My kid is a smart ass

        The following is an essay my son wrote about lying. It was something I asked him to think on due to an increase in lying about silly little things. In true B format, this was his response.

Lying is when someone purposefully, or knowingly, gives someone else information that is wrong. This can be a major issue when one is to be trusted, as a person doesn't know when they will give correct answers or not. Lying has been an issue ever since creatures have communicated with one another, to lie and get the upper hand against the other. It arose most likely then from the survival instinct, proving to be a useful tool against those who had not yet discovered it. Some used trust to make bonds with others, to form communities because they found safety in numbers. And still some lacked the mental capacity for concepts such as lying and as such never developed that tool, and could have fallen victim to those who had. Then at some point man came along, and improved upon lying, made it into a science, before there even was sciences. Man used deception in strategies to hunt its prey. Like the suspected strategy of velociraptors, where one would come up and take the prey’s attention make it think it was far enough to escape if needed. But then as they had its attention, a few others were coming around behind it and on it’s sides to kill it. Such is the way deception was used for hunting, but once man had advanced far enough that it could overcome its feeble bodies and overpower its prey, they moved deception to each other. Man became the deceiver and the deceived, with many things such as religion, magic, politics, optical illusions, guerrilla warfare, and more. When there was no beast who could challenge men, they turned on each other. Devising ever more complex  weapons to defeat their enemy. And taking ever more offence to any insult, anything to give them a reason to challenge the so called enemy.

        From the previously stated situation one unifying religion arises to take its followers and lead everyone from the violence to, more or less, peace. Christianity at some point in that turmoil had arisen and taken a small hold, however, they were widely persecuted. Amongst the most despised religions of its era, but some how it had managed to gain favor enough with Rome to earn the Edict of Milan. This edict claimed that Christianity was no longer to be punished, but welcomed as the official religion of Rome, the superpower of its time, had just given Christianity some legitimacy. Through the years Christianity would grow, and flourish, with some compromises. One of which being Christmas, originally the Pagan winter solstice, a very spiritual time for what was the majority of the people then. Christmas was adopted as their holy savior Christ’s day of birth, to get more pagans to join their church. Christianity after the fall of Rome had some influence in Britain, but not much. The invaders after the roman decline were not so peaceful, and wanted nothing tied to roman culture left behind. So they burned pillaged and slaughtered anyone the Romans had left, including many christian monasteries. But as time went on, the christian people had a plan. They were to change everything from the baseline up. They started by rewriting the heroes of the people they were being persecuted looked up to. One of these many heroes was Beowulf in the famous poem, Beowulf. They fundamentally changed the story as they inscribed it since no one besides the monks were literate at that point, the story was strictly vocal. But the monks changed that and made sure to get their agenda done with it too. As the monks wrote the poem of Beowulf they changed the story in subtle ways to push their ideology of peace and compassion over the current one of war and violence. Changing where the poem would have said gods, to god. introducing the story of cain and abel to the story. And in even more subtle ways by shifting the characters attitudes towards each other and making thin similarities between the characters of Beowulf and the characters in Christianity’s holy book. Then once the changes started taking hold they started setting up churches and converting more and more people. Christians had many values to teach the people in that culture, but one of the main ones was about honesty. If people could not trust one another to tell the truth then they could not coexist. They could not trade, or even make laws, because those laws were open to the peoples decisions, and if they were deceitful then the laws could not do their job to regulate properly and without bias. Then the culture unravels based on grudges that accumulate because the people cannot trust the laws to take care of their disputes. After many centuries of British culture developing and evolving slowly, a few set sail for India, trying to find a safer way. However these travelers did not reach India, they came to America.

