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dragonlady7OK, so I'm not that funny. Going back and reading something you wrote and then chortling is sort of like an odd mental form of masturbation, and talking about it here is probably a similar kind of TMI. So I'll at least be marginally decent and not mention what of mine I read that I thought was funny. Because, really, I'm not actually a very funny writer. I occasionally can score laughs with judicious use of the absurd, but for the most part I lack any sense of comedic timing.
Tragic.
Work was exhausting, which is odd, because I wasn't all that busy. But, for the record, my total cash tips were something like %45 of my cash sales. The reason, of course, is that almost everyone paid with credit card, and a large percentage of them left me cash tips instead of adding the tip onto the credit card. But, there were also some healthy doses of generosity in there. And kindness. Which were appreciated. One dude who wasn't even that drunk said, "You know, you're such a good sport. You've been a really great waitress." Which made almost as much of an impression on me as the fellow who handed me a $20 for a $12 tip and said "The change is yours." (I know he'd only had one beer, too.)
So... lots of delayed passengers because, I think, of thunderstorm cells along the East Coast. So I had at least one table that sat for almost my entire shift. Several four hour tabs. Mild to moderate drunkenness. Nothing out of hand, though.
edited to add: Just finished doing all the math and I made almost 20% of my total sales in tips, so yes, people were generous today. I will somewhat uncharitably add that I had no foreigners at all, and I don't even think I had any Canadians, so part of it just might be that yes, Americans are generally good tippers. Especially when travelling in small groups.
And then I had to wait outside the cash office, and I spoke with a co-worker, a cashier I've worked with before. (I admit I only knew her name because she had a nametag.) It came up in conversation that she's expecting her 3rd child in December. She can't be much older than me, if at all. Her oldest is 2, and her youngest is 6 months. I think all 3 children have different fathers. Her brother has 9 children, the youngest sired when he was 16. (She, like me, is one of four children, and while none of my siblings have children, all of hers do.) When I said I had no children, she said I was lucky. I asked her if she didn't like being a mother. "Oh, no," she said hastily, "I love it. I love my children. It's just that I'm tired and my daughter's in the terrible twos, and my boyfriend's being retarded." And I conceded: at the end of a long shift during which she didn't have much time to pee is not the time to ask a pregnant woman how she feels about motherhood. I also conceded that my mother, while accepting that it is not the time to have grandchildren yet, sort of wishes for one, and is spoiling, spoiling, spoiling the Scout the Grand-Dog.
And I wanted to ask my co-worker if she ever suffered from postpartum depression or anxiety or anything like that. Did she find herself paralyzed with fear over her children's fates? Did she agonize the way so many of the people I know (at least online) do? I have little doubt she's a good mother. But I wonder-- how far across socioeconomic lines does postpartum depression go? Or does it manifest itself differently? I overhear many of my coworkers, many of them young single mothers, talking about issues of motherhood, and they never mention anything of the sort---- but then, many of the women in my online peer group who do suffer from these sorts of issues don't discuss them either.
But I don't know her well enough to ask those sorts of questions. So for now my curiosity goes unsated.
But it made me think. Some of my coworkers seem to come from a world utterly alien to my experience. Among the people I grew up with, children were almost always planned (or not entirely unexpected. Katy was an accident, but they'd been planning on having kids sometime-- perhaps not quite then, but at least they were married and had already agreed that they wanted kids. Astonishingly, little Ann wasn't an accident at all, and Mom confessed she was the only one that was really planned. Any of you planning on babies-- have 'em in the spring, Mom says). You weren't always married, but having one wasn't something you left entirely to chance. But this woman, and many of my co-workers, spoke as if a child were something that just sort of happened, and more than one person has said I was lucky or blessed not to be a mother yet. Which, I must say, is quite the opposite of the sort of sentiment I encounter among my online peers, many of whom struggle with infertility issues. And I thought, "I've never had to work very hard not to have a child." Am I spoiled, to have had ready access to contraceptives throughout my entire sexually-active life? (I got my current 12-month prescription for $80, including the exam and followup, from Planned Parenthood. It is not that money was an object.) Or do I just view these things in an entirely different way?
