Use Your Wisdom

The latest headline of a policeman’s bullet killing a supposedly innocent and unarmed man is crushing to read. According to reports, a young man was gunned down by police on the eve of his wedding. Protests have filled city streets and prominent minority leaders are on the scene voicing concern over police leadership and practices. The need to raise one’s voice and demand better of police is understandable. The taking of innocent life is alarming, especially at the hands of those in a position to protect and serve.

Though I support the effort to organize and demand answers in this situation, I am disappointed the taking of innocent life by those who aren’t in law enforcement barely generates a gasp anymore. Police officers are continually exposed to more aggressive criminals with younger faces and impressive weaponry. They put their lives on the line every day. It is no wonder to me tragedies happen as a result of jumpy trigger fingers. Perhaps if individuals were equally as loud over the crime that lays the foundation for these types of tragedies, they would become more rare. When the news captures groups protesting crime, the protests are usually directed at police and city officials. Participants demand to know why aren’t they doing more to stop the violence? Why must police always be in the wrong? Why not target the criminals who are at the heart of the problem? When are we going to stand up as a society and get loud about criminals? When are we going to fill the streets and shout out our refusal to tolerate the violent and illegal behavior that makes our police officers’ jobs so dangerous? When are we going to accept there is only so much a man or woman in a bullet proof vest can accomplish without the full support and assistance of the community?

The courage it takes to put on a badge and take to the streets is immense. Instead of simply reacting with scorn to the episodes where police officers have made an error in judgment or have acted aggressively in stressful situations, let us do our part to help rewrite the job description of those in blue. Let them be the keepers of peace instead of warriors on a deadly battlefield.

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Depending on your age, you may or may not remember the old game show Password. It ran from the early 60’s to the mid 70’s. Since I was 4 when it went off the air, I suspect my exposure to the game came in syndication. In any event, contestants were paired with a celebrity and were charged with the task of guessing the ‘password’ when given a series of one word clues. If you did well, you qualified for the ‘Lightning Round’ where $250 was up for grabs.

Though Password is no longer on the air, the modern day version of the game is alive and well. Instead of taking place in a studio, the game is now set in my living room. I play it daily on my laptop. These days there is a lot more on the line than $250. If I am able to guess the magic password I get to access my bank account, open my emails, retrieve my voicemail, read articles from online newspapers, pay bills, update my webpage, upload photos to my virtual album, participate in internet forums and write on my blog.

Before becoming a contestant, I naively thought the game would be easy to win. Granted, the degree of difficulty was increased with the addition of user names, but I had a master plan that should guarantee success. I’d pick a user name that would work in all situations. Because it’s unwise to have identical user names and passwords on everything, I’d select different passwords for each function and make sure my choice was logical to the task.

Unfortunately, my strategy fell to pieces. The game’s producers assumed I’d try to take the easy route by sticking to one user name. They decided to make things interesting by informing me my user name wasn’t available in several situations. That meant I had to select some randomly. I didn’t view that as a problem since my memory has traditionally been pretty good. In those situations, I’d try to be as logical with my user name as I was with my password. Trouble was, what seemed logical 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years ago, isn’t necessarily consistent with what seems logical today.

Now that I have been playing the game for a few years, my head is spinning. There are days when I hit the jackpot on the first try. Other days, I’m lucky if I guess one of the two correctly. There are no longer celebrities to help you when you get stuck. The producers want to keep the game fun, so they’ve created ways to give you hints. They’ll generously send you a hint via email. All you have to do is come up with the email account you indicated when you started playing the game. Hmmm, I have 4 to choose from. If that doesn’t help, perhaps you can remember the phone number that seemed logical to reference. Hmmmm, only 3 to choose from there. Unless I happened to sign up for this part of the game before my last move; that would add 3 more numbers into the equation. If phone numbers and emails won’t work for hints, perhaps you could use the name of your best friend. Let’s see, who was I speaking to at the time? Ugh.

I’m beginning to feel I no longer want to play the game anymore. Trouble is, once you are a contestant, you are pretty much stuck. To make matters worse, the game keeps getting bigger and more involved. Almost everyone I know is playing. Passwords and passcodes are showing up everywhere. I wonder if the producers would consider adding vacuum cleaners and washing machines to the game. Now those are some passwords I wouldn’t be upset to guess wrong.

