The View from the Cheap Seats

The letter N is featured today in the blogging A to z challenge. My post will be numbers — a nice, random collection of digits.

When I lived in Nebraska as a child, my phone number was 402-331-6864. When I lived on Shorewood as a teenager, my phone number was 815-741-1593. When my husband and I lived in Joliet, our number was 815-727-4444. Please don’t call any of these numbers. I won’t be the one to answer the phone!

12 — the number of tattoos I have.

2 — the number of dogs I have.

24 — the number of years I have worked for my school district.

14 — the number of years I have lived in my current house.

33 — the number of states I have visited.

7 — the number of countries I have visited.

1 — the number of times I have been married.

43 — the number of pounds I have lost since starting Weight Watchers in August.

8 or 9 — the number of years I anticipate I have left to work until I retire from teaching.

13 — the number of cousins I have; 8 — the number of cousins I associate with.

289 — my highest weight ever.

40 — the number of pounds I gained when I was pregnant.

3 — the number of times I have broken my nose.

4 — the number of piercings I have.

4 — the number of TV’s in my house; 2 — the number of TV’s that are working.

Me, by the numbers.

I struggled with what to write about for letter H in the Blogging A to Z challenge, but I finally settled on honesty.

It is common to hear, “Honesty is the best policy.” But I contend that it is not. Too often, honesty is used to hurt people, and the person being honest likes to use that honesty as a shield for being hurtful. There’s a line in Taylor Swift’s song “All too Well” where she says, “You call me up again just to break me like a promise/So casually cruel in the name of being honest.” That’s how honesty is often used — casually cruel in the name of being honest. I see it when I indulge in my guilty pleasure of watching “Say Yes to the Dress”. Brides bring friends and family with them and their companions are brutally and cruelly honest, to the point of making attacks on character and appearance all because of the bride’s choice of wedding dress.

As a teacher, students will often ask me questions that would never elicit an honest answer from me. Once a student asked me to read a story she had written. When she asked me if I liked it, did I answer honestly? Nope. I didn’t like the story. It was boring. But I found a way to answer her by saying I liked the way she developed her main character and I pointed out passages she wrote well.

My husband and I made a promise to each other many years ago that if we ever cheated on each other, we would never tell the other person. That kind of honesty doesn’t help a marriage — it hurts it. A confession like that only alleviates the guilty conscience of the cheater while destroying the other person. What purpose does honesty serve when all it results in is destruction?

I believe people need to be selective in their honesty. Your audience, the occasions, and the purpose all play a role in determining what you should say and how you should say it. Sometimes a partial truth or a flat-out lie will spare those around you as well as yourself unnecessary heartache.

Blogging A to Z challenge letter for the day is G, which brings me to Guns n’ Roses, my very favorite band. From the first time I heard them, I was captivated by the edge in their music, Slash’s easy too-cool-for-you vibe, and Axl’s sexy sway.

I never got the chance to see them perform live, although I tried. I was supposed to see them in Alpine Valley in 1991 but never made it. It’s a very long story where the people who were with me look bad and I look bad, too. When the night ends with a drunk girl (not me) puking on a cop and tickets issued all around, it’s not pretty. Thanks to my stupidity and the the police in Hebron, Illinois, I never got the opportunity to see my favorite band live.

Me dressed as Axl Rose at a halloween party.

Some people find their music offensive for its language, content, and misogyny. I won’t deny that their music contains plenty of foul language, offensive content, and some misogyny. But I’ve always been pretty liberal minded about music and focused on that as opposed to the social acceptance of the music at the time, because that can be fickle.

Probably my favorite song by Guns’ n Roses is “November Rain“. I love the fact that it is based on a short story and it tells that story but I can’t figure it out completely. I love music that hints at a story but leaves it up to me to figure out what is going on.

Another one of my favorites is “Patience“. This is likely because it was the only song by G n’ R that my husband could tolerate while we were dating/engaged. I won’t deny that the lyrics also spoke to our relationship at the time, so the song has some history.

I also really love “Think About You“. It’s got a slick, sexy vibe to it. The song just makes me smile and feel good on the inside 😉

I also won’t deny that I really like the song “Better” which many will likely consider a sacrilege by G n’ R purists since it came off of Chinese Democracy. But I can’t help myself — the riff in that tune and the words just get me every time I hear it.

My friend Chris and I dressed as Axl and Slash at a halloween party. We took 2nd place in the costume contest.

Not to mention that Axl is just too damn sexy.

After posting my Blogging A to Z challenge post for the letter E, there were tongue-in-cheek comments about what the F word post should be. And it turns out that it’s not a joke because my F word post is indeed about the F word. So if you find the F bomb offensive, you’re best off not reading any further.

This post is actually a guest post from the friend who actually suggested it first. Laura tells a great story about the first time she let the F word fly in front of her mother and how she struggled to make sense of why it was a bad word. Her story really struck me in two ways: first, it made me think about the first time my own daughter let the F bomb fly — she was maybe 3 or 4 years old. She was mad at me and said, “You’re fuckin’, Mommy.” My mother-of-the-year response was, “I’m fuckin’? You can’t even use the fucking word the right way.” But the thing (the other thing) that strikes me is that word — why is it bad? What makes a word good or bad? I guess I can wrap my brain around why a word that is used as a racial or ethnic slur would be bad — its intent it is to hurt and degrade. But why are swear words bad? I readily admit the F word is a pretty big part of my vocabulary — for better or worse. That’s why my daughter said it at such an early age. But rather than continue to ponder the origin of evil, I present to you my friend Laura’s guest post about the F word. Fuck yeah!

“As a child, I repeated things my mother said. Unfortunately for her, what she said one day was worked into song form, which I sung for my family after supper, to the horror of everyone:

Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it in a Bucket! Fuck it on a Truck! Fuck it, Yeah, just Fuck it!

Mercifully, I don’t recall a dance to accompany it.

I remember a completely shocked, white-faced audience. I remember saying, What…? About a millisecond before my mom snatched me up.

Oh no! You can’t ever say that, Laura!

But you said Fuck it today and it rhymes with truck it and bucket and lots of stuff…

It doesn’t matter, it’s a bad word! I shouldn’t have said it.

I looked at my one year younger brother, like, Do you believe this shit? Who was chewing on his sleeve in nervousness and despair at my situation. There goes my song! I remember yelling. Then I just remember my siblings running from the room in fear and later, eating a popsicle and wondering, What the Fuck was that all about? Did I mishear my own mother, who’s every utterance I hung on? What was wrong with my song, was my pentameter off? Did someone else write a Fuck it in a Bucket song first, and was I plagiarizing? What in the Wide World of Sports was going on?

My sister’s counsel: You said a swear word! You said the worst one!

Me: So?

Sis: You can get spanked for that!

Me: I didn’t get spanked.

Sis: But you could! It’s the worst one!

Me (perched analytically in the head of my 5 year old self): But I didn’t. Why is it a bad word? How does a word get to be a bad word? How can words be bad? I said it, Nothing happened. (If there’s no consequence, is it still bad? Are there things in this world that are bad just on account of?)

Sis: it just is! It’s the worst one!

While I was trying to digest how my mom did anything bad, because she was a sweet, singing, pie baking chestnut haired angel who I adored unconditionally, and while I tried to decipher the idea of a ‘bad word,’ my sister kept breaking into my day dreaming with her insidious nagging. (It’s the worst one!) Do things have worth outside of their purposes? (Spankings!) If so, how is that worth assigned? (You’re in trouble!) Am I to deduce that worth is inherited? That things have a worth outside of my idea of value? If that’s true, things are only important in relevance… (Wait til Dad finds out!) Maybe a word exists merely to be bad, but if that’s true, how are we all assigning the same value at once? (You said a Bad Word!) Where does a bad word come from? (Mom’s mad at you!)

Finally, I couldn’t take another dire warning, all because I wrote a KickAss song, and I started to cry. I said, I’m telling Mom on you! And then I ran outside to play, thinking, Oh well, Fuck it. She’s always a Cassandra anyways.” — Laura Pogliano