        American culture is based on the British culture we came from, however since then it have had influences from just about every other culture that one can imagine. The base in British culture means that at its roots america was a christian nation. The values of the american society throughout history have changed little. The main values for the most part were wealth, honesty, opportunity, and intellect. Though many politics have been excluded from many of them. Many politics have had a lot of bad reputation over the years for having not-so-honest streaks. Some have outright lied to the public. As such there is an air of distrust between the public and politics. They just seem to be out for themselves, many feel. President Clinton claiming he did not have sexual relations with one of his interns, Monica Lewinsky. Previous governor Eliot Spitzer of New York had an affair with a prostitute which he denied. Chris Christie previous governor of New Jersey lied(most likely) about knowing 2 lanes of traffic being shut down to spite someone who had posed against him in his gubernatorial race. So there is quite a lot of mistrust, which leads to disinterest, with politics in the United States. And leads to low polling rates, such as the average polling rate of new yorkers is around 45% of those who are registered. So of the 20 or so million in new york, roughly 50% are eligible to vote after restrictions and such. After that about 45% of those end up voting. After that the winning candidate gets around 60% usually. So with those statistics the winning candidate usually only gets 13.5% of the New York population. This is mainly from disinterest with the politicians themselves. America viewed them as in it for themselves, laundering money, lying, and hiding behind smoke screens to get away with anything. This is what was the fear in ancient time with deceit, that anyone with a quick wit could lie their way out of paying for their actions, and it is still happening today.

        Lying is a serious problem in any culture, for all its people. The people need to rely on each other for support, for trade, for many things needed throughout the day and if they can’t then problems can come up like depression from isolation and many other mental disorders have been studied in other high intelligence animals, such as the african gray, to come from lack of interactions. Other implications could be endangering of people based on incorrect information, or other complications.

Morbid Children's Rhyme Time

We've all heard our share of nursery rhymes. I can remember being a kid and being terrified of them. Most of them are horrifying. I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts where I break down a nursery rhyme and express my own thoughts on it.

There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe
(as if this image doesn't say enough?)

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

This line is obvious. Haven't you ever seen a shoe house? Where the heck did the woman find a shoe big enough to hold her and her millions of kids? Did she not ever question where it came from or worry that the owner was clearly a giant who would possibly come back to get his shoe and murder her and her family in the process??? You gotta think things through! How irresponsible. If you've got a shoe fetish so strong that you want to live in one, you probably should seek help.

She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.

Why didn't anyone ever teach her about birth control? Where are the fathers? How did her uterus not fall out, is an even better question. If you have so many children that you don't know what to do.. perhaps it's time to call in some help. There are lots of people who would love to adopt a child..COME ON LADY! I think it's time to stop sleeping around and possibly consider getting your tubes tied. I'm sure there's some clause under Obama care that could help you get it done. STOP HAVING SEX!

She gave them some broth without any bread;

Oh, well that's a healthy meal. What kid doesn't love JUST broth for a meal? If she had the means for some broth, couldn't she have kept the animal meat she got it from? Is she keeping all the good food to herself? Is she slowly starving the kids so that they will die off and make her life easier? Doesn't she know about programs like WIC? Again, I feel like she was hoarding kids instead of adopting them out. Instead of the crazy cat lady, she was the crazy kid lady. Let's face it.. it's never good to have any form of crazy. Someone get these kids a meal!!

And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

Did she ever consider that her kids were probably acting out because they were starving? Where the hell is child protective services?! It's great practice to whip your kids and send them to bed.. I mean, no need to worry that they wont wake up from the beating. Glad she could find the time to whip each of them, but couldn't find the time to scavenge some sort of food to feed them. Shows where her priorities are.

Seriously, this nursery rhyme scared the bajeezus out of me. I remember hearing it and just laying there paralyzed with fear. Are people still reading their kids these things? How have they not made it to a banned books list? 

Growing Up As a Poor Kid

Thought I would compile a top ten list of things that remind me of growing up as a poor kid. Enjoy!

