We All Need To Vent

Some days are just full of frustrations.  Trials and tribulations, as the old folks might say. From the time you wake up, everything seems to go wrong.  Your alarm doesn't wake you because you forgot to turn it on. The coffee maker dies after depositing a viscous, bad smelling, barely-liquid into your cup.  You run out of gas on the way to work, because the fuel gauge is broken.  The report you have been working on for the past three days mysteriously vanishes when you hit 'print'.  The teacher who was supposed to complete a rating scale 'forgot'.  You sit on a chair before realizing that it contains a liquid, and your white pants are ruined.  Not that I would EVER wear white pants, for fear of a sea captain named Ahab. But if this did happen to me, I would find it completely necessary to just take the rest of the day off. Maybe the week.

Frustration happens. Most of us blow everything off, and move along.  We'd go nuts if we didn't. And it makes sense to let things go, especially in today's  It certainly isn't professional to throw yourself on the ground and have a grand fit, although it sounds very fun.  But some days you just can't blow things off, and they pile up.  An explosion is imminent.

Bless whoever made this comedy gold.

When I get that frustrated, I have to vent. I need to mutter a few choice curse words under my breath, or visualize the Hand of God coming down from the heavens and smiting the object of my frustration. Occasionally, I will need to distract myself with chocolate. A little of this, and then I take a deep breath, refocus, and get back to work.  Problem solved.

That is for minor irritations.  Major irritations require a human touch for venting, to regain balance. We have to talk it all out of our system, and we need someone else's ears. There is no other way to get rid of all the emotions that are building up inside you.  Bad things happen when you keep things bottled up inside. 

This is a big favor to ask of another person, of course. I suppose that you can pay someone to listen to you, but that can get expensive.  You can try to vent to a complete stranger, or your spouse, but it's never the same.  It's also the reason that I can't go back to a particular Burger King in San Marcos.

Thankfully, most of us have a friend or two who will listen while we complain or whine about the unfairness or inconsideration of whatever is causing us annoyance. Trust has already been established, and the rules laid out.  These rare souls don't tell you how to fix the problem, or what you "should" have done.  No, they're cheering your rant on, encouraging you with just the right comments("NO WAY!", "She did NOT!")  to keep you going until the anger is spent.  Then come the tissues, the hugs, laughter.  And the snacks!  The storm has passed.  This is the magic of a good friendship.

It is important to cherish these particular friends, and not overtax their ears with constant complaining.  Reciprocity is so important.  Your friends may call you on occasion and want to vent and to neglect them would demonstrate poor manners and a definite lack of consideration. Just as they listened to you vent, you should listen to them.  Otherwise your magical friend will probably find herself venting to another, and her frustration will be with you!

Strategic Friendship

I've always worried about my son's social skills.  He's an only extrovert growing up in a house full of introverts, after all.  Larry and I can go days without speaking, our noses in a book or at the computer, and we are content.  Zane would talk to grass if it would answer back, and gets irritated if there's no one around. 

I sometimes get to observe my son in his natural habitat, otherwise known as school, when there are schoolwide events.  I mostly hang back on these occasions and just let action unfold around me, because that's when the magic happens.  For example, I noticed both kids and adults approaching one student, George(not his real name), a boy in Zane's class.  George spent a great deal of time, hugging, smiling, and otherwise engaging with a great variety of people.  It's FERRIS BUELLER!!!! I thought to myself, because I think thoughts like that. 

"George, is there ANYONE here that you don't know?" I had to ask after the fifteenth person came running up to greet him.  After all, you usually don't see such happenings with an eight year old kid.  George never missed a beat.  

"Apparently not," he said. "I'm popular."

Popularity is something that I have little experience with, admittedly. It's never been important to me, the weird kid at the back of the room. I turned to watch Zane, content to run around with his little group of friends.  None of them seemed to mind that George had to stop and chat with everyone.  They weren't going to gather around him like an entourage, however. Zane and his friends went on about their business, and George caught up when he could. 

