I had a birthday last week and am already behind on writing thank you notes to people who took me to dinner, bought me gifts or simply remembered.
It’s never a chore to say it in person, at the moment, so that’s usually my go to. But these days, more than ever, I think people also appreciate getting a note.
I guess a little glitter wouldn’t hurt
Sure, a text is okay. And an email is adequate. But a hand-written note in an ever-growing, impersonal digital world? Who does that anymore?
Not enough of us.
And by handwritten note I don’t mean giving A.I. the assignment of figuring it out for you.
What did I do Chairy??
Better not to send it along at all.
It’s the impolite social equivalent of regifting.
Something about it WILL seem off to the reader even though you are sure it won’t. They might not know you were helped along by something unhuman but they are likely to think your response is something less than human (Note: Aka real).
It just…. won’t smell right
Which robs the gratitude of any true meaning. Unless what you meant by it was to fulfill a social obligation that would otherwise have you come off as cold and unappreciative.
Or in old-fashioned parlance, raised by wolves.
Speaking of which, can you believe we live in a world where the president of the United States calls a female reporter Piggy out loud?
What’s that supposed to mean?
Perhaps you can.
What about admonishing her on camera with, Quiet, Piggy,, receiving no on-the-spot blowback from fellow journalists, and having the White House press secretary then publicly laud said POTUS for his frankness and openness?
Perhaps we should skip the thank yous and go straight to the I’m sorry(s).
As if
In any event, it’s THANKSgiving time for MOST of us.
And I selfishly prefer the former.
Because, at the end of the day, any reason for saying thank you should give any one of us who says it a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Since the very fact of doing it means that someone (Note: Or more than one) did something NICE for YOU.
It doesn’t have to be BIG.
Or BIGLY.
Or HUUUUGE.
Just nice.
it’s the least you can do
Imagine that when you’re eating your turkey.
Or tofurkey.
Or simply taking it upon yourself to treat another person kindly for no reason at all other than common decency. And with no expectation of receiving anything in return.
Except maybe this sash
Not even a thank you note.
It will make receiving one all the more warm and fuzzy. An even more convincing confirmation that doing an act of kindness for someone else, one that they might even give you thanks for, doesn’t make you a chump.
Despite what you are seeing from the top. On a weekly, and often daily, basis.
Did you know the fourth (and final?) season of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix?
What about that sequel to Top Gun, the trashy, watchable and massively popular 1986 film starring Tom Cruise that I never quite liked (Note: Oh, who cares, Chair?!) but yet managed to be moved by (Spoiler Alert: I can’t reveal that moment but it’s as cheap, effective and mind-numbingly obvious as anything to come out of the 80s).
Because none of it truly matters when you’re livin’ life in the upside down.
If you don’t get that reference, the Upside Down is the crazy underground alien world we were first introduced to in the first season of Stranger Things.
It is an evil, ruthless, violent dystopian place where anything can happen and you will more likely than not, not survive.
Think of it as, well, an American classroom in the midst of a school shooting.
Too soon?
I don’t think so.
Might as well just cut off the top of the pole
I can tell you that episode one of ST’s fourth season opens with a short sequence that ends with a series of cuts to the maimed, bloody corpses of a group of pre-teens at the hands of… Oh, well, why spoil the fun?
Just know that the Duffer Brothers once again have their hands on the deadening pulse of America.
So much so that several days ago there was a warning card inserted right before the episode began that lets us know this season was shot a year ago, and that we’re saddened by the recent blah, blah, blah, etc. etc., etc….
But talk about prescience.
It’s like Eleven could sense… the most predictable thing
On the other hand, maybe these images, cuts and, well, shots are just the kind of thing we take for granted these days. And what are writers anyway except a delivery system of artistic truths for the masses to see and contemplate and feed upon?
At least that’s how I talk about us when I’m at my most cynical.
And this would be one of those times.
There is no sense to be made of the shooting deaths of 19 children and two of their teachers at an elementary school in the small town of Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday because one can’t make sense of the insane and nonsensical. That’s what makes us categorize those events as such.
Senseless
And yet there is no lack of would-be sense makers trying to deny the obvious with lies, tortured statements and contorted half-truth answers to the obvious.
Here is a list of the deadliest mass shootings in the U.S, over the last two decades.
The majority of these were done with military style weapons like the AR-15, the gun of choice for that 18 year-old shooter at Uvalde. The gun the NRA backed Republican Party refuses to ban. (Note: Heck, they don’t even want universal background checks).
And there is a reason for that. This gun can shoot a bullet a second, eviscerating the flesh, bones and organs of its human targets like no other weapon in our history.
It’s speed and efficiency has made it BY FAR the most popular and PROFITABLE gun out there. And that’s quite an accomplishment since at this point there are way more guns than people in the U.S.
You read that right.
Who else is mad as hell?
No wonder the shooter bought two of them in the course of a week, along with more than enough ammunition to kill all those kids two or three times over. And no background check required, you can’t even get two handguns until you turned 21 and, anyway, these AR-15’s are much quicker, faster and FAR more fun. Speaking from the merely logical perspective of an 18-year-old, they are the best and most efficient way to achieve your goals.
And yet we’ve got the Texas governor (Abbott) and senator (Cruz) on TV mansplaining to us all sorts of things.
– It’s single parent families and a lack of religion that has helped create all this.
– It’s mental illness (Note: Duh) in the last 20 years, especially because you used to always be able to buy rifles at age 18.
– It’s a excuse to take away everyone’s guns, a Democratic hoax to take over and politicize every single awful thing in the world to their favor rather than address the issues real Americans care about.
– Only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns.
So we’ve tried: * armed guards * good guys with guns * nothing * more teacher training * thoughts * prayers
Of course, in reality Texas ranks last of all states in the country for money allotted to mental health services and effectiveness in treating them. It is also one of easiest states in the country to buy and possess a gun thanks to recent legislation signed by Gov. Abbott that vastly expanded gun rights.
The fact is, you can buy and carry pretty much any type of gun anywhere at any time.
As for that final statement, more than a dozen police officers, all of them presumably good guys with guns, stood inside that elementary school on the opposite side of a classroom door where a bunch of children 10 and under lay bleeding, screaming, terrified and begging (Note: via recorded 911 calls) to be rescued.
Make it make sense
But the good guys were wrongly ordered to stand down by their supervisor when they should have gone in, or so it’s being said right now. This was a different story than was announced on Tuesday.
And it might get even worse by next Tuesday.
But suffice it to say, there is nothing simple about this story that any good guys vs. bad guys scenario might possibly address.
As much as the top elected officials in Texas and in the world of Republican politics want to make this into a simplified tale of life in the wild, wild west.
It is nothing of the sort.
This is life right now.
And as long as we remain the RIGHT side of the aisle up, we will stay forever in the upside down.
notes from a chair 