A plea for some polite words...

The other night, we went to one of our favorite restaurants (Huanacaxtle cafe) to say "bon voyage" (literally so, twas one of the kid boats going on the "puddle jump", which the sail into the South Pacific is known as) with some friends (Convivia!). We had a large party with about 7 kids, mostly around the age of 5 yrs of age. There was one person smoking at a nearby table, so I decided to ask her to put her cigarette out. Growing up American, gives me the chutzpah to ask, while growing up with a Mexican mom (who's culture emphasizes graciousness and politeness), informed my way of asking.

"Could you please put out your cigarette? We have people in our party that are sensitive to cigarette smoke."

The reply? "I live in Mexico, so I don't have to." While I absorbed this shocking announcement and tried not to let my mouth fall open at that, she continued, "Can't you just have them sit over there?" She asked pointing to the far side of the restaurant.

Before I could tame my tongue- "Smoke doesn't know how to stay on one side of the room." Recovering myself, "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

And that in a nutshell is why I think America is having so many problems and seems to be a sinking ship. Whatever happened to the way of thinking that it is nice to be nice to each other?

Our problems (yes, I still say "our" despite the fact that I live in another country for months at a time and have dual citizenship) in the U.S. is not caused by gay people wanting the same rights at their straight married friends. Nor is it caused by atheists and agnostics wanting the separation between state and religion to be observed a little bit better. Nor is it caused by liberal bleeding hearts asking for our government to help those unfortunates that cannot seem to catch a break, despite their efforts. Nor is it the conservative hard cases that insist that there needs to be limits on our government. Nor is it because our Christian friends proselytize to us heathens. Our problems stem from our arrogant refusal to be polite anymore to each other, or to other members of the world.

While we cannot "polite" our way out of situations like 9/11, there are so many problems that can be solved by politeness. Am I turning into Ms. Manners, here? Maybe...

The image of the "ugly American" is one we all know. Clueless, dressed inappropriately, loud and demanding, Americans and non-Americans alike can laugh and say "Isn't that a funny cliche'? I'm so glad that's not true of me or anyone I know." And yet... we have all come in contact with someone like the aforementioned smoker, someone who believes that their rights are more important than anyone else's. Look through your memories of the last couple of days. Was there a moment where you politely asked someone for something and they ignored you? Responded rudely? Gestured rudely? Or was it you doing it to someone else?

My thoughts linger on this subject because up in the U.S. I become inured to the impoliteness around me. For the past 4 mos. I've been living in a place where being gracious and polite is valued. The two incidents of rudeness in that period of time have both come from... my compatriots. Both times I was startled by the abrupt and unkind attitudes behind those encounters. Now I could argue that Mexicans have been rude to me by crowding around me in line (they don't seem to have the same sense of personal space that Americans have, but is that being rude or is it being chummy?), or sometimes skipping over me when helping customers (the squeaky-spanish-speaking-wheel-gets-the-grease?) but no one can find excuses for my lovely smoker's rudeness or my next example-

While in yet another one of my favorite eateries (what can I say? I like to eat and all that walking into town has caused me to not gain any weight while eating in town), someone approached my son to tell him something. When he came back to our table, I asked him what she had said. "She asked us to keep our voices down." "Did you tell her that we're deaf?" (here I indicated to my 82 yr old father and myself). "Uh, no." O-K. Not wanting to seem rude as we were A) not leaving right away and B) guaranteed to be speaking LOUDLY again, I thought to go over and explain. To be polite, I might add (and yes I know that that is a sentence fragment but it did catch your eye on "polite", I hope).

"Hi! Did you just ask my son for us to keep our voices down?" I began.

"Actually, I told him that YOUR voice was too loud," came the steady reply with a challenge in her eye.

What? This was supposed to be my attempt to explain that we are NOT rude assholes who disregard a request. All sorts of retorts flashed through my head; clever, bitchy ones, even. I swallowed those and went for polite.

"I have hearing aids (here I pulled my hair back to show them to her) and am severely deaf and I am speaking with my profoundly deaf father." I tried to not say this with any antagonism but with the right amount of patience and nicety. Not lecturing, I reminded myself, not talking down to.

She responded with a sniff and a "Whatever."

Um. Really? Again, bitchy, mean things to say back flitted through my grey matter. Again, nicety won out.

"I'm sorry that I bothered your lunch." said NOT in a sarcastic tone, though it was killing me to do so.

One could argue, "See! What good does all that nicey nicey talk get you? IN either case, what good did your politeness get you?" Aside form this passive-aggressive post on my blog, I guess you could say that I took the high road. (going off on a tangent here- T asked me if the smoker's story was going to be my "new story" to tell everyone. When I asked her what she meant, she said, "you tell stories to get everyone to feel sorry for you!" Now if that isn't a classic example of passive-aggressive behavior on my part, I don't know what is) I didn't take in all that negativity and spew it back, thus increasing it. I maintained my little island of civility (though smaller and smaller it may seem) and not stoop to the rude person's level.

Side-note - bumped into "mean-to-deaf-people" woman at a Mexican train night later, and she apologized profusely explaining that the tensions that we were all feeling in the cruising community over some perceived slights had gotten to her that day. I find her to be a very nice person and I think my polite behavior deflated her anger and made her into a friend.

So now I look at my behavior in context to the surrounding culture. In Mexico, it is not rude to stand close to a complete stranger in line, stare at someone who is foreign looking, it is just curiosity. If you observe the way other people get a salesperson's/waiter's attention and imitate it, you won't get skipped over (much). But what does that say about the U.S., where driving down the road, people fling the bird at each other with abandon? Where smokers respond to a request for them to cease smoking, with a "for christ's sake!" Where people bump into you, then somehow give you stink-eye over it?

Today, just for today, try to emphasize the "please" in your requests. Say "thank you" with a sincere look in the other person's eye. Let someone else have the last piece or let that stranger go in front of you. Knowing that just by that small action, you may have encouraged a little more civility on the planet. You never know. We just might change the world for the better.

I ruminate on being witty...

My last post was all about how I wish I was as witty as my other blogging friends, at least that was my conscious self speaking. But somehow my ego/unconscious decided that was not true and this blog post appeared, fully formed, in my head. At 2 Friggin 30 in the morning. And would not leave me alone until about 3:30 in the freakin' morning. GAH! But that is what happens when you are a writer in denial (I make that sound like a drug addiction, now don't I?).

I couldn't very well crawl out of bed at 2:30 AM, which on our boat entails, crawling over my dear inert snoring husband, thus ensuring him to wake up and ask me what I was doing and where was I going? Try explaining to someone who is trying to stay asleep, that not only could I not sleep, but now I want to turn the light on in the salon to write. Somehow, I don't think the hubster would have liked that very much.

Now I DO have many blogging friends that are very funny & witty. There is Jenn Lancaster ( here http://www.jennsylvania.com/jennsylvania/ ) who is so funny that she has written about 4 memoirs (Bitter is the New Black, is her 1st one) and a novel. When I read her blog, I laugh out loud, sometimes cry I am laughing so hard, and sometimes wee in my pants, I am laughing that hard. Have I ever met her? Why no, I haven't, but we have communicated by email and I feel like I know her (as does most of her fans, that's just the way she writes, it makes all of us her "girlfriends").

There is Deb Markus (here at http://www.bitternotes.com/ 1 of her blogs, all of them funny) who became my friend through homeschooling circles and because she ran the most excellent magazine "Secular Homeschooling" (and here is her latest bitter homeschooling list http://www.bitterhomeschooler.com/ about Rick Santorum, funny, very funny).

There is my friend Julie Tilsner ( here http://www.badhomecooking.com/ ) who cracks me up, because I seriously feel like her posts could have been written by someone observing me cooking. Or rather, trying to cook.

Was this a serious plea for all of my readers (all few of you!) to read my favorite other writers to prove that I sit in some pretty exalted company and that feeling intimidated by them, is understandable. (Oh, I almost forgot the person who last intimidated me with her great post on her blog, my newest friend, Molly Forbes Doolittle http://www.doolittlecruising.blogspot.com/2012/02/present-timebarra-navidad.html read this post to Ben's poem which is the best humourous poem I have read recently) Why yes, who do you ask? (and yet another writing friend is the poetess, Millicent Borges Accardi here at http://www.millicentborgesaccardi.com/ which is just more proof that if I can't be witty because of intimidation of my funny friends, I also feel intimidated by my extremely talented poet-y friend, who I grew up with. And yes, I know "poet-y" isn't really a word).

Having written all of the above as a prelude to my post about my stressful day yesterday (yes, you could be excused from the rest of your blog if you chose to read and get lost in those other blogs... wait a minute! No, you have to read the rest of what I have to say)

Yesterday, I lost my dad. Not as in "my dad passed away, isn't that sad?" but in a "geezus, how the hell did I drop my 82 yr old father off at the airport and my cousin is at the other end asking me where my dad is?" kind of way.

I took my dad to the airport, here in Pto Vallarta, and could barely get him on the plane, despite the fact that we arrive 2 hrs and 40 min. prior to departure. What kind of daughter am I, anyway? The kind that thought, "he has a puppy, how would he get on the plane with her?" and then somehow screwed that up-kind. I researched the website, and many others searching if he could travel with her in the cabin (& not in the cargo hold). By all answers, it should have been a resounding "yes"! But getting there, we were told (by a very nice but unresponsive Alicia at Volaris Air) that she could only be in the cargo hold in a hard carrier. Which we were not in the possession of. Nor were we able to follow her simple directions (walk from the airport to Comercial, its only a long block away {more like 1/2 MILE}) and I did tell her I was not going to make my 82 yr old father walk over there, only to miss his flight. She told me I had a bit more than an hour to get it done. Whereupon, my poor husband ran out to the truck, drove over to Comercial, could not find anything but dog houses, then in desperation drove to Wal-Mart (yes, against our religion but yesterday it saved the day) where there was only one size, a bit too small for her, but dammit, that was what we were going to buy. He got back with 15 min. to spare, we checked her in and my dad then needed to get to his gate.

We got some food for him, made him eat as quickly as he could (he is after all, diabetic, and needs to eat) and then got him to security check (which seems weird that I have to explain to my kids that we all used to be able to walk up to departure and keep our loved ones company until they actually were walking onto the plane, oh pre-9/11 was easy now, wasn't it?). Whereupon, all seemed to fall apart. He was standing in line (we walked as far as we could with him), and he was being directed by the TSA guy to where he should go, when a pushy couple just tried to shove him out of the way (which was funny considering he towered over them and could have pushed back & really knocked them over). I watched in dismay, as he dropped his passport, his visa and the dog's health certificate about 3 times while people shoved him around. We watched in a bit of a horror over his being made to go through the metal detector three times while he had to remove 1st his belt, then his change, and then his glasses (really, tsa guy? You are going to make an 82 yr old do all that? Don't you have any ablility to discern whether he is a terrorist by looking at him?) He couldn't hear what the TSA guy was saying and thus further delayed the people behind him, making them ruder! Now I was thinking, why didn't I just spring for another ticket and fly home with him? What else could happen to him? I watched, helpless and increasingly angry and bitter, that people don't seem to be able to help an older, deaf man and help him get through the process of security.

Then late at night (10:30 PM my time in Mexico) I get online to check on my dad and see text/emails from my cousin Yolanda's phone saying that my dad was not there on her end. Wha? Crap, I'm officially now the worst daughter ever, in my mind, because I am now convinced that A) he missed his flight or B) was sent by cab to the wrong border crossing with a lot of luggage and a puppy that jumps on everyone in sight. GAH! While that proved to be incorrect on my part (his flight was delayed and going through the border crossing on SAt. proved to be a longer ordeal than on other days during the week, which we had not accounted for), I was frantic and called back to the U.S. to find out what happened to him (which btw we in PV area are 2 or 3 hrs ahead of San Diego time and I should have taken THAT in account... I thought it was the same time back there and was apoplectic that maybe it was that late for my dad and he was somewhere without the possibility of sleeping somewhere comfortable). My cousin Yolanda is a saint, because she did get him a few min. after her last email to me asking where he was, and took him to her house to sleep and be comfortable and fed. What a great cousin I have, and I really shouldn't have stressed out over it. After all, I need to take the advice that I gave my dad that afternoon, when I said, "Why worry about it? It won't make it go away, and life is too short to worry about what we have no control over".

No control, indeed. sighing

rather than be intimidated...

OK, its true. I've been intimidated by my many, very witty, blogging friends who manage to come up with much better posts that I do. Its also true that I am a bit removed from what is happening politically in the United States, because my day is filled with talking to sailors at the Copa de Mexico, homeschooling, thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner and how will I fit in a nap or a meditation session into my day. Am I dreaming up funny poetry about people that I run into? Nope. Am I sleeping in and then recording the craziest dreams ever, that can then be made into a novel and make me millions? Again, no. Should I be scared of doing any of these things? No, not really and the next time I get a wild hair in my saddle over it, I plan on being witty and funny and gay. Instead, I thought I would post these great pix of my dad on his 82nd birthday and the silliness that ensued.

Here are the kids with their granpa
And then again, me and dad
My dad's special "headwear" courtesy of Oliver from Huanacaxtle

Like I said, silliness ensued but we sure had a good time. One only turns 82 once in a lifetime.
By the way, I'm going to miss my dad and Tricia when they go back to the U.S. this Sat. sighing...