Zane left the group at one point, while his friends were shooting hoops  I finally noticed my son talking to the policeman hired for the day.  The officer was smiling.  Zane appeared genuinely interested in the officer's baton, his taser, his gun, and whatever other odds and ends officers keep in their belt.  And the officer seemed to love it, because they talked for about fifteen minutes.  The guy was still smiling as Zane returned to our group, and I realized that Zane had made a friend.

While Zane's friend George could be compared to Ferris Bueller, my child is more strategic in his friendships.  I used to do the same thing.  As an Army brat and perpetual new kid, I always made an effort to befriend the adults around me.  In a kid's world, adults are the ones who get things done, who make things happen. It's in a kid's best interest to take an interest in the adults around him. Especially those adults who might not be used to getting positive attention from anybody, let alone an eight year old kid who is truly interested in the people around him. Making friends with the adults around me helped me adjust more quickly to a new school and my place in it.   

Zane loves the librarian, and she loves him right back.  The second he walks into the library, he calls out "Hello, Ms. F.!", and you can tell that she doesn't hear that very often.  She lights up.  The two of them share a love of books that not many kids can bother with, these days.  My son appears to have made an effort to cultivate that relationship, just like his mother.  He's also made friends with the receptionist, the school nurse, the counselor, and the principal. I've seen them all light up when my son enters a room.  He's comfortable, and I like that.

Popular is fickle.  I don't care about popular.  Zane seems to care less about being popular, and more about the people.   Oh, that might change, as he gets older.  But for now, I'm feeling a little glow of pride in my son.  He's learning to make his way in the world.

Making Connections

I'd like to say that I am social, but the truth is that I have very few actual friends.  Maybe if I had been born into a family that put down roots in one place, if I'd had a dad who had a regular 9-5 job someplace, then perhaps I'd have grown up more social.  Maybe I'd have become a cheerleader or the president of the senior class or something, and everyone would have been my friend.  I'd probably hang out with the same group of kids my entire life, from Pre-K to twelfth grade, and we'd all continue to hang out together after college, meeting up at games or for dinners once a week. 

But that's not what happened.  What happened was that I moved 17 times before I graduated from high school.  I'd make friends, get comfortable, then we'd move.  I would write, but out of sight, out of mind--very few people ever wrote back.  That got old, so I stopped trying.  My requirements for friendship are therefore probably a little different than most people's.  If I am going to the trouble of putting my heart out there, of opening myself up to another person, I need something in return.   Loyalty is what I value most in a friend--someone who is going to stick around, no matter how the dynamics of the relationship change.

Because all relationships go through change. The tide goes in and out.  I grow or don't, the other person grows or doesn't, but real friendships are never static.  Those relationships that are static, such as that with a coworker, may not continue after one person changes jobs, because the entire reason the relationship existed(work) is no longer there.  Many people don't seem to understand this, and there are feelings of abandonment.  As a child, I was all too familiar with these feelings.  I don't necessarily like it, but I understand that when a coworker leaves a job, they are not likely to continue calling or texting or meeting for lunch.  After a while I just forget about them.



The tide goes in and out. There has to be more to a relationship for it to become a friendship.  There has to be a give and a take established, where each person takes what they need and gives back.  A sharing of both joy and pain.  Not just in the good times, when the marriages are sound, and the children are happy, and everyone is healthy.  It is easy to be friends with people under those circumstances, but the tide goes in and out. Things change.

The true test comes in the bad times, when divorce is inevitable(hypothetically), or someone is dealing with illness.  That's when I tend to corral the wagons and take on a siege mentality.  I get downright cranky, snapping at everything. I am not easy to like. I am ready to fight.  That is just when I need someone to offer me a box of tissue, a bottle of wine, and a hug. Or just listen--that works, too. The very few brave people who have done that for me, well, those people are rare gems indeed.  Those people always have a direct connection to my heart, no matter how many times the tide goes in and out.

What do you cherish most in a friend?

The A-List: Get to know YOU Questions

I've seen a lot of posts out there with "Get to Know Me" kinds of questions, or "30 Days of Truth" stuff that's supposed to be deep and meaningful.  That's well and good if you like that sort of thing, never mind that nobody is checking the answers for minimal truthiness.   However, I have other questions that I would want answered should we meet. Important questions that truly reveal who you are as a person at a level deeper than deep.  Friendship-level deep, with all the gossip and drinking and fun that entails. 