I fear to ask these questions in conversation lest they appear judgemental, and part of the reason they're behind a cut is that they probably are, but my bias is one I admit to: I am an educated white woman, the daughter of educated white people, and my mother told me about contraceptives (just in case sex ed in school hadn't) when I was 13 (she was giving the lecture to Katy and included me in it), and it has just always been assumed that I would have children once I had finished my education and found myself a husband, although I rather imagine the husband is less strictly expected than the education. (I think my parents would be more receptive to my eschewing traditional marriage bonds than dropping out before I had my B.A. Although really, I don't know; I haven't tried it. It's too late now.) And so it just seems insane to me to just have a baby happen to you. But I freely admit that I have never lived in that kind of society, and if I'd grown up where that was normal, maybe I'd think people like me were weird. But I just don't know, because I am so far away from that kind of thinking. I really don't know what the young mother sitting across the hall from me thought of me.
She didn't say, probably because she didn't want to seem judgemental.
Tragic.
Work was exhausting, which is odd, because I wasn't all that busy. But, for the record, my total cash tips were something like %45 of my cash sales. The reason, of course, is that almost everyone paid with credit card, and a large percentage of them left me cash tips instead of adding the tip onto the credit card. But, there were also some healthy doses of generosity in there. And kindness. Which were appreciated. One dude who wasn't even that drunk said, "You know, you're such a good sport. You've been a really great waitress." Which made almost as much of an impression on me as the fellow who handed me a $20 for a $12 tip and said "The change is yours." (I know he'd only had one beer, too.)
So... lots of delayed passengers because, I think, of thunderstorm cells along the East Coast. So I had at least one table that sat for almost my entire shift. Several four hour tabs. Mild to moderate drunkenness. Nothing out of hand, though.
edited to add: Just finished doing all the math and I made almost 20% of my total sales in tips, so yes, people were generous today. I will somewhat uncharitably add that I had no foreigners at all, and I don't even think I had any Canadians, so part of it just might be that yes, Americans are generally good tippers. Especially when travelling in small groups.
And then I had to wait outside the cash office, and I spoke with a co-worker, a cashier I've worked with before. (I admit I only knew her name because she had a nametag.) It came up in conversation that she's expecting her 3rd child in December. She can't be much older than me, if at all. Her oldest is 2, and her youngest is 6 months. I think all 3 children have different fathers. Her brother has 9 children, the youngest sired when he was 16. (She, like me, is one of four children, and while none of my siblings have children, all of hers do.) When I said I had no children, she said I was lucky. I asked her if she didn't like being a mother. "Oh, no," she said hastily, "I love it. I love my children. It's just that I'm tired and my daughter's in the terrible twos, and my boyfriend's being retarded." And I conceded: at the end of a long shift during which she didn't have much time to pee is not the time to ask a pregnant woman how she feels about motherhood. I also conceded that my mother, while accepting that it is not the time to have grandchildren yet, sort of wishes for one, and is spoiling, spoiling, spoiling the Scout the Grand-Dog.
And I wanted to ask my co-worker if she ever suffered from postpartum depression or anxiety or anything like that. Did she find herself paralyzed with fear over her children's fates? Did she agonize the way so many of the people I know (at least online) do? I have little doubt she's a good mother. But I wonder-- how far across socioeconomic lines does postpartum depression go? Or does it manifest itself differently? I overhear many of my coworkers, many of them young single mothers, talking about issues of motherhood, and they never mention anything of the sort---- but then, many of the women in my online peer group who do suffer from these sorts of issues don't discuss them either.
But I don't know her well enough to ask those sorts of questions. So for now my curiosity goes unsated.