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Oh dear. Things aren’t looking good for Nemo. Did you catch the report released a few days ago? The one about a collapse of our oceans’ fish populations by the year 2048? Now don’t panic. We don’t have to worry about it just yet. That’s 42 years away, after all. We should be grateful the news isn’t making a big deal over something so far off. We currently have much more pressing extinctions on our hands. The disappearance of TMX Elmo from the shelves 2 months before Christmas is the real tragedy!!! Nemo is safely tucked away in his cozy coral home and the supply of America’s favorite red fuzzy buddy is exhausted. It makes complete sense that people care more about Elmo than Nemo at the moment, right? Besides, even if Nemo does disappear, it’s not like our kids don’t have tons of polyester versions of him to share with future generations. All the better since those can be tossed in the washing machine if they start to smell.

You know, the more I think about it, the less I believe we really need to worry about this population collapse. When you think of it, fish have had their fair share of time to enjoy this planet. They’ve been hogging the oceans for more years than I have the ability to conceptualize. Sure, I like fish. Nothing beats fresh Mahi-Mahi under a perfectly seasoned caper dill. We’re creative though. I’m sure 4 decades is enough time to develop a soy alternative that tastes like my favorite finned friend. There is the nagging problem about Polar Bears dying off after their food source is destroyed. That would rid us of the stress of having to worry about melting their icecaps though. Yeah, this really could work out well all around.

Gosh, I feel much better now. Good thing I didn’t overreact initially. Things happen for a reason. This doesn’t have to mean the end of the Nemo movies either. Finding Nemo 2 could be a young boy’s quest to track down Nemo’s little bones and deliver them to their rightful place at the Smithsonian Museum. Um, I do expect royalties.

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Road trips as a kid were always fun. Mom would stock the car with treats and games so my sister and I could entertain ourselves as we rolled down the highway. One of our favorite activities was the alphabet game. If you aren’t familiar, the goal was to find words on signs that began with the letter of the alphabet you happened to be on. You’d start with ‘A’ and go to ‘Z’. Whoever completed the alphabet first, won. Your opponent wasn’t allowed to use the same word you spotted. Getting to ‘Z’ was no easy chore. That game kept us occupied for a fair amount of time.

As my infant daughter cried in the car yesterday, I started looking forward to the day when the alphabet game could keep her busy and content during our journeys. Then it hit me. If I want my daughter entertained for more than a few minutes, I’m probably going to have to come up with another distraction. The alphabet game isn’t going to work. One could get to ‘Z’ in the 3 mile drive from my front door to the Interstate entrance.

What has ruined the entertainment value of the alphabet game? Ladies and gentleman, I fear we are experiencing a sign epidemic. I’m no Signtologist, but they seem to be spreading everywhere. It’s a challenge to see grass and trees anymore. Restaurants, politicians, insurance companies, cell phone providers, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, tourism boards, auto dealers and a whole bevy of others are in an aggressive race to see who can decorate our roadways the quickest with their large billboards. A lot of expense goes into making them bright and appealing so our attention is drawn away from the task at hand and towards the important marketing message. Of course they are wasting their money. Please tell me all of these are going unread. I mean, we all have our eyes on the road while driving 70 mph, right? Right?!!! Lord knows I don’t want to pass someone driving at full throttle with a Grisham novel propped up on the steering wheel. Seeing someone with their eyes trained on the new McDonald’s salad flavors isn’t any less horrifying.

Though they may not be as fancy as the advertisers with the gigantic highway displays, local marketers have made their contribution with curbside plastic and cardboard signs. “Store Closing”, “Donate Your Car”, “Open House”, “Lower Your Bills”, “House of Nails”, “JJ’s Painting”, “Basket Bingo”, “St. Vincent’s Spaghetti Dinner”…the list goes on. Even sign making companies are joining the game. At nearly every major intersection in my urban area there is a narrow white rectangle with a phone number to call if you need a sign. Of course, sometimes it is hard to see. The limp and faded yard sale posters from 2 months ago tend to droop and obstruct the lettering.

I’m trying to figure out the reproductive nature of signs in general. I rarely, if ever, see a sign actually going up. However, each day there seems to be more and more. The moon must have something to do with the birthing process. Or could it be aliens? Signtology is based on aliens, right? All I know is their life cycle is pretty interesting (the signs’…not the aliens’). They show up abruptly and linger for weeks, months and years. Campaign signs are the most prolific. You wake up one morning and they are everywhere. They are like Cicadas, only we don’t have the 17 year reprieve between outbreaks. They return every other year and pain our eyes until their demise on the first Tuesday of November. Whatever/whoever gave them life has little interest in their expiration. Very few are respectfully put to rest on the first Wednesday of November. Many end up like the Cicadas, dead and flat on the ground patiently waiting to be reabsorbed by nature.

