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Communicate: What do you mean ?

Communicate is a multiple meaning word.  Descriptors abound intent on classifying the spoken and written forms. We utter, discuss, chat, and chew the fat.  We write, compose, draft, and pencil in. 

We categorize further by the characteristics of rich and ordinary expressions. A rich communiqué crafts a full sensory presence. An ordinary communication simply conveys information.

Many folks never need more than ordinary expressions. They are content to chitchat and draft everyday messages. Communicating for them is nothing more than exchanging pertinent information; routine calls, coffee pot gossip, instant messaging, and clipped emails supplemented by the occasional memo suffice. They do not need to know any more than how to draft a business letter or include all of the requisite elements in a inter office memo.

A few people feel the irresistible urge to share complex ideas.  Often those who can comprehensively vocalize all the dynamic dimensions of a story or process, are lost when they try to communicate in writing. I was one of those, so I speak from personal experience. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to communicate what you really mean. But we can learn to communicate rich written ideas if those who have been there will guide us toward finding our own voice (so to speak). I had two writing mentors that guided me through the process. And now I am peer tutor with the communication department’s writing consultation program at San Jose State University.  

Lessons from Cookie Monster

http://www.blingcheese.com/image/code/0/cookie+monster.htm

I am fat. Not the politically correct “overweight” - just plain fat. Apparently, I am not alone in this condition. A quick perusal of the Internet reveals staggering statistics about how fat our nation has become (but I won’t bore you with the numbers). Suffice it to say that the “diseases of prosperity” (high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease) threaten to send a significant number of us to an early grave.  

A myriad of sources (backed, of course, by official scientific research studies) claim that this is because we eat too much fat (like cookies!) and not enough of the good stuff like high fiber foods (you know, the stuff that resembles the texture of cardboard) and veggies (AKA-rabbit food).  

Fair enough. But do we really need all of those statistics to tell us what the Cookie Monster has been showing us since we could grasp a cookie in our chubby little paws?

What did Cookie Monster show us?

Simply this:

OVERINDULGENCE = FAT.

Cookie Monster loves his cookies.

Cookie Monster is rather rotund.

This is not exactly rocket science.

Perhaps if we start turning blue and growing fur we will finally get the message.

I think I’ll go have a cookie (or two).

Boxes

The Berenstain Bear story, “Inside, Outside, Upside Down” was one of my favorites as a young child. In my mind I rode along with Brother Bear as he climbed inside a box and bounced his way to town and back again on the back of a truck.

Children (and apparently bears) are fascinated with boxes. Expensive toys sit on the shelf while the boxes they come in open doorways to the world of imagination. An old refrigerator box is the most sought after but any old box will do on a rainy afternoon. Inside a box is a place to decorate your very own house with tiny chairs and tea for two, or a castle filled with gallant knights and ladies in waiting.

Grownups don’t like boxes. Inside a box is synonymous with closed-mindedness, a lack of innovation, or the opposite of creative. “Think outside the box” has become a catch phrase for supposedly forward-thinking industry leaders intent on producing more innovative consumer-based products …

which they will ironically deliver in boxes.

So where are you? Are you inside the box, or outside the box?

Dead is a Four Letter Word

We do not like the word dead. We do not speak of being dead except in the vaguest of terms, “She passed on,” “He has gone to be with God”… . It is not an explicit social rule like we have for other four letter words were not supposed to say, the bad “f***” word or the “s***” word (you know, the one that also means a bodily function). But most of us learn not to talk about death sometime before we reach adulthood. It just makes people uncomfortable.

Two weeks ago our family cat died. She had been sick for days, slowly getting worse until one morning she just stopped breathing. While she was dying, my seven year old son started asking me all kinds of uncomfortable questions. These were the same types of questions that I remembered asking in my own childhood experiences with death. “Are we going to bury her in the backyard”? And “Why is she dying”? I did not want to answer him. I wanted to shelter him, to distract him with sugary treats and spare him this pain. In short, I caught myself indoctrinating my son into our cultural avoidance of anything related to death. It just seemed wrong that I felt completely unequipped to talk to my son about death. So I tried to answer his questions as honestly as I could. “I don’t know yet if we are going to bury her in the backyard or have animal control come and pick up her body.” “I don’t know why she is dying…”which was as far as I got without sliding into the old canned phrases-“God must want a kitty for company… .” I was thoroughly frustrated with my inability to simply say what needed to be said about death.

A couple of days after our cat died, we snuggled up on the couch for Friday movie night. Our feature film - “Snowmen” – was about three young boys that decided to try to set a world record for building snowmen. What the synopsis for the film did not say was the reason the boys attempted this feat. The boys had been playing in ice tunnels in a front yard when a snowplow came and chased them out churning up the snow and uncovering a dead body in the process. I started to squirm in my seat. But the film broke up the intensity with a good deal of humor and classic school yard issues like dealing with the mean bully so we continued to watch. The boys became fixated on the dead body dubbing him the “snowman.” They visited his grave and became incensed that he did not even have a proper gravestone, believing that he would just be forgotten forever. Meanwhile we discovered that one of the boys had cancer and wanted to do something so he would be remembered forever (it later turned out that his cancer was gone). Hence the snowman building marathon that followed. The world record attempt failed and the distraught boys returned to the snowman’s grave pondering what they might try next. An old grave digger then enters the scene and imparts words of wisdom for the boys, “It is not what you did with your life that matters, but how you did it.” Toward the end of the movie, the boy that had cancer tried to apply the “how you did it” wisdom by attempting to make peace with the town bully. But the ice he was standing on broke and he plunged into the frozen lake. We saw the whole experience narrated by the boy’s thoughts as he was drowning. Under water fighting for his life, the boy reflected on the words of the old grave digger earlier in the film. ‘It is not what you did in your life, but how you did it that matters.” He got it. But it was too late. He died… but was brought back in the hospital 53 minutes later (which was good because I was about to get really upset that a family movie would let a child die).

But what really mattered was that my son “got it.” He understood that death was just a part of life. That what matters is not the dying part but appreciating the life we have; it matters that we treasure the time we have with the people and the pets that share our lives. 

And to be honest, I needed to “get it” too.

A Day in a Life of a "Single-Mom".."College Student"..AKA "Wonder Woman"

I sit here writing with my foot soaking in a foot bath of acid water.  Now before you freak out thinking I have immersed my foot in a vat of acid, let me clarify.  My father has recently taken on a project that involves producing something to do with electrically charged alkaline water which apparently creates a natural acid “waste” water that is good for various skin conditions (I don’t understand it, but that is what he said).  Now, I knew this acid water was supposed to be good for plants, but I must admit I hesitated at the thought of exposing my skin to such a controversial substance.  Nevertheless, after stepping on a bumblebee (suppose I should be grateful that my only price for careless footing was a swollen foot but the bee gave his life) followed by shoving my foot into a shoe and traipsing all over the university campus, which led without break to walking my neighborhood with my young son looking for his missing scooter - I acquiesced. Ahhh,  relief.

 

Now, if I could just shut my mind off for a bit about the woman my step mom is helping that had to have hip surgery (geez, what is a little bee sting?) and has no family except her dog…

Oh, and then I am supposed to figure out a costume for “Disney Dress Up Day” at my son’s school.  Who is really considered “Disney”?  Does that include “Disney Pixar”?  Does Scooby Doo count, and if so, how do you create a last minute outfit that resembles Scooby Doo, with no budget for this and that will withstand the jungle gym? 

While I am considering these deep thoughts (said sarcastically) I am wondering if I am going to survive my last two semesters at San Jose State University. I am often up until three in the morning drinking copious amounts of coffee trying to stay awake long enough to complete the latest round of written assignments, emailing my single 20 -something project partners in a desperate attempt to get them to do their fair share of the work, while alternating between reading with one eye and closing the other to let it rest because my eyes are so tired that I can’t see the computer screen anymore. And it never fails, the next morning I have to give a presentation in front of people looking like something the cat dragged in.

On and on…keep the kid’s drawers stocked with clean clothes (okay, so I am frequently sifting through laundry baskets for something that resembles clean), make his lunch for school, help with his “sandwich book report” (resembles one of those double sided advertising signs designed to be worn by a person) which, it just so happens, is due on the same day as my 10 page research report.

The insurance bill is overdue, not because I don’t have the money, but I just keep brain fading on it..

Now my laptop battery is draining. And i’ll be damned if I am going to get up, climb the stairs and recharge it to complete this blog post.

Anyone identify?