Assumption advice: Think before you speak, and err on the side of civility

What can I say about assumptions that aren’t already obvious to most thoughtful people?  Oh, wait. I am assuming that most people are thoughtful. There I go, making an assumption. It’s easy to see how a person could get into the habit of making gross assumptions. We all do it! Some of us more egregiously, and rudely, than others. 

Top 10 MAJOR assumption faux pas:

1. Don’t assume a married woman has taken her husband’s last name. (Ahem!)
2. Don’t assume someone is (Fill in the blank religion). Right, Wolf Blitzer?
3. Don’t assume someone is (Fill in the blank ethnicity) because of how they look. (Ahem, again!)
4. Don’t assume someone’s (Fill in the blank political party) because of some of the issues they support.
5. Don’t assume everyone you meet has children, or even wants them.
6. Don’t assume all families are the same as yours.
7. Don’t assume a person is financially successful/unsuccessful because of the car they drive or the house they live in.
8. Don’t assume every married couple is happily married.
9. Don’t assume people are as happy as they seem.
10. Don’t assume someone is as healthy as they appear.

This list is the tip of the iceberg of assumptions. Listing every example is beyond the point I am trying to make.

When you get down to it, assumptions often come from ignorance, lack of experience, laziness, and arrogance. Again, we all are guilty of these things, but assumptions can become knee-jerk reactions and responses which severely limit proper analysis of situations to the extent that the person doing the assuming becomes narrow-minded and intolerant.

 It doesn’t matter what race, religion, or political persuasion you lean towards. Assumptions are universal and the people making them come from all walks of life and every corner of the Earth.

Many people like assumptions because they don’t challenge them to consider other points of view or opinions. That’s where arrogance comes into play, and the defenses come up. 

For instance, in the first major assumption I listed about people assuming that a wife has the same last name as her husband, the person making the assumption will defend their error by saying, “Well, of course I assumed her last name was Smith because her husband’s name is John Smith and they seem like a traditional family.”

Aha! They SEEM like a “traditional” family. So, because they seem like something, the assumption is that’s what they must be! Eureka. Not so fast. There are many reasons why a woman might choose to keep her own last name after marriage. Frankly, it’s no one’s business, and she should have to defend it. 

A recent, glaring, example of a serious assumption blunder was when Wolf Blitzer- an educated and seasoned reporter- made a seriously erroneous assumption when speaking to a woman in Oklahoma after the devastating tornado hit her town.

‘He asked if she thanked the Lord for guiding a split-second decision that saved her life during the disaster. Rebecca paused. Smiled. Then admitted: "I'm actually an atheist." ‘

Ouch! That had to hurt. Many detractors were horrified that Wolf would be criticized because he was well-meaning, but in reality he was being thoughtless and inconsiderate. He could have broached the topic in a completely neutral way which would not have assumed that the woman was a spiritual believer. He obviously wasn’t trying to be malicious, and he ended up looking foolish. I will bet good money he never makes THAT mistake again. 

Sometimes it is important to take a step back from the situation and use some extra time to THINK before speaking. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and err on the side of courtesy.

Taking a moment to ponder and assess a situation is so much wiser, kinder, and polite than blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. Thinking before acting on preconceived notions or perceptions is not only civilized, it helps you from looking like an idiot. Trust me, I have made enough assumptions in my life to write a book. I am far from perfect in this department. 

If you come away from this blog post with anything, let it be this- We ALL make assumptions. Try to minimize them. You may have to get off your high horse and open your mind a bit, but in the end, it may help you save some relationships and your credibility. 

How I survived the Mayan Apocalypse and all I got was this lousy calendar

According to lots and lots of content on the internet and television, some long-dead Mayans supposedly said that the world would end tomorrow, 21 December, 2012. If that’s the case, this may be the last blog post I ever write. I guess I better make it memorable.

But wait, not so fast. I have some news, doomsday devotees. The Mayans may have been very good at many things, but predicting the end of time- not so much.

Is it the end of the world as we know it? Really, who actually believes that the world will end because some ancient Mayans said so thousands of years ago? Apparently a lot more than you would ever have imagined. Seriously. There are people all over the world who have been in a panic for the last few weeks. Some people just can’t resist a juicy conspiracy theory, a cryptic apocalyptic prediction, or the rants of some religious zealot. I suppose those people are either really weak-minded or perhaps they are extremely bored and want some excitement to spice up their dreary lives. I just don’t understand the allure of it all.

Here is what I want to ask those people- Since when did Mayans become experts in prediction? What else do they have to show for their expertise? Excuse me, but isn’t their civilization, uh, extinct? And to be very blunt, if they knew so much, where are they now?

Incredibly, it seems that people all over the world are losing sleep, and their minds, over the “impending doom” and prediction of our collective demise. But the details are a little shady and sketchy.

Before we throw the Mayans under the bus and accuse them of predicting our universal demise, let’s get the story straight. According to a segment on NPR, the Mayan prediction has been played up by the media and is completely wrong and erroneously reported.

