People Who Know Drama Better Than TNT

On behalf of my beautiful wife, Lisa Salaymal-Strohman, I’m writing a post based on an observation she has made in relation to some of her social networking friends.  She has many, so if you are reading this, it’s probably NOT about you.  But if you are the paranoid, everything-is-always-about-me type, maybe you’ll learn something.

So my wife is constantly updating me on the drama she reads in the social media updates.  One case in particular is a little frightening.  The ex-wife of a friend of a family member (isn’t social media great in the way we have “friends” who aren’t really friends) has been in the midst of a broiling dispute with an ex-boyfriend for quite some time.  This guy is a real bozo—a convicted criminal and troublemaker extraordinaire—and they were apparently jawing back and forth and basically letting the whole world view their strife.  It was great entertainment for a little while, but then things got ugly when the guy started getting her very young son involved, posting pictures of him and making not-so-well-disguised threats.  She continued to provoke him, questioning his manhood and detailing his criminal background, and apparently it escalated to the point where he tried to break into her house and was arrested.

This woman is good-looking, I’ll give her that, but she’s a drama queen, sitting on her throne with this air of haughtiness, as if she can do no wrong in anything she does, whether it be her appearance or personality.  Yet she repeatedly prodded this guy, and instead of stopping when her son became involved, she increased her foolishness even more.  A line was crossed, and either she was too caught up in it to not realize, or else she’s just not that bright.  Either way, this girl seems to live on drama.

But it’s not just her.  My sister had a friend who repeatedly dated the “wrong guys.”  She was living with a guy for well over a year, and despite the fact that he threw an air conditioner through a window of their RENTED apartment (of course SHE was the only one on the lease), she stayed with him.  Then he ended up in jail for one crime or another, and she finally dumped him—and moved on to a guy with similar issues.

I know a lady who is like this in her workplace.  She is constantly gossiping, pushing people’s buttons, asking inappropriate questions, writing long and ranting emails.  She has a little group of women that she shares her inappropriateness with, and they just go along with it and laugh and enable her.  This lady has family issues, financial issues, you name it (and everyone knows because she details every second of her existence), and yet she’s completely clueless as to how she’s perceived by her superiors.  She’s always questioning why she didn’t get a bigger raise or bonus, and she can’t fathom that it has anything to do with her personality.

Funny, I just re-read that last paragraph, and it actually describes a number of people I know either directly or indirectly.

And back to my wife.  She sees this phenomenon called “perpetrating the fraud” happening all over social media sites.  People will put up posts saying they are going to “take a stand” or “confront” so and so or such and such, but it never seems to happen.  Even more to the point, people will try to instigate fights with close friends or coworkers, then see them in person the next day and act as if nothing happened.  I remember doing this decades ago with my cousin using the online service Prodigy (yeah, before the Internet).  We got into a little spat over an online game we were playing, and it progressed into sending each other 2-4 page messages calling each other names and pointing out each other’s flaws.  Then we’d see each other in school the next day and act like nothing happened.  But in my defense, we were like 12 years old.

I know we all need a little action in our lives, but, at least for me, that’s what movies and television and books are for.  That’s why reality television is so popular.  People watch Jersey Shore because it’s funny, yeah, but the incessant fighting is what draws people in.  It’s the same with soap operas.  People just LOVE drama.

But for those people that welcome it—no, NEED it—in their personal lives, I just don’t get it.  Does airing your grievances on social media for the entire world to see satisfy some deep urge inside of you?  Does dating the wrong type of person make you feel like you’ve accomplished something?  Does putting your personal and professional life in danger give you a thrill?  It all just seems so silly to me.

Of course, I’m probably not the best one to judge.  The highlight of my week happened earlier today when I had three cavities filled.  I’m in bed every night at 9:30 PM.  I sold my motorcycle a month before my son was born because I felt riding it was unsafe (not because I was reckless on it, but because other drivers don’t pay attention to motorcycles—a fact I learned the hard way when twice I had someone pull out right in front of me, both times causing me to brake hard and maneuver quickly into another lane).  But you get my point.

