|
.oOo...DIARY MENU...oOo. :: Newest Entry ::  |
Electrical Sockets & Eye Sockets .............. << previous // next >>
This afternoon my father did the funniest (or strangest) thing, depending on how often you hit your funny bone or enter The Twilight Zone. With eyes glazed over and shoulders hunched forward as if gravitating towards the computer monitor in deep possession, he said as matter-of-factly as if he was speaking about how beta decay result in the nuclear emission of gamma photons, "Now, I want to go back in time." Confused? Bemused? I was helping my dad compose an e-mail and we were browsing through his inbox. What he meant to say was that he wanted me to scroll down the page to find an older e-mail to which he wished to reply. "Kids say the darnest things" is a popular expression (thanks to Bill Cosby for his hilarious show with the same title), however I believe that parents also say the darnest things. If I wrote down every funny thing my parents said or did since I was little, by now I could easily compile a small series of books. My advice to children is to listen to your parents because one day you will have to give them the very same advice they've given you. Being the extreme bookworm that I was when I was a child, my parents would always tell me not to read at the table during dinner and to concentrate on eating. Of course as a teenager I ended up having to *ahem* "remind" my parents of their oh-so-wise advice that they bestowed upon me (perhaps to their great dismay)...hehe...It was really amusing to see how they reacted exactly the same way that I did when I was told not to read at the dinner table. Apparently their situations are always "exceptions to the rule." How convenient, eh? Parents can be quite the clever bunch. Many years back, my mother went through a fatigue streak where for weeks, she felt very low on energy as she was coming home from work on the public transportation. So how did she fill that void? She ate Mars chocolate bars and how sweet it must have been (literally!). When I was little, I remember thinking just how smart my mom was to have devised such a handy excuse to eat chocolate. Usually I just blatantly went up to my mom or dad and asked, "May I have some candy?" Children are sometimes as blunt as a coconut being dropped on the top of your head from an altitude of 1275 feet (but hopefully less painful...owww!). Occasionally they make you lose your temper, as Stephanie, (one of my friends from gradeschool) illustrates. There's just no beating around the bush...or should that have been Stephanie's hairy arms? Yes, Stephanie had hairy, HAIRY arms that made even my dad's moderately-hairy arms seem like nothing at all. The horror, I know! Forget world poverty, starvation, and wars. The worst thing is being a female with hairy arms.....*rolls eyes* (I hope that you realize I was being silly when I wrote those last two sentences. If not, WOW, I should become a hypnotist! Watch out, world!) In grade seven the boys in our class were just that....(stereotypical) BOYS, so of course they teased her mercilessly and many jokes exaggerated how she somehow resembled the infamous Sasquatch (who by the way is right now shaking with anger at being reduced to a petty joke. In fact, he just threw his computer monitor out the window! But fear not, he will stabilize and will be hired by Dell to promote their newest gadgets in the Sasquatch version of the "Dude-You're-Getting-A-Dell" commercials.). Stephanie, Debra, and I monitored the Senior Kindergarten class during the first recess and I remember this one incident so clearly. Shelley (a little girl in the kindergarten class) came up to me, grabbed my arm with her cute little hands, and exclaimed triumphantly, "See?! Mary doesn't have much hair on her arms. Debra and I don't either!" Shelley ran back to where Stephanie was, her little chest puffed out as though she was embarking on the next major scientific discovery since genetic cloning. In a very loud (yet very innocent and adorable) voice, she asked Stephanie, "How come you have so much hair on your arms? Mary doesn't...Debra doesn't...I don't...Are you a man?" Haha! Unfortunately, although Stephanie was 12 and the girl only 5, Stephanie burst out in tears and lost all composure. Sheesh! I went over and had a gentle talk with Shelley, telling her that not everyone is the same and that as you get older, try to appreciate the differences that make each person unique. We wouldn't want everyone to look and act the same, would we? (Oh, what a dead give-away that I live in Canada and not in a communist country, eh?) Without being told, Shelley went back to Stephanie and apologized, saying, "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I like you, even though you look like a man." *Sigh* Oh well...at least I tried...haha.... Hmm...children are sometimes so honest that it would be fun to let them critique the pages of a fashion magazine or a victim on one of those fashion/make-over television shows, especially if the target is a woman who asks the stereotypical question, "Does this make me look fat?" Oh boy! I would cringe (even if I feel like laughing) if the kid says, "YES! It bulges out here and the seams look like they're going to explode!" Even some men don't know how to answer the question, but at least the children answer it truthfully, instead of being