These are some of the things that I want to know, if I were interviewing for friends.  There aren't really any right or wrong answers, but the answers reveal a great deal. At least I think so.  I haven't done any sort of scientific study or anything, because those aren't really any fun at all.  (Really.  They teach you about this in grad school.) These are questions that I've inconspicuously asked over the years.  In some cases, I've savored the answers like a fine wine; in others, I've had to spit out the vinegar. 

1. We are eating lunch in a restaurant. George Clooney walks by.  Since I am an enormous fangirl, I get up to get his autograph. Do you tell me that I have spinach in my teeth or let me go?   I seem to eat items that stick in the crevices of my teeth.  I will have entire conversations with people with a green smile, with stalks of broccoli protruding from my mouth...and nobody says a word.  That means that either the people I eat with are secretly laughing at me or that they didn't notice. Either way is a bit sad, but I'll live.  I promise you, here and now, that if we meet and I notice that you have something in your teeth, I will let you know, just in case George Clooney walks by. 

2. We are at a concert, when a man approaches us to ask if we would like to come backstage to meet the band.  Do you say yes?  Why or why not?  This question came into existence because it actually happened to me.  It was the Metallica concert in Ft. Worth, and we had just wandered into the building and were looking for our seats. I still get annoyed about the whole thing.

3. Picture in your mind your favorite celebrity(if you are picturing Justin Bieber, you are TOO young to be reading this blog!).  He is standing in line in front of us at the movie theater.  I deliberately push you, and you end up in his arms, your darkest fantasy.  What happens next?
Here I am, helping you out, being a good friend and putting you in a position to at least speak to your celebrity crush.  Because if you want it, I want to help you get it!  I'm a giver, and I mean that in a not-weird way.

4. You don't want kids, because they are messy and you prefer a clean house with no smeary fingerprints.  However, I do have children, and I like to talk about them on occasion.  How many cute child stories are acceptable during a five minute conversation?   When I did not have a child, hearing someone talk about their children for hours was actually physically painful.  I understand that people who don't have children might not want to hear all about my son, however adorable he might be.  I try to be considerate, and limit my stories.  I also understand that if I talk about Zane, then I must reciprocate and listen to the other person discuss their children.  I will even listen to stories about pets without uttering a word of complaint.  Knowing how many stories are to be allotted in a specified time frame will be very helpful. 

5.  We end up arrested and in the pokey for participating in some shenanigans.  When they bring you into the interrogation room and start asking questions, do you spill your guts or clam up?  If you hang out with me, sometimes things will happen.  Hilarious hijinks may be happening, the sort that we will tell around the dinner table at Thanksgiving. But other incidents may take place over the course of our friendship, such as mullets or horrible tattoos, that we do not want getting out. Things that never need to see the light of day, such as that time in Vegas.  Especially that time in Vegas. I need to know that you've got my back, that you won't be singing like a canary about my tendency to steal pens in the first grade.


So? Are there any questions that you would ask on a friendship quiz?  Do tell in the comments!

RemembeRED: Rare Gems

Prompt:  This week, we’d like you to explore friendship. You can talk about a current friendship or one from your past, a friend you met over kindergarten snacks or happy hour at your first job. Examine your emotional interest in the friendship and the role it plays, or played, in your life.



The Army is a hard place for a kid.  Your dad or mom gets tossed around, sometimes in an arbitrary manner, and the family has to go with them, even if it means ripping their roots right out of the ground.  Just about the time I would get comfortable with a place, just about the second that I made a new friend, my dad would come home and announce that we were moving yet again. 

The friends I had just made would tell me that they would miss me.  They would cry and they would promise to write every day.  My family would drive off, and I would be in the backseat with the addresses of all of those friends who promised to write me every day. 

They never did. 

I wrote them letters for awhile, homesick, hoping to hear anything except the silence of an empty mailbox.  One day I just stopped looking.  I gave up expecting that anyone meant it when they said they would remember me, or that our friendship had meant something, so that the next time my family had to move again, I wouldn't get hurt.