Maybe there’d be a lot less crime if we weren’t so hell-bent on experiencing drama in our lives.  My wife and I were watching The First 48 the other night, and there were two rival gangs in Miami—kids in their teens—who lived two blocks away from each other.  They were all friends when they were young, but as they grew into middle school, they began having a beef with each other over something as silly as reputation.  You know, my block is better than yours.  Then one of them was shot and killed, and the young man who pulled the trigger put together a rap song and uploaded it to YouTube, basically bragging about killing the other kid.  And then one of the victim’s cohorts shot and killed the first killer’s uncle.  Mayhem in the streets, all because of reputation built off the need for drama.

I’m not a pessimist.  People reading my blog would probably argue that point, but I really don’t enjoy going around observing and pointing out what’s wrong with society.  I relish in what is right though, and I just wish everyone could do the same.  It’s one thing to observe the negative.  It’s something else entirely to live it.

Blind to the Ways of the World

I’m amazed at how content some people are with ignorance.  They live day to day without reading newspapers, watching news, surfing the web.  And I’m finding more and more of these people each and every day.  People that choose not to encumber themselves with technological tools such as smart phones and Facebook accounts.  People that don’t have cable or satellite subscriptions or even a television to watch them on.  What gives?

My wife’s aunt  is in her late thirties or early forties and can’t read.  Not English.  Not Vietnamese, which is her native country.  I just can’t imagine stumbling through life and seeing WORDS everywhere and not knowing what they say.  I mean, how could anyone go through life without having any inkling of what is going on around them? 

On the flip side, I see people that seem to LIVE on social networking sites.  I've even had some recent Facebook "friends" that have lost all social etiquette.  It seems some people, rather than choosing to give updates on their daily happenings or posting pictures of things they find interesting or exciting, have decided that Facebook is a prime market for proselytizing their political agendas.  It’s not like he or she would go around telling people in public that Romney is an idiot or Obama is inept.  Doing so would probably, at the very least, get a few choice vulgar words or middle fingers tossed at them.  Yet on Facebook they have no problem posting graphs and phrases outlining the fallacies of our president and/or his competitor.  Or worse yet, a few of my Facebook “friends” have posted glaringly inappropriate content.  Nobody wants to know that you think that lady’s butt looks nice, even though you used some outrageously vulgar language to express your sentiments.  Nobody cares that you think certain people have lied to you for years, and that they can all reside in a fiery biblical residence for their rest of eternity.  Nobody cares about your religion or your politics or anything else you post in an attempt to make people see your point of view.  Because either people will agree with you, or they won’t, and the ones that won’t will just think you are nuts and defriend/block/ignore you.

I’m not sure which is better, being completely naïve to the ways of the world or knowing entirely too much, especially with regards to close friends and members of your own family.

When I turned eighteen, I got a tattoo on my leg of the Chinese symbol for the word slave.  I had it lasered off in my late twenties because, well, it was the Chinese symbol for the word slave!   And really, I think it might have actually meant “female slave”—I know, how awful is that!—and I felt extremely embarrassed about it when I frequented Chinese eateries.  But the reason I got the tattoo in the first place was purely philosophical.  It was to always remind me that I am a slave to my desires.  In other words, I live in a capitalist, keeping-up-with-the-Jones’s society where everyone is judgmental of everyone else, money equals power, and we are raised from a young age to place value in material possessions.  I will always want things.  And each and every time I see something I want, that something begins to own me.  I’ve lost control.  I’ve become nothing more than a child lusting over a piece of candy.

For a while I actually dreamed of moving to China and joining a monastery.  I wanted to train my body and my mind to think without influence, to exist without needs, to accept all and judge nothing.  Of course, being a white American kid, I realized those were merely pipe dreams.  Sure I studied martial arts and read hundreds of books on eastern philosophies, but I had to be realistic.  And now that I’m a father and a husband, I wouldn’t trade my family for the world.  But I still envy those monks, knowing that they know nothing and yet everything at the same time.

Our minds, as babies, have not yet developed enough to understand the world in which we live.  And as we grow, we learn to love, hate, value, judge, believe.  We learn what is right and what is wrong, what makes us happy and what makes us sad.  But unfortunately all of that is relative.  What I judge to be good, like maybe voting for Obama for president, someone else may judge to be bad.  I value my Dodge Ram pickup truck, and yet I know a few people who detest the make and model and even hate the people who drive them, as I learned one day when a friend not-so-eloquently put his foot in his mouth by bashing people who drove them, not knowing that I had just purchased one a few weeks prior.  Oops!

So really, all of these things that we’ve learned since the time we were born really seem quite trivial and meaningless, don’t they?  Even down to the mere words we use to describe things.  Is it a spoon?  A utensil?  A lifter?  A ladle?  A spatula?  Did you walk here?  Or stroll?  Trot?  Bounce?  Saunter?  Oolala!  We use labels to define things, and yet those words do no justice for what I’m describing.  Each of you reading this is  picturing a different type of spoon—plastic, ornate, wooden, soup, large, small.  Does it matter?  All this knowledge in our heads is pointless.  Rather we should be focusing on the tangible and intangible.  Focus on what we observe.  Pass no judgment.  Do not label it.  Observe it, understand it, and then move on.

Having an empty, clear mind is a wondrous thing.  Because without that, we are all mindless slaves.  I’m a slave to my desires, and so are you.  I can’t just give up social media.  I mean, I can, but how else would I let all of my followers know I have this wonderful blog?  I can’t quit my job, because then I couldn’t put food on the table for my family.  I can’t give up drinking Red Bull.  Ok, maybe I can, but why should I?  We are born to be consumers.  We are born to grow up, go to school, get a job, have a family if we choose, grow old, and die…and buy buy buy all the way through.

Sad, really.  Life for those monks seems so much simpler.  And easy.  And peaceful.  They know a spoon is for eating rice, and that’s that.  They don’t get to hear daily about gas prices going up, injustices toward others, etc. etc.  It's no wonder they are some of the greatest thinkers mankind has to offer.

Maybe my friends and family who live life outside of the proverbial “Know” are onto something.  And maybe I shouldn’t have had that tattoo removed.

Going to the Beach Beach

Going to the beach...beach...

I bought these two pairs of shoes from Famous Footwear a couple of weekends ago, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how well I like them.  I'm not normally a shoe guy.  I think I own maybe two pairs of boots, a pair of sandals, a worn-out pair of casual dress shoes, and two pairs of sneakers.  My lovely wife, who owns dozens and dozens and dozens of shoes much to my chagrin, insisted I get some new ones to go to the beach, and so we stopped in at Famous Footwear in Harrisburg over Father's Day weekend and I got myself these two pairs.  Since then I've worn both a handful of times, and I have to say they are very comfortable for my size 13 W feet.  If you are a big guy looking for a nice pair of sandals and sneakers, check these out.

We also had to get a new portable DVD player for my son for the trip to the beach beach.  Don't ever buy an RCA portable DVD player like this one:

  

We got one like this in January, and after minimal use (maybe a half hour a day in the car), the thing warped inside causing a little piece of plastic to bend up into the DVDs as they would spin.  We didn't realize this until it completely destroyed one of my son's Marvel Superhero Squad DVDs.  I wanted to break down and buy a headrest DVD player for him, but I don't think we'll have our vehicle long enough to justify the cost.  Instead, we got a cheap Sylvania one that seems to work pretty well.  See, these are the things you don't think about when you plan on having kids.  Yeah, you have to feed them and pay for diapers and clothing and whatnot, but our son would be lost without his movies to watch in the car.  We're now on our third DVD player, and with each one costing roughly $100, that's an added expense that we hadn't really considered.  Oh well--at least he's not into playing sports yet...

It's been a long time since we've been to the beach beach.  I have to say it like that because my wife sings that line from Nicki Minaj's Starship over and over and over.  I really wish she'd learn some more lyrics from that song.  Anyway, it's been so long since we've been there that I keep remembering all the cool stuff we want to do.  Swimming, building sand castles, collecting sea shells, walking on the boardwalk, eating, eating, eating, biking in the mornings, playing in the arcades, riding rides.  The list goes on and on and on.  I just hope we have enough time to do all we want to do in a week!

Regardless, my blog will be on hiatus until probably the second week of July.  The same goes for participating in flash fiction contests and writing.  As much as I love doing all of these things, relaxing at the beach beach trumps them all.

Have a good one!

Time to Grow Up!

Yesterday Phil Miller, the man who hired me at my position, retired from thirty years of service with our firm.  He’ll be sorely missed.  Aside from his peculiar antics that make him him, he has been a great mentor and friend over the years.  Sure, he’s probably come to me for technology-related issues a hundred times more often than I’ve sought out his advice on retirement planning, but that’s the nature of our chosen fields of expertise.  Still, he paved the way for our company bringing in an IT expert twelve years ago and thereby giving me a job, and for that I’m thankful.

I guess I’ve reached a point in my lifetime where it’s time to put on the big-boy pants and accept the fact that my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers, are all on their way out.  Sure, we’ll still see them holding political offices and heading large companies and corporations.  For some of us, age never seems to trump the prospects of more or continued money and/or power.  But for the most part, all of the Baby Boomers have already, are in the process of, or will be retiring very soon, relinquishing duties and control over to Generation X.

Funny, because I still feel like a kid.  I guess having that feeling is a good thing.  I mean, I’m on the latter end of the generation, having been born in the late 70s.  I also had my son later in life, being 31 when he was born.  Having a young one in your life tends to make you feel younger.  I swear I have just as much fun as he does playing with his Avengers toys and building forts out of pillows and stuffed animals.  We could spend hours in the toy store, both of us playing with cars and light-up swords and gauging which ones are worth buying to take home and play with some more.  Honestly, I don’t want to grow up!

Five years ago, before my son was born and my father passed away, I really felt like a kid.  Naïve.  Carefree.  Careless, to some degree.  My responsibilities from that time seem piddly compared to the ones I have now.  And whenever I had a question, I’d typically go to my dad.  He seemed to know everything, whether it was how to change brakes on a car to building a deck to water treatment processes and options.  He only attended a few years of college, but being a Navy Corpsman, electronics salesman, chemical salesman, and DIY master, he always seemed to know the answers to any of my questions with his huge vault of knowledge.

Now it seems more people have questions for me than I have for them.  And more often than not, I know the answer.  Maybe not to the extent that I could write a Wikipedia article on it, but I always seem to know enough.  I don’t know if it’s all those years of Q&A sessions with my father or my lifetime experiences or my education, but it’s amazing how I’ve acquired so much over the years.

It makes me realize that somewhere there I guess I already have grown up.  I can’t pinpoint a date or a year.  Was it the day my son was born?  Or when my father passed away?  Was it the day I graduated from college or started my first big boy job?  Or perhaps when I bought my first car or my house?  I don’t know, but all of those things made me take a leap into the unknown, and each one of them likely contributed to my “grown-up” status.

Thirty years or so from now, I’ll be retiring as well.  Maybe I’ll have grandkids and a cozy little spot picked out where I can spend the rest of my years.  Maybe not.  But no matter what—no matter how much I know or where life will take me, I think I’ll always still be a kid, still thinking that someday I’ll have to put on my big boy pants and grow up.  Or maybe it’s just better if I keep being that “grown-up” subconsciously and instead focus on having fun in life.

Don't Make Me Mad!

Last night, after a nice and relaxing forty-five minutes at the park walking and playing in the little playground there, I went home and did some self-reflecting.  It wasn’t easy, considering my son’s energy must not have been fully expended by that point as he was jumping on the bed and hitting me with pillows.  But as I sat there, mindlessly watching Celebrity Apprentice that I’d recorded on the DVR and fending off multiple polyester-filled missiles, my thoughts turned to that of self-assessment.

I realized that I really couldn’t be happier.  Sure I could always use more money, a bigger house, and a better wardrobe.  I’d love to get an in-ground swimming pool.  Heck, I’d love to just quit my job and spend hours and hours every day with my son, relaying to him the abundance of mostly useless knowledge I have stored up in my noggin.  He’ll be three in a couple of weeks, and sometimes I feel like I’ve missed a lot of opportunities with him being in daycare all day long.  Then again, there are some dads out there that travel for work, only seeing their kids a couple of nights a week, and those guys miss out on a lot more than I do.

But yeah, I’m a pretty happy guy.  I don’t have many problems.  I mean, yeah, I could always be in better shape.  We are planning a trip to the beach this summer, and a couple of my trip companions are concerned about their beach bodies.  I think I’m personally less concerned with my body image as I am with my overall health.  As far as my physique goes, my son says I look like the Hulk.  I laugh, thinking I probably look more like the Blob.  Hopefully my skin doesn’t have a greenish tint to it that I’m not aware of.  And I hope he doesn’t dwell on the rare times I get angry.  Everyone gets upset every once in a while, some more often than others, but I try to limit it as much as possible around him.  I don’t want him growing up in an environment where yelling is normal and accepted.  I try to laugh and be humorous with him as much as possible.  I’m also a pretty mellow guy by nature, so that helps.

Some people aren’t, though.  A couple of months ago, during the early evening hours, I just happened to look out the window and saw some guy pull over on the side of the road right across from my house.  He got out, walked around to the other side of his car, dragged a six-year-old kid out of the back seat, and began “paddling” him senselessly.  The kid was screaming and crying, and the guy tossed him back in, then came back to the other side and did the same with what appeared to be a four-year-old.  At that point I was up, down the hallway, and was standing outside my front door with my arms crossed, glaring at him.  He glanced over at me with a fury-filled, beat-red (as opposed to beet-red) face, said absolutely nothing, got in the car and sped off down the road as if nothing had happened.  I can’t say it was child abuse, as he did only smack them on their behinds, but there was something in his demeanor and the viciousness of the paddling that made me think that wasn’t the first or last of his temper.

I guess some people just aren’t meant to have children.  Perhaps conception was an accident, or maybe they were just careless.  Maybe a sixteen-year-old female, on the advice of her thirty-two-year-old mother, told her boyfriend she was taking birth control but wasn’t, hoping to get pregnant so that she could force him and his family to pay child support, just as her mother had done before her.  Or maybe they really did want kids, but their own upbringing was so screwed up that they don’t know how to raise them.  Or maybe a parent just snapped, just one blue-moon moment where that guy just couldn’t take it any longer, but instead of working through his anger calmly on his own, he unfortunately decided to take it out on his kids.  Who knows?

Some people turn their anger inward on themselves.  They wallow in their misery, hoping for a pity party from anyone who will listen to them.  Some of these cases may be legitimate illnesses such as depression or bipolar disorder, but many just seem to live their lives crying “why me?” while the world passes them by.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve read Facebook posts or Tweets by people complaining about their lives or their problems.  I feel so sorry for those people—not because they have love-life issues or that they are crazy busy while suffering from a migraine.  I pity them because they use social media to air their problems, because they don’t seem to have anyone else in their lives to talk to, and because they refuse to focus and see all the positive things in their lives rather than dwelling on the negative.

I’m sure those same people would look at me and say, “Well, you don’t know me, Ryan.  You don’t know what I have to deal with.”  But that’s the unequivocal and grandiose problem and answer right there.  Why are you comparing yourself to me?  Why do you think the grass is greener in my lawn?  Yeah, I did use Scott’s TurfBuilder, but I did it because I had a huge dandelion problem—not to play Keeping Up with the Joneses.  Yeah, possibly I make more money than you, but there are a lot of people out there that make a lot more money than me.  Yeah, maybe I don’t have your health problems, but I’ve had my fair share of them—including a broken skull, ruptured appendix, etc.  We could go back and forth all day, and what would it accomplish?  Would you be any happier?  Probably not. 

Take a serious look at your life and ask yourself what you have to be thankful for.  I’m certain you’ll find more than you realize.  And when you do, embrace it.  Cherish it.  Open the curtains and the windows and breathe in a nice big breath of fresh air.  Go for a walk or even a run if you are physically able.  I think you’ll find, if you do that, that your life really isn’t all that bad.  And if you really do have a serious issue in your life that you are dealing with or need to deal with, perhaps that newfound positive vibe will help you tackle it.  Because I can assure you, the “woe is me” attitude won’t.

And remember, being angry at the world doesn't solve anything either.  Not only does it raise your blood pressure and put you at risk for serious health issues (like getting your butt kicked), but it wastes your time and energy that could be better spent enjoying life or improving yourself.  Besides, you look pretty silly with that angry face.  Right?  Yeah, who are you kidding?