Posts Tagged ‘Self-Improvement’

My niece is about to enter the second grade, but as Robert Fulghum famously noted, she learned everything she needs to know in kindergarten. She learned to share and to play fair. And she expects the universe to support her idea of fairness. So when she lost her plastic duck-topped coffee-stirrer—a souvenir from the previous day’s parade of ducks at the Peabody Hotel—she declared: “That’s not fair!” as though the universe would magically make it reappear.

“What’s not fair?” I asked.

“They took it!” she said of the restaurant staff that had thrown away her prize.

“You left it on the table, and they picked it up with the rest of the trash. Why isn’t that fair?”

Because!

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Britain’s official royal poet was in a bit of a snit. Sir John Betjeman had been asked to pen a verse for Queen Elizabeth’s 1977 Silver Jubilee. And the usually good-humored 70-year-old Poet Laureate was not pleased with the response. Among other criticism, Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn had called Betjeman’s patriotic work “banal.”

After the poet left in a huff, his agent explained to reporters, “He is very upset that it is being treated as a poem when in fact it was never intended to be. It is a hymn.”

Whatever literary critics and politicians thought, when Betjeman’s “hymn”—sung to a composition by Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music—premiered later at London’s Royal Albert Hall, it was greeted by long and thunderous applause. Clearly the public overruled the critics.

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As a small child, I was so afraid of heights I was scared to go up on a teeter-totter. So I only got on with children much smaller than I was. That way I could control the experience, keeping myself in the middle and bottom ranges and sending the other kids soaring to the top. Naturally, they were thrilled with the view from on high. The view from the bottom wasn’t so great, but at least it didn’t come with a panic attack.

The other day, I realized I’m back on the teeter-totter, sitting at the bottom and hating the sucky view. Only this time, I don’t have the same level of control. That’s because the teeter-totter is my life, and I’ve somehow seesawed out of balance, becoming focused on work to the exclusion of almost everything else—including my health and well-being.

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Children are much more influenced by what their parents do than what they say. Sherry Lansing is a perfect example.

When Sherry chattered about becoming an actress, like other stereotypical moms in the 1950s, Margot Heimann Duhl told her daughter to focus on becoming a housewife. But necessity had forced Margot off traditional paths. When she’d fled Nazi Germany for America at 17, she’d had to be self-reliant, learning to speak English and working as a dressmaker. And when Sherry’s father, real-estate investor David Duhl, died of a sudden heart attack when she was nine, Margot stepped up again. The grieving widow went to his office and announced she was taking over the family business. On being informed by a male office manager that she couldn’t possibly do that because she didn’t know anything about real estate, she replied, “Teach me. I can do it.”

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July 18, 1984. People walking along the street that Wednesday in Detroit were probably a little startled when it suddenly began raining … clothes … books … small kitchen appliances … furniture … a bicycle … a stove … a refrigerator.

For three hours, unemployed auto worker Nelson Jones dumped the contents of his 16th-floor apartment onto the street as crowds watched and a television crew captured the drama for the evening news. When it ended, police charged Jones with littering. As his niece later noted, “Everyone has their off days.”

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We all have hidden talents. Mine is mind-reading. Somehow I can discern—without any meaningful evidence—when people disapprove of, or disagree with, something I’m saying or doing. It’s an amazing skill. And what’s truly amazing is how many of my friends share this wonderful gift. In fact, the world seems to be a thriving hive of mind-readers.

We mind-readers could be a useful or dangerous bunch … if we were any good at our hidden talent. But usually when we decide what other people are thinking, we couldn’t be further from the truth. And if we act on our fanciful imaginings, we only wind up hurting ourselves … as blues legend B.B. King once discovered. In a 1997 interview with writer Kira Albin for Grand Times magazine, King shared how his mind-reading skill combined with his love for potato pies to create a painful childhood moment.

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Men … are you tired? Run down? Listless? Do you poop out at parties?

Well, the answer to your problems is not in Lucy Ricardo’s famous bottle of Vitameatavegamin. Oh noooo. The answer to your chronic fatigue may well be lying in bed next to you … masking her evil with an innocent expression.

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My parents didn’t get off to a great start.

He was a technician working in a shop that sold and repaired radios and televisions, and she came in to buy a small radio for her boyfriend. Because the boyfriend was in the military, she had to give his full name for the shipping label. Part of the young man’s given name was … Elsie. My dad had an aunt named Elsie. He was very amused. Mom, not so much.

They met again when my dad came into the fountain where my mom worked a second job as a soda jerk. The first meeting had been somewhat out of character for both of them. Typically, he was more reserved and she had a better sense of humor. Things began to go more smoothly after their second encounter … for everyone but Elsie.

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She starred in fewer than 25 films and died at only 36 nearly a half century ago. But Marilyn Monroe made a lasting impression …

A 2006 survey by StarPulse.com listed her as the “All-Time Style Icon of the Last Century.” In April 2010, Americans polled for Gillette named her among the world’s “Top Ten Goddesses.” The same month, British survey respondents chose her one of the “Most Seductive Women of All Time.” In July 2010, a survey for QVC found her one of the “Most Beautiful Women of the Last Century.” And in 2008 when Smithsonian magazine polled cross-country samplings of high school students and adults 45 and over, she was listed among the ten most famous Americans in history, not including presidents or first ladies.

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In 1999, Nevada resident William Junge bought a personalized license plate after purchasing his SUV. So in 2006 when the 59-year-old tried to renew the plate, he couldn’t understand why the DMV denied his application. He’d had that plate seven years. What suddenly made hoe offensive? Well, a DMV employee suddenly found the word listed in an online slang dictionary as a variation of “ho” … not to be confused with tally-ho, Westward Ho, or Ho! Ho! Ho!

Okay … but what did that have to do with Junge?

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