How did we get to this degree of sign infestation? I’m not sure. How do we fix the problem? I haven’t a clue? Where is the message of wisdom in all of this? I’ll have to think on that one. In the meantime, there are a few things you can do. Keep your eyes on the road and provide a final resting place for the weathered and expired. As for me, I’m off to invest in printing companies.

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You’re probably thinking I’ve lost my mind. What in the heck does moldy bread have to do with wisdom? You’d be surprised. Stick around and I’ll tell you.

My husband and I are bread fanatics. The anti-carb craze did nothing to deminish our love of the loaf. When we go out to dinner, our favorite part of the experience is the arrival of the bread basket with its precious cargo warmly wrapped in a linen napkin. On one occasion we pulled back the layers of linen only to find a fuzzy spattering of green mold decorating the surface. We were disappointed to say the least.

My husband and I are not confrontational. When the waitress returned to our table, we delicately offered she may want to be aware there is mold on the bread. We expected a look of horror and an apology or two. What we got was an eloquent speech about how there couldn’t possibly be mold on the bread. The bread was freshly delivered that day. The supplier is top-notch and reputable. Proper storage of the bread is never an issue. Her supporting arguments as to why the bread couldn’t possibly be moldy were very convincing. Except for the tiny problem of there actually being green fuzz on the crust, I would have believed her. When I pointed out the flaw in her position, irritation showed on her face and she coolly offered to bring another loaf. Um, no thanks. Not only am I not interested in a sibling of my green friend, now I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible she’ll spit in my pasta. (I’ll leave that for another Blog.)

At first I was surprised the waitresses’ first reaction was to deny the obvious and put so much effort into convincing us we were mistaken. I mean, the green fuzz was clearly visible. Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply agree, offer an apology and move to solution mode?

The more I thought about it, I realized her response wasn’t all that uncommon. It actually happens to varying degrees with different levels of success all of the time. Children have the least practice so they tend to have poor results when they attempt to argue away the obvious. There is a huge smear of chocolate around their mouths, yet they go to great lengths to tell you they haven’t gone near the cookies. Teenagers swear they’ve done their homework and then distract you with arguments about how you don’t trust them when they start to feel the corner they’ve backed themselves into. Employees and coworkers are adamant they followed up on an issue and offer there must be some technical reason why none of their phone calls, faxes or emails happened to get through. Do you see the similarities?

For the examples I’ve used so far, the person who attempts to argue away the obvious rarely, if ever, succeeds. Something strange happens when we go higher up the ladder though. When we try to call big business, politicians, celebrities and high-profile criminals out on their moldy bread, we are less likely to hold them accountable to the obvious. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say we will indulge their position longer. It may be we are more inclined to hold such individuals on the pedestal we’ve created (not the criminals, of course), so ignoring the obvious is more comfortable for us. It could also be we are met with more advanced diversion tactics, fancier words and louder retorts.

Let’s imagine I told a visible political figure the bread he’s serving is moldy. The argument would be a bit different. I’ve got something against carbs and want to give bread a bad name. This is an election year and I want to get the fungi haters among us to the polls. I don’t have the ability to see the big picture; that mold could be the new Penicillin. I have an agenda to close down the restaurant before it’s had a chance to be successful. I’m making a big deal when it’s an isolated incident. There are plenty of other loaves in the restaurant that are mold free. The mold wouldn’t be there if the person on the shift before him had done his job. Perhaps I put the mold there myself to get attention.

When the arguments get more sophisticated, distracting and personal, it’s easy to convince ourselves (or pretend) we were mistaken, back down and quietly eat the moldy bread. Who wants to do battle against that degree of rhetoric? Trouble is, once you know the mold is there, no argument is going to make it taste good going down. I try to avoid swallowing something I know is spoiled. If I don’t have the ability or strength to send it back, I at least leave it untouched so the server knows I didn’t like what was dished out.

My closing thought is this. We owe it to ourselves to notice the mold in this world, to make it clear to those serving it up we know it’s there and to refuse to swallow what’s spoiled. By taking this stance, we are more likely to avoid being served moldy bread the next time around.

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