A Sensitive Liberal's Guide to Life by An Uptight Seattleite

Author:An Uptight Seattleite
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

I was leaving the Bakery a while back with a baby and a four-year-old in tow when a man followed me out the door to point out, accusingly, that we were expected to bus our own tables. I had not done so but was taken aback by his pursuit. While I admit I transgressed, is it reasonable to police the busing behaviors of others?

BUSTED

Dear Busted,

Taken aback by a pursuit? Sounds like we have some serious directional dysfunction here. Energy is being cast forward and pulled back in highly contradictory ways!

Hey, don’t look so tense! I know that was gibberish. I was just messing with you a little there to loosen you up. When we’re touchy and defensive, we’re likely to be less open-minded about learning from our mistakes, wouldn’t you agree? So, relax—I’m not conducting a police interrogation here!

Keeping that in mind, let’s go through the timeline one more time. I assume there was some kind of emergency. Maybe one of your children, or both of them, were bleeding from the neck? In such a situation, yes, of course, it might well be understandable that you wouldn’t do a full clearing of your table (though you could have perhaps at least thrown away your trash).

Or did you mention your children for some other reason? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn’t expect that the cafe, or society as a whole, would accord you some sort of special treatment because you reproduced.

Let’s back up a moment and imagine this situation from the man’s perspective. He’s quietly going about his business—drinking his coffee, reading his paper, and monitoring you and your kids. Sure, he thinks, that woman may have children, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s insensitive about the larger footprint she therefore makes on the earth. I’m sure she will, if anything, be even more diligent about her responsibilities. She certainly wouldn’t expect minimum-wage workers to clean up after her. Or so he thinks.

And then he sees you get up and leave trash strewn all over the table, a mound of diapers on the floor, and perhaps a trail of blood-soaked rags from your children’s neck wounds. As if the words “please bus your own table” in sun-faded marker were not affixed with four yellowing pieces of cellophane tape above the cream station. The man could have simply shaken his head sadly and gone back to his soy latte. But no, he seized the teaching moment and charged aggressively across the wide meadow that separates stranger from stranger. I suggest you meet him halfway, at the Learnin’ Tree.

My child is gifted. Her friends are not. How can I avoid making their parents self-conscious about this difference?

ZOE’S MOM

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.