Then I met Cathy.  She was much cooler than I was, which meant that she had nicer glasses and was allowed to wear real blue jeans.  We were in a few classes together, and somehow she decided that we should be friends.  I was skeptical, but she slowly won me over, and before I knew it, she was my best friend.  Almost as soon as I realized that, my dad came home and announced that we were moving to Washington, D.C.

I was heartbroken. Again.  My last day at Kirby Junior High,  Cathy and I walked to the bus together, holding hands, even though it wasn't cool to do that.  She started crying, and said that she would miss me and she promised to write.  I started crying as well, and I hugged her as hard as I could, because I expected that would be the very last time I ever saw Cathy again.  A halfhearted optimist at heart, I wrote her a letter once we were settled in our next home. 

And she wrote me a letter back.  She really was my friend.

Finding Friends

We were in the Rainforest cafe in Grapevine last week. We were standing at the entrance, waiting for a table. Zane was wearing his Lego Batman shirt. Two little boys ran up, and I got nervous. Random children don't usually show up wanting to talk, and I immediately thought they were students that I had met through my job. Then I realized that these two boys weren't there to talk to me. As if!

"I have Batman, too!" One of them said to Zane. And he did. So did his companion. This apparently was a "HUGE-BIG" deal, to quote my son. These three boys all stood close together, examining their shirts with the intensity usually reserved for small reptiles and bugs. It was as if the matching shirts joined these three into a sacred fraternity; now they were all Brothers of the Lego Bat. Larry stood by, beaming, as if he also was a member of this club.

I found myself a little jealous. Nobody ever ran up to ME just because I was wearing a cool t-shirt! But I wasn't going to wallow in self-pity, I told myself.

Okay, maybe I did a little bit.

Then the moment was over, and everybody went to their tables to eat, all conversations drowned out by the loud noises of the robotic animals that are supposed to represent the ambiance of the cute creatures of the rain forests. (Drew Carey once pointed out that nobody ever wants to save the ugly animals. He's right.)

But the incident got me thinking about the spontaneity of children, their willingness to just like everybody, and forming friendships that last.
Children learn so much just by being around other children. Peers will instruct each other over the years about the general hierarchy of the classroom and what behaviors are okay and what are not acceptable. My kid needs to know this sort of information to be successful, and there isn't a class/course that he can take that will teach it to him. His peers are his teachers for these lessons, and each lesson is pass/fail.

That's a lot of pressure on a kid.

My son is an only child. Unless someone hands me a big wad of money or shows up on my doorstep with the gift of a baby to adopt, Zane will always be my only living child. He spends most of his time with adults or older children as a result. While this has given him a pretty large vocabulary in three short years, being an only child means less time interacting with his peers. I worry about that.

There are many things that parents can teach their children. How to throw a ball, how to make your bed, where the toothbrush goes after you use it, etc. Little things(ALWAYS put the seat down!) that make day to day life easier, and big lessons(NEVER date an adult woman who wears only pink,) that form the kind of person a child will eventually become. Children learn by always watching and listening to the adults around them. I relearned this the other day when I watched my son roll his eyes at me, throw his hands up as if in surrender, and say, "Jiminy Crickets, Mom!!!" (My next expletive colorful metaphor is going to be "Jumpin' Jehosephat!" You have been warned.)

But a parent cannot make friends for his child, although I am sure there are many who try. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but it is a rite of passage that a kid just can't avoid. The child must decide to approach another kid and initiate a friendship. He may be rejected. He may be accepted. Whatever the outcome, parents have to stay out of it other than to offer inconspicuous encouragement.

I don't have a lot of friends. The ones I have, cultivated like pearls over years, are the ones I want to keep. People who will be there for me, to listen to my troubles and then slap me into reality so I can deal with life. People who make me laugh when I am ready to just bawl my eyes out. People I can trust with my triumphs and my heartaches.

I want my son to have that.

I want him to find friends like those two boys, who used a Lego Batman shirt as an excuse to make a friend. Ones who don't care that Zane doesn't always speak well, often puts his pants on backwards, and occasionally hollers "Jiminy Crickets!" I want my son to have friends who accept him as he is for who he is, and then build on that.

But Zane will have to be the one to boldly go out there and make friends. So I worry.