politically correct (BAH!) and therefore unhelpful. Listen up, men! These are some answers you can give to a question such as "Does this outfit make me look fat?": (1) "No, dear." *eyes glaze over like a gazelle at the watering hole*, (2) "No. It's your fat that makes you look fat." *braces for hard and repeated face-slapping action and evil eyes*, or (3) *smiles brightly* "It isn't the most flattering outfit you have. How about that one you wore to Fred and Chrissy's party? It brings out the beautiful colour of your eyes, your skin seems to glow, and I couldn't take my eyes off of you for one second the whole night...which is why I ended up tripping down the stairs and breaking my nose in the process. Does my now-crooked nose make me look less attractive?" *smiles at own brilliance of changing the focus* Beware: Watch for Gender Stereotypes Ahead!!! Going back to the whole "hairy situation" --> It is a little funny (yet annoying) how women in North American societies feel that they HAVE TO be hair-free almost all over in order to be beautiful. I have fallen victim to the mantra-like routine of shaving, waxing, and plucking. It's like pulling all the feathers out of a chicken to make it beautiful, except in that case, the beautiful get cooked and devoured (notoriously by an old man who wears a strange bow-tie and thick, black glasses -- the Colonel from KFC), so maybe they don't have quite the same motivation for smooth, hair-free/feather-free skin as women. Geez, what's come over me? Have my brains been abducted by Captain Kirk, the little green martians, or the Oompa Loompas that constantly dance in the background of my mind's eye? Here I am making a huge-stretch-of-a-comparison. It will not happen again. I will try to abstain from discussing chickens in the future...Hmm...this is getting weird, eh? So let me go back to what I was saying. It's a bit of a pain what we, women, have to go through to meet society's harsh hair norms. We need to have long eyelashes, but not bushy eyebrows. We aren't "supposed" to have hair under our arms or on our legs...or another place that isn't right to talk about especially since some of my diary audience are too young to worry about such things. *Smirk* I find it funny (yet again, annoying) how men are allowed to have unibrows (albeit they may get mocked as being Ernie from Sesame Street), Santa Claus beards (so many times I've seen men who look like Santa Claus and who wear Hawaiian-printed shirts. It only makes you look like Santa on summer vacation), and hairy arms and legs. Strangely enough, I dig moderate (not HEAVY) hairy arms and legs on guys. As women, we must put so much effort into our outer appearances, whether it's through the application of cosmetics, wearing figure-enhancing clothing, styling our hair, or plucking our eyebrows, which can take an hour or longer depending on experience or personal dissatisfaction (as the song goes, "I can't get no....satisfaction"). Men pick up a t-shirt off the floor, sniff it to see if it passes the Can-It-Be-Worn-One-More-Time test, splash their face with water, leave their hair in that popular "I-just-got-out-of-bed look" that says you're SUCH a rebel (yeah, you're a rebel alright...OF HYGIENE! Hehe...well I'll admit that sometimes I like the whole messy, spikey-hair, bed-hair look...*sigh* You caught me), and leave the house, all under 15 minutes. I was whining to Mike before about how for a wedding, a woman has to put so much effort into looking gorgeous (See above list), yet a man on his wedding day gets his hair cut, brushes his teeth, washes his face, takes a shower (FINALLY...garlic be gone! Hehe...just kidding), and is ready for his special day. It makes me laugh. I haven't heard anything back from the Account Manager after the interview I mentioned in my previous entry. I guess that they are looking for someone who has more experience in the human resources department already. Another guess is that they may want someone who lives locally and I live quite far from their main headquarters. Oh well, it wasn't a total loss, because as I said before, at each interview you go to, you pick up more experience and you get a better feel for the situation. In better news, maybe it was a godsend that I didn't get that job as a Project Assistant in the sales and marketing department because a new job popped up that combines my interests, work experience, and education. The job position is for a Website Researcher and Writer. From what I understand, I would be responsible for researching a wide variety of topics and then writing an article on each for internet publishing. They want someone who has excellent written communication and who is very knowledgeable about the internet. I believe that I have both and this is a blend that I'm looking for in a career. I am very excited about going in for the interview on Wednesday. I will try to remember to keep you posted in a later entry. Until next time, keep your fingers out of electrical sockets or eye sockets, be nice to strangers, and look both ways before crossing the street. Mary Shaw ~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-.~.*-. SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD: "One Night" by The Corrs...(What a sexy, romantic, relaxing song!) LAST FEW SONGS I LISTENED TO: + "Whatever Gets You On" by Fastball 
|
Friday October 14th, 2005. - 5:54 PM