Oh the joys of surplus food!! The peanut butter (and I call it that with trepidation) was so hard you needed a pickaxe to get it out of the container. We never had fresh cow's milk..only powdered milk that came from bags. Same with eggs, they came dehydrated in bags. Any one else remember the awesome cans of pork (again, not sure it could be called that) that were only identifiable by the black image of a pig on the front of the can? There were no boxes of sugary cereals with prizes in the bottom. Only big clear bags of unidentified flakes. As a poor kid you didn't invite friends over to eat. You escaped as often as you could to a friend's house and ate real food....like Little Debbie Snack Cakes. 

Horrifying jeans that had pleather patches at the knees to make them last longer. Wait..not just that, they said HUSKY in big bold lettering on the back pockets because I was a chubby kid. 

We got two new outfits a year. One for Easter Sunday and one for school. These jeans were the bane of my existence. They were not only unfashionable, they were indestructible! I remember sliding on our stone driveway on my knees trying to ruin them in hopes of getting something else. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for a 12 year old girl to have to wear these?! Thanks, Grandma for allowing me to wear pants that announced to the world that I was fat and "husky". 

Christmas time.. I so badly wanted to believe in Santa Claus. I couldn't understand why everyone in my class always talked about getting toys and games and I got a stocking with pennies in the toe, along with an orange and maybe some chocolate. I remember a couple of years that our presents arrived in garbage bags left on our doorstep.. those were awesome years! I later found out that it was the Arctic League who had done that. Let's not forget that I was born in an era where pennies really didn't amount to much... it's not like it was the 1800's, when a handful of pennies was a huge treat! The most I was able to get was two hot balls. Yippee fricken skippy! 

Don't think for a minute that I owned shoes like this! Anybody else remember calling cheap, out of style shoes 'cat heads'? When you are poor, you get used to wearing popular clothes years after they were popular. Only when they started showing up in thrift shops did you MAYBE have a chance of getting something that was once considered fashionable. As a poor kid, you didn't care if you were out of date. You seized the opportunity to wear once stylish clothing if it became available. I had a favorite pair of leg warmers that I got long after the trend was over. I didn't care that I looked like a poorly put together Jane Fonda, five years after the fact..

A bike was my best friend. I remember getting a banana seat bicylce about 5 years after they were huge. It was rusted and discolored..but it was mine. A bike meant freedom. I left at sun up and didn't come back until dark. I can thank my out dated and dangerously old bike for many knee scars and butt rashes that the plastic seat gave me in the summer.

 Generic toys. On the off chance that you were lucky enough to get a new toy..you can bet your bottom dollar that it was a knock off of the real thing. Ever played with a fake Barbie Doll? If you have, you know that their heads snapped off if you looked at them wrong. Their hair always stuck on in an awful, unchangeable style..that you would always end up cutting. Not only did you NEVER want to look like one of these dolls, you hated them for existing. I wont even get started on fake legos.....

Hot summer days with no plastic pool. You learned to enjoy a garden hose..that is, until your grandmother caught you "wasting water" and would yell to turn it off. Seriously, I wanted a plastic pool so badly. If I saw one in a yard, it beckoned me like an oasis in the desert. I had images in my mind of sliding down the 12 inch built in slide and splashing like I was in a swimsuit photo shoot. Alas, we never had one. Totally surprised I never got some crazy illness from drinking from the rusty end of a garden hose. 

Terrible Halloween costumes. I was a sheet ghost for many years. Another popular costume of mine was the hobo. It consisted of one of my grandfathers flannel shirts and some dirt smeared on my face. I didn't care..it was that wonderful candy that I got to have only a couple times a year that I was after. We won't discuss how many times I fell flat on my face from tripping over the sheet...safety was never a big priority in our house.

Slicing ice cream rather than scooping it. 

I honestly did not know that scooping ice cream was an actual thing. I remember being old enough to go to a friends and watching them pull out a strange looking device that scooped it and being completely amazed. We rarely got stuff like ice cream, but when we did..it was sliced. Two bigger slices for the adults and equal smaller slices for the kids. That's just the way it was done. Ever try to eat sliced ice cream on a plate? It just slides around and mocks you while you drool over it.

Everyone laughed when Miley Cyrus cut her hair in a style that looked like she went at it with a weed whacker. Me..well it just made me think about all the horrible hair cuts I had as a kid. Whether it was a family member who swore they knew what they were doing, or me doing it..I had many.. MANY bad haircuts. I think the best was when I tried to cut my own bangs. Instead of achieving the popular look I was going for, I ended up looking like a monk who escaped a monastery in search for heroin. 

There you have it. Wonderful memories of a poor kid. I don't regret a minute of it. In fact..I laughed out loud several times while writing this. There's something about growing up as a poor kid that makes being an adult even more awesome. You certainly never take cracking real eggs into a pan for granted.

When It's Not Just Worrying

About 18% of the population in the United States has severe anxiety.

Let me be clear.. severe anxiety is not getting nervous before a test or worrying how you will pay your bills this month.

It is all encompassing. What may start as a thought can trigger a tsunami of mental and physical symptoms that can affect every part of your life.

The first time I had a panic attack I thought I was dying. It started as a rapid heartbeat that I could feel and I immediately started fearing that I was having a heart attack and that death was imminent. I got dizzy, couldn't breathe, couldn't talk, and couldn't stop the overwhelming flood of fear that came on as quick as you could snap your fingers. This first event landed me in the hospital hooked up to a bunch of monitors and wading through vials of blood...only to be told I was healthy.

I continued to have panic attacks several times a day for over a year... I couldn't leave home most of the time.

Like most people who experience anxiety and panic attacks, you fear having another episode. This fear then triggers yet another panic attack. It is a vicious cycle that easily takes your feet out from under you and keeps you spinning on the cycle..until you find a way to stop it.

The cycle of anxiety looks like this:

You can clearly see that it is a circle..and in the same way that a circle in infinite, anxiety can feel the same. 

I remember saying, "I can't do this forever...". At one point in my life I truly felt like I would go insane with anxiety. The problem is that anxiety creates all sorts of irrational thinking that will only increase the level of anxiety you are feeling.

So many people suffer in silence because they fear how others will react. They worry that they look like fools and become embarrassed. They get stuck in the negative cycle and begin to live their lives anticipating the next panic attack. 

Which is truly not living at all. 

We live in a society that is used to covering up feelings with medication. And while there are situations where medication can be helpful to some, it does not address the root cause of a person's anxiety. It becomes a band-aid. Once the band-aid is removed, the sore that is anxiety..resurfaces. The cycle then repeats itself. 

If you have or are suffering from panic, you may find yourself feeling that there is no hope for you. I have had many people tell me that there is no form of therapy that has worked for them or that they've tried it and didn't get anywhere. 

Not only do I firmly believe that dealing with the cause of anxiety can work, I believe it is essential to begin healing. 

I have been in therapy for more than 4 years to help me learn to manage anxiety. It has not been an easy process and there have been many hills and valleys on the journey. I still have days where I can feel panic start to creep in and I will find myself starting to have the same feelings that used to lead to full blown panic attacks. The difference is that I have learned how to make friends with it. I no longer feel afraid of it. It is a part of me that will, on some level, always be there. I just needed to learn that I was in control of it..and not the other way around. 

People who are anxious tend to doubt themselves and have a habit of continuous negative thinking. "I can't" used to be one of the most common phrases I would use. I had to realize this about myself and learn to break the lifelong habit of poor thinking. Anxious people are also very hard on themselves and have skewed self expectations. We feel like failures if we don't know something, can't do something, give up on something....

In short, we think we are super humans.

But we are just human...like everyone else. 

My intention in this post is not to pat myself on the back. It's to remind me and you that even though we may feel we are at war at times, it's a war that we can win. 

Today I have to face one of my (many) irrational fears..and I've learned long ago that I will always need to carry these reminders with me..and sometimes say them out loud.