stormkeeper_lovedoris

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I have two!

One

The first one that comes to mind is, "How do you go up the stairs?"

Mom and I were taking a train, and a little kid - maybe 6 years old - approaches the stairs that happened to be near our seat and asks mom the above question. Mom's response was, "You go up the stairs."

Two

I was at the Subway (restaurant), standing in line. I placed my order. The customer behind me, a woman who appeared to be of Southeast Asian heritage, asked me, "Are you Indian?"

At first I thought I