Maya expert, Professor David Stuart, of University of Texas at Austin, told NPR, "The Maya never, ever, said anything about the world ending at any time — much less this year. So, it's sort of bizarre to be living through this time right now, when so many people seem to be worked up."

And worked up they have been- for a few years!! So now, Dr. Stuart tells us that there is ANOTHER date predicted. Come on! And why should I believe the Mayans anyway? Look what happened to them. Perhaps if they had been smarter about predicting their own demise, I might have more faith in their predictions.

To be fair, the Mayans aren’t the only ones who have predictions about the end of time. Remember that lunatic Christian guy who said the Rapture was coming; and then it didn’t so he had to recalibrate the date; and then it didn’t happen- AGAIN. Well, he blew his credibility, but it was too late for the hundreds of people who believed him and gave away all of their earthly possessions. ***crickets***   I know. It’s pitiful. For some more apocalyptic stories, check these out- http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=132629051

I guess the long and short of it is that NO ONE truly knows when the world will end. It is baffling to me that people are so intrigued and obsessed with something that is almost entirely out of their control. For goodness sake, worry about the things you CAN control in life and do something about them. Getting wrapped up and actually feeling anxious about something so completely unknowable and without real evidence is, well, a little bit - looking for a nicer word – unstable and childish.

 So chill out, enjoy the final days of 2012, but stop fretting about zombie apocalypses, predictions from ancient civilizations, or doomsday prophets who tell you to sell all your stuff.  The end is NOT nigh. Enjoy being alive for another day and for as many days as you have left!!  If all else fails, STAY CALM and avoid Mayans.

“I’m not wearing any underpants”: Stories my mother told me

Talk about an attention-getting title for a blog post! As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, I have been having a hard time keeping up my blog recently. Stress, pressures, lack of energy, and some other issues have turned my creativity upside down. I am doing my best to get back into the groove, and the stubborn part of me doesn’t want to completely cave into it!

This evening, as I was taking a hot shower, a very funny story came into my mind. I thought it would be terrible for a great story like this to go untold. After all, the best articles, books, novels, and poems all have one thing in common- a terrific story.

My mother is German. She was born in Germany in the late 1930s, and her early childhood memories involve war. She has hundreds of amazing stories from that time, and I hope at some point to be able to capture them. This story I am about to tell, however, tells a story of when she first moved to the United States in the late 1950s. It is a family classic.

Here is the background- Washington, D.C., in 1958, my mother has recently arrived from her hometown of Köln, Germany, and has been staying with one of her great aunts- a wealthy woman who has been living in the U.S. for a few decades. My mother had THREE such great aunts, who were all her paternal grandmother’s sisters. They are always referred to by my mother by the streets they lived on in D.C. 

There was Aunt Mintwood Place, Aunt Holly Street, and Aunt Columbia Road. Aunt Mintwood Place was the wealthiest, snobbiest, and meanest. She treated my mother very shabbily, and after my mother married my Cuban father, was never heard from again.  But I digress.
 

This particular story takes place in D.C. at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart on corner of 16^th and Park Road. My mother and Aunt Mintwood Place were going to Mass one Sunday morning. Aunt Mintwood Place always dressed to the nines to go to Mass, and she had on a very beautiful dress, her mink coat, and her veil. In those days, Catholic women had to wear some sort of head covering when they entered a church. Unfortunately for my poor mother, that was NOT the custom in Köln, and she had not remembered to bring her head covering.

 

 

Jackie Kennedy wearing a head covering to Mass

 

As the story goes, once inside the church, Aunt Mintwood Place kept touching the top of her head and looking at my mother with dagger eyes. My mother couldn’t figure it out, and afterward, her aunt gave her a serious lecture about how she was now in the U.S. and that she needed to ALWAYS have her head covering for Mass in the future. So, my poor immigrant mother took her lecture like a woman and started walking out the door of the church.

 

There is a long, stone, stairway down to the street and my mother had walked quickly ahead of Aunt Mintwood Place when she called after her. “Oh, the wind is blowing very hard! I am afraid my dress is going to blow upward in the wind. “

 

 My mother looked at her with a perplexed face, but then saw that the pleated skirt she had on was indeed blowing upward. So, my mother leaned in toward her and said, “What are you so worried about?” to which Aunt Mintwood Place, who had been so very worried about my mother’s bare head in church, uttered the now infamous sentence- “I’m not wearing any underpants.”     PRICELESS.

My mother stands there looking at her, completely overwhelmed by the irony of the situation. She told us, years later,  that all she could think about was the old biddy standing in front of her, decked out in her diamonds, mink, expensive dress, head covering and NO PANTIES!  How incredibly hypocritical of her!

The obvious “moral” of this story- Get your priorities straight. Cover your ass before worrying about covering your head.

I hope you enjoyed this story as much as we have enjoyed it these 50 plus years. It reads like a joke, but it’s 100% true.   MORE stories to come.