, Shakespeare is worth reading, learning and studying.)
Anyway, back to our original discussion.
So these were the two things I heard. The first was while I was at the pool. There was a man there with his young daughter and (presumably) his girlfriend. He was having a discussion with another woman at the pool with her kids. In it, he was telling her – in full hearing of his 6- or 7-year old daughter – all about the nasty divorce he was going through. He was bitter beyond belief, and his bottom line was that he was going to “do whatever it takes” and “bury her financially” if he had to, in order to take their daughter from her and attain sole custody. He didn’t care how long it took, or how often he had to drag her to court, or what he had to say or do, she wasn’t going to get away with leaving him–
Wow. Okay, granted that maybe this woman had done something horrible, in which case, maybe he deserves full custody. But that kind of vitriol and hatred sounds a lot more like using the child to get revenge than doing what is best for the child. Who, remember, was standing within earshot of the twenty minute diatribe he went on.
Then today my assistant was telling me about her friend, who had just split up with her live-in boyfriend. They’d dated for a year and then she’d moved here to be with him, but after about 6 months realized that it wasn’t going to work out. There’s a lease on the apartment. He could afford the apartment on his own (he makes a good income while she just graduated from college) and could sign off to allow her out of the lease, but he won’t.  He insists if she wants to leave him that they break the lease – and that because she is the one that wants to break up, she has to pay the more than $2000 that it will cost to do so. I don’t think this last would hold up in a court of law, but that’s not really the point. The point is he is trying to blackmail her financially into staying with him.
Seriously? Would you want to be with someone under those circumstances?
Why do we hate people when they have had the audacity to fall out of love with us?
I get that it hurts. Fuck…I’ve been there. It hurts and it makes you feel like shit and maybe the leaver isn’t being kind about it, etc.  Or hell, even if they are, it still sucks.  But honestly…is hating them, exacting revenge, being hurtful and hateful going to make that person love you again? Make them decide, “Hey, I made a mistake, let’s get back together?”  I don’t think so.  If anything, it will drive them further away.
I just don’t get it.
*******************************************
In other, happier news, it’s almost time to be off work and heading over to W’s! I still have to work in the morning, but I’m off after 12, and then we are on a jet plane at 4pm!! I already feel like I’m only half here at work, although I am working furiously to get everything done that needs doing before we go.
Speaking of work, I had an odd conversation with my boss yesterday. We were talking about books, and “Shades of Grey” came up. The topic always makes me uncomfortable, because I am just not ready to go there, you know? And when she started telling me about how uncomfortable the book made her, well, I was ready to hear all about what freaks and perverts “those kind” of people are.
Instead, the reason she said she was uncomfortable was not because of the “whips and chains sex” (her words) but because of what she felt was a lack of full, informed consent on the part of the female character! “I get that some people like this stuff,” she said. (Oh if only you knew…no, thank goodness you don’t!) “But what bothers me is that it doesn’t seem clear that the woman is willing, or even informed enough to know what she is getting into and agreeing to.  That really bothers me.”  I haven’t read any of the books (which I told her, citing that I’d heard it was really poorly written) so I can’t say whether this is an accurate assessment of it. But it was a pretty levelheaded reason not to like it, in my opinion, and not the one that I would have guessed she would come back with.
Okay, that’s it for now. Back to work for me.

3 thoughts on “More Miscellaney

  1. I bet that feels good – to get that off your chest Jade :). Now I am off to check out the ‘Shades of Grey’ thingy – I keep on hearing about it from all over the place!

  2. 50 shades is very tame. I didn’t find a whole lot of lack of consent in it, actually.
    and I know what you mean about vanilla folks bringing it up in conversation, assuming (incorrectly) they are commiserating with another vanilla. Is amusing.

    1. Interesting. I’ll have to check it out myself to see if I can figure out where she’s coming from. Also…yeah, I am sure she thinks of me as vanilla as herself (except for my penchant for high heels, tattoos and piercings. Well, granted she only knows about the multiple ear piercings…lol.) I was very sure not to say I didn’t want to read the book on grounds of content, tho. I think my exact words were, “It’s not that I don’t want to read it because of what it’s about…” and shrugged. I won’t be actively deceptive about my status as a “vanilla.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *