a view from the other side

I’ve been annoyed more often than usual in the last month or so. I’m generally fairly easy-going, but even the smallest things have been bugging me lately. I believe this is due to the anxiety I’ve been experiencing.

February was a very stressful month, both personally and professionally, which is why my 27th Day posts are several days late. When I’m stressed, I’m anxious, resulting in extreme reactions to trivial matters, such as the shoes my husband left in the middle of the living room floor for me to trip over.

When reviewing specific incidences of annoyance over the past month, I discovered most fell within just a handful of categories. So, I’ve listed the top five things that bug me.

1. Adults who don’t pick up or clean up after themselves. When I go to bed at night, the counters are clean and clutter free. But, after my husband gets up, pours a cup of coffee and makes toast for breakfast, the counters are covered with coffee stains, empty packets of sweetener, an open loaf of bread, and a margarine container with a knife sticking out of it. That bugs me!
2. Individuals who inappropriately promote their personal agendas. I find this even more objectionable than commercial spam. An email, disguised as a joke, denigrates our president; a message on a hobby list urges participation in a letter-writing campaign on a politically-charged issue; a tech forum post calls for the boycott of a company because it’s owned by foreigners. The perpetrators think they can get away with this because they don’t profit monetarily, but this is spam, and it bugs me!
3. Bad grammar. I admit I’m a grammar snob. Any high school graduate who speaks English as a first language should  be able to speak and write correctly. The word “ain’t” is like fingernails scraping across a blackboard. “He don’t” and “there” when “their” is required are almost as annoying. Today is National Grammar Day, so why not make it a point to improve your speaking and writing? That won’t bug me!
4. People who practice and preach intolerance. Yes, I’m intolerant of intolerance. There are those so convinced of the superiority of their opinions and values they are not only prejudiced against those who differ, but actively promote discrimination against them. That, my friends, is bigotry. It bugs me, and it should bug you!
5. A day has only 24 hours and 8 are wasted sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, I love to sleep. I’d probably do it even more if I wasn’t so busy doing other things. I’ve been told we need less sleep as we age, but I didn’t nap until I hit 50. It annoys me that I can’t function without devoting a third of my life to slumber. I spend an hour every day dealing with email, so why can’t I spend only 60 minutes sleeping? That would bug me more if I weren’t so tired.

What bugs you?

I ran across this video of comedian Louis CK’s appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He talked about how everything is amazing now, but nobody is happy. We all take this technologically-advanced world around us for granted.

He mentioned the rotary phone in his house when he was a kid. Ours didn’t have a dial. To place a call, you picked up the receiver and the operator at the other end said, “Number, please.” Our number was only four digits, and since we were on a party line, we had a distinctive ring — one long and two short.

The phone itself was as black and heavy as a bowling ball, with a straight, cloth-covered cord. It sat on top of the radio/phonograph console in the living room. I was instructed to answer, “Hewitt residence, Mary speaking.”

Our line was shared with my grandmother and my father’s insurance office, so we didn’t have anyone interesting to eavesdrop on. But, when I visited my grandmother, I would sit in the corner of the dining room at the little phone table nestled next to the china cabinet, listening to the interesting conversations of all the neighbors.  My grandmother scolded me only after I repeated everything I’d heard.

I was a teenager when we got our first dial phone, but since we still shared a line, I wasn’t allowed to spend any time gabbing with my girlfriends on the phone. In some ways, we missed the cheery voice of the operator when we picked up the receiver, and it took some time to get used to having to dial a number.

We didn’t have exchanges like they did in the city, so our number was still short. My cousin had a phone number that started with TU, which stood for Tuxedo. I still remember her number: TU1-4489. Bloomington still has the same exchange, but of course is now 881.

In 1965, I went to work for Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in Fargo, ND, back when it was referred to a Ma Bell. I worked as a dispatcher, sending the installers out to put princess phones in teenagers’ bedrooms across the area. How different those cute little phones were from the black behemoth that sat in our living room when I was a child.

Today my phone fits easily in my pocket, and I’m in contact daily with my children and grandchildren who live hundreds of miles away. I am amazed by the technology that allows me to communicate so easily with those I love, but I’m also grateful we once had exchanges that put letters, as well as numbers, on our phone dials. How else would we be able to text?

Today’s word to journal at OneWord is “remember.” Easy to write about for someone who teaches memoir writing, wouldn’t you think? Not exactly, since the broad scope of the word caused me to contemplate the whole notion of how memories are formed. Why do we remember certain moments in our lives so clearly while others are buried within our minds?

Scientific studies show that highly emotional events are remembered much longer and more clearly than those that evoke little or no emotion. It’s why my generation remembers the Kennedy assassination and the first moon landing, while my parents remembered the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Today we remember events such as the space shuttle disaster, the Oklahoma City bombing, and, of course, 9/11.

When recalling my own vivid memories, I realize they are indeed emotional.

My first memory was one of terror. I was very young, because I was still sleeping in a crib. When I woke up, the blanket was completely covering me, and I couldn’t find my way out. I related this memory to my mother, who said our house was always chilly in the winter, so she fastened my blanket to the crib rails so I wouldn’t kick it off. It’s likely I somehow managed to get turned around under the blanket. To this day, I can’t stand anything over my face and head.

Another memory of childhood involves my vision. My parents found out I was extremely nearsighted when I was only three. I vividly remember riding home in the car wearing my new glasses and realizing trees had leaves and cows had faces. I also remember having breakfast with my husband after cataract surgery five years ago and being able to read a sign across the restaurant without my glasses.

Other vivid childhood memories are also emotional. I remember being accused of writing something derogatory about our teacher on the blackboard and being helpless to prove it wasn’t me. Perhaps that’s why I can’t tolerate movies about people who are charged with crimes they didn’t commit.

I clearly remember the day when my classmates started a forest fire. I attended a small country school with two grades in each room. I was in fifth grade when we went on a picnic in the woods near our school. Some of the sixth graders snuck off to smoke and didn’t put out their cigarettes carefully. Several acres were burned before the fire was finally extinguished. The experience didn’t prevent me from taking up the smoking habit later on, but I’ve always been extra sensitive to the smell of burning.

Of course there are many other memories that have stuck with me over the years. It will be interesting to see which ones are retained as I grow older. As my mother’s Alzheimer’s progressed, she lost all her memories of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but she still remembered events from her childhood. Toward the end she became upset because her parents, who had passed away decades earlier, didn’t come to visit her.

Learn more about memories:

• How we remember and why we forget
• Brain regions influence our memories
• Neuroscientists identify how trauma triggers long-lasting memories in the brain
• New understanding of how we remember traumatic events
  
• Probing the mechanics behind how we remember
  
• The flavor of memories

What are your first memories? Are most of your early memories emotional?

During a recent conversation with an online friend, I was surprised to hear she had been spending a great deal of time ponderin what she wanted her newborn grandson to call her when he started to talk. I soon discovered that naming the new grandparents is almost as important as naming the new baby.

When I was growing up in the Fifties, my cousins and I called our grandparents by their last names. For me that was Grandma and Grandpa Hewitt, and Grandma and Grandpa Fenne. I couldn’t imagine calling them anything else. This traditional form of address was an expression of respect. A few of my friends were even more formal and called their grandparents Grandmother and Grandfather. 

I don’t remember giving much thought to the grandparent name issue when my daughter was born. Her paternal grandparents were as old as my own grandparents, so it seemed natural to call them Grandma and Grandpa Schubert. My parents were in their early forties, so their first names, Gordon and Elaine, were more appropriate. Somehow these were shortened to Grandpa Gordy and Grandma Lainie. When my nephew and nieces came along much later, they also used those names for their grandparents.

When I became a grandparent myself, there wasn’t much question I was going to be called Gramma Mary since the other grandmother was already called Gramma Carol by her grandchildren. Eventually my name was shortened to Grammary.

Many grandparents receive their nicknames because the grandchildren mispronounce their names. My middle daughter’s first child was also the first grandchild on her in-laws side, who picked Nana and Papa Bear as their names. However, my granddaughter changed Nana to Nina, and that’s how she’s known to all the grandkids. I always thought she should be called Granny Grubbs, but not surprisingly she vetoed that name.

Papa Bear passed away when his granddaughter was only two. Eight years later, Nina married a man with the same first name as her late husband. The grandkids call him Binky, a nickname my granddaughter bestowed upon him. She was, after all, the first grandchild on that side, so she had naming power.

One of my other granddaughters has a grandmother she calls Honey. Apparently the name came from her first grandchild because that’s what she called him. It’s seems many grandparents receive their nicknames this way.

Other grandparents have ethnic names. My friend of German heritage called her grandparents Oma and Opa. My Greek son-in-law’s mother should be called Ya-Ya, but I think she’s just plain Grandma.

I told my friend not to worry to much about what her grandson calls her. I’m sure she’ll answer with love to any name.

Here are a few resources for choosing a grandparent name:

• The World’s Only Grandparent Nickname Book
• The Grandparents’ Guide to Choosing a Name that Fits
• The New Grandparents Name Book
• How to Choose Your Grandparent Name
• Different Names for Grandparents
• Grandparent Names Around the World
• Nicknames for Grandparents
• Names for Grandparents

 If you’re a grandparent, what do your grandkids call you? What do your kids call their grandparents? What did/do you call your own grandparents?

When we visited my daughter during the holidays, we slept in my 8-year-old grandson’s room. He came in one morning and crawled in bed next to my husband.

“I smell something,” he announced.

“What does it smell like,” I asked.

“It smells like oldness.”

We laughed about it for awhile, but then I began wondering, what does “oldness” smell like? Is it the musty odor of an antique book pulled from the shelf at an estate sale? The stale, starchy scent of heirloom linens unfolded from a trunk in the attic? The sharp, acidic aroma of a rusting watering can forgotten in the far corner of the garden?

A canine’s sense of smell could help diagnose disease, but can our age be determined by the way we smell? We color our hair to cover the grey, undergo facelifts to remove wrinkles, and exercise regularly to retain a youthful figure, so it’s discouraging to think our scent will give us away.

When I was in my twenties and early thirties, I wore the fragrance “Youth Dew” by Estee Lauder. Apparently this scent, despite its name, is suited to grandmothers, not adolescents. At least it’s a consolation that Madonna wears it. But wait, Madonna turned 50 last year! Somehow I doubt anyone ever tells her she smells of oldness.

Today I’m feeling overwhelmed. Too much on my plate once again. I really do need to learn how to prioritize.

My grandson was naturally upset when I forgot his birthday. I told him it was because my head was filled with so much stuff there wasn’t room for any more.

“Then vacuum it out, Gramma!” he told me.

Smart kid.

Every time I begin feeling sorry for myself about one thing or another, I run across someone who’s much worse off than I am. While I complain about our heating costs, one of my Twitter followers is heating her house with a kerosene heater because she can’t pay a $900 fuel bill. When I fret about my grandchild’s health problems, I remember my client whose 2-year-old niece has leukemia. With a change in our insurance coverage, we’re struggling to pay our medical bills, but an online friend can’t afford a critical surgery.

I’m not usually a “half-full” kind of gal until someone comes along with an empty glass. Why is it that I have so much trouble counting my blessings? Maybe it’s because I have so many. Here are three:

1. My home is warm even when the temperature here in Minnesota doesn’t get above zero for an entire week.
2. My son-in-law works for a company that provides great health insurance coverage for two of my grandkids who have health problems.
3. After my cataract surgery four years ago, I went from wearing inch-thick glasses to only reading glasses.

I first started blogging back when they were called “weblogs” and consisted of links to sites of interest. At the same time, I was sporadically posting entries to an online diary. But, by the time the blog boom began, I was no longer part of the online writing in-crowd.

Today’s blogs are a combination of weblogs and online diaries with a bit of commerce thrown in. Some bloggers are making big bucks with ads and affiliate links, and relative unknowns have become blogging superstars.

I held off for a long time, but finally decided to enter the blogging world once again when I joined a journaling group called Monthly Write offered through HeartWriting. In addition to writing in my journal, I’ll be posting my entries on this blog.

On the 27th of each month, I’ll be writing about three topics:

1. How I’m feeling that day
2. Three things I’m thankful for
3. How aging is affecting me

The rest of the time I’ll just be writing about what’s on my mind. At the age of 63, I’ve got a lot of stuff crammed in there, so if you become a regular reader, you’re sure to find something of interest at one time or another.

I won’t try to sell you anything, or change your mind about anything, or even teach you anything, but I hope what I have to say will make you stop and think, even for just a minute.