But it made me think. Some of my coworkers seem to come from a world utterly alien to my experience. Among the people I grew up with, children were almost always planned (or not entirely unexpected. Katy was an accident, but they'd been planning on having kids sometime-- perhaps not quite then, but at least they were married and had already agreed that they wanted kids. Astonishingly, little Ann wasn't an accident at all, and Mom confessed she was the only one that was really planned. Any of you planning on babies-- have 'em in the spring, Mom says). You weren't always married, but having one wasn't something you left entirely to chance. But this woman, and many of my co-workers, spoke as if a child were something that just sort of happened, and more than one person has said I was lucky or blessed not to be a mother yet. Which, I must say, is quite the opposite of the sort of sentiment I encounter among my online peers, many of whom struggle with infertility issues. And I thought, "I've never had to work very hard not to have a child." Am I spoiled, to have had ready access to contraceptives throughout my entire sexually-active life? (I got my current 12-month prescription for $80, including the exam and followup, from Planned Parenthood. It is not that money was an object.) Or do I just view these things in an entirely different way?
I fear to ask these questions in conversation lest they appear judgemental, and part of the reason they're behind a cut is that they probably are, but my bias is one I admit to: I am an educated white woman, the daughter of educated white people, and my mother told me about contraceptives (just in case sex ed in school hadn't) when I was 13 (she was giving the lecture to Katy and included me in it), and it has just always been assumed that I would have children once I had finished my education and found myself a husband, although I rather imagine the husband is less strictly expected than the education. (I think my parents would be more receptive to my eschewing traditional marriage bonds than dropping out before I had my B.A. Although really, I don't know; I haven't tried it. It's too late now.) And so it just seems insane to me to just have a baby happen to you. But I freely admit that I have never lived in that kind of society, and if I'd grown up where that was normal, maybe I'd think people like me were weird. But I just don't know, because I am so far away from that kind of thinking. I really don't know what the young mother sitting across the hall from me thought of me.
She didn't say, probably because she didn't want to seem judgemental.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 03:30 am (UTC)Angst is easy, very easy, and it is not so hard to do it.
So really, what it boils down to, is that I am far too lazy to be able to write humor. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-14 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 11:38 am (UTC)Anyway, Grover actually has an on-campus daycare. Almost all the girls have children. A few weeks ago, one of them approached Raederle and asked her when she was going to have a baby, and didn't understand Raederle's horrified reaction. "Not before I'm in college!" she exclaimed. Her boyfriend, standing beside her, added "Not until you're out of college!"
I think in most cases, the Buffalo kids have grown up in one-parent (mother) households on welfare. Once they have a child, they get their own welfare grant and can move into their own apartment. What teenager doesn't dream of getting out from under their parent's thumb, doing what they want to do? So the benefit of the parent's experience is lost. And there is no question but that once there is one child, there tend to be more.
They have just as much access to birth control as you and I have. They just choose to ignore it. One baby is independance; each subsequent one is higher income. Judgmental? Yes. I have come to be quite prejudiced; but my prejudice does not fall across racial lines. It is very simple; I respect you if there is a working adult in the household.
I think this is why Buffalo is sinking. The inner city is composed mostly of welfare families, and the ratio is climbing.
I DO NOT think that welfare is inherently bad, or that good people don't or shouldn't use it. But this generational thing is going to sink us. I was on welfare myself, for about seven years. When my older son turned 18, my worker casually told me to have him come in to fill out papers to get his own grant. I was horrified. I told her that he would get a JOB. But that is the thinking. Welfare children are just expected to go on welfare rather than paying their own way.
Insane? Absolutely!
Date: 2005-05-12 04:39 pm (UTC)No, because everyone has ready access--a pack of condoms can be bought inexpensively at drug stores and even gas stations. Of course, condoms aren’t foolproof, but they’re a damn sight better than nothing.
I want to be understanding of cultural and social norms that endorse unprotected sex and (young) women as a result having children they don’t necessarily have the financial means to support (or sometimes the family/community structure necessary to support them), but then there’s a part of me that just wants to shake people and scream, “THIS IS 2005, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! GET A CLUE!!!” And my feelings on the subject certainly aren’t limited to this country.
But then again, I know full well that it’s only through understanding the reasons why this kind of behavior persists that something leading to a long-term solution (i.e. a combination of better education, improved access to health care/career development opportunities, ways of bolstering self-esteem among young women, etc.) can be found. The whole thing is intensely frustrating, and for all parties, I think.