ever heard of thirst?

Once a month I get together with a handful of people and engage in some heated debate. OK, I engage in debate quite frequently, but this is the same group of people, and the genesis is always a book.

This week we touched on whether cultural relativism is ever defensible, whether superpowers have any clue their dominance inevitably has an end date, and how the demise of face-to-face combat has changed the nature of war. It gets a bit animated because everyone who shows up is pretty bright, and the same woman always hosts at her place.

Sounds good so far, right? Now, here's the complaint: never once have I seen the host offer anyone food, snacks, a drink, or even water. Nor have I seen anyone else bring any such items, not even a take-out coffee. People sit in their designated seat and engage in debate for three hours at a time and nobody eats or drinks. Last time I brought a tea in a safe, lidded, take-out container and I think I saw a few frowns.

Admittedly, I'm not the normal house guest. I grew up in a decidedly-non-white-bread household where food was a huge part of any social gathering. I've learned not to expect everyone to serve a six course meal for anyone who crosses his or her threshold, the way my parents would. But having guests at your house for three hours, without even offering up some tap water just seems a bit gauche, no?

This group has predated me for quite some time (I've only joined in the last few months), so there may be some fantastic explanation for this dearth of food and drink. I've spent an embarrassing amount of time amusing myself with potential explanations. Perhaps a particularly heated debate provoked a nasty food fight, leading the banning of food into perpetuity? Or they discovered that half liked peanut butter, the other half chocolate, but no accidental combination of the two ever happened? Or perhaps the drinks were mysteriously spiked one night, leading to a strange round of strip debating? I could go on and on.

RainyBow

how are you?

I lived in Eastern Europe for a while a few years back. I was fortunate enough to get a great job there, despite my lack of knowledge of any local language and/or culture. Although in time I managed to learn some of the language, breaking into the culture was much more difficult.

At first, my team (all locals) viewed me with some suspicion. I found out later that this wasn't because of my habit of falling asleep during meetings (it was a bit of a party time in my life) or my obsession with finding absolutely any television programming in English (even though I never watched tv at home). It was because I was a crazy English speaker who smiled way too much and asked everyone, "How are you?"

In a short time, I figured out that the smiling thing was kinda bad, but it took one of my team members to explain to me that the "How are you?" thing was actually offensive. As she explained, one should never ask that question unless one is prepared to hear the answer... in full. In her mind, people like Americans were too quick to pretend they cared when they really didn't. I thought about it and realized that she was right: I actually didn't care how most people were. After a while, once my mindset had shifted, it was hard for me to come home to things that had seemed normal to me before. Walking into any store like Gap or Pottery Barn was an assault on the senses. All of these people I didn't know were pretending to care how I was. Fakes and phonies.

Well, last week I seem to have forgotten this valuable lesson. A colleague who I barely know (I'm racking my brain trying to think of her last name right now and I can't) came by my desk to ask my opinion on one of her projects. I turned around and said, without thinking, "Hey, how are you?"

Big mistake. Over 40 minutes later I had heard the full story of her mother's health problems, which South American region she was in, what the insurance company had tried to get away with, what her sister was doing to try to get her mom home, and how her dad was holding up.

I don't want you to think I'm heartless. Hey, if your mother's sick I'm all about the sympathy. My parents aren't young and my dad hasn't been in the best of health. Lots of people in my life have died, especially recently, and I know that's tough. But I'm not sure you should be telling someone you barely know the long version of your story.

But it's still my fault for asking. I need to get back in touch with the Eastern European in me. No more random "How are you?"s.

RainyBow

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SunnyShine note: Ugh.

8 items or less

I went to the grocery store this afternoon to get the ingredients to make lasagne. (I make a delicious lasagne if I do say so myself.) I timed my outing specifically to end up at the store when most people would be home stuffing themselves with turkey. It was busier than I expected but not so bad.

I gathered the things I needed and proceeded to the 8 items or less line. Not surprisingly, the person in front of me had a cart full of stuff. This drives me crazy. I can look the other way when there are 9 items or even 11 items (I don't much like that either but I'm not going to lose sleep over it) but a full cart is unacceptable.

Now here's the problem. The cashier will never say anything to the person with the excess items so it is left up to the people standing behind to say something. Even when you do say something about it, the cashier will never back you up and tell the person to go to another line. Invariably the person who is going through with half a cart doesn't give a s**t in the first place so saying something serves no purpose other than pissing them off. It's a no-win situation.

I actually saw two people get into a fist fight because of this and the police had to be called. A guy was going through with a cart overflowing with food just before a long weekend. When the guy behind him said something, he got punched. Delightful.

Why have them in the first place? If no one is going to enforce the rule, what's the point? They only provide false hope to those of us who have a few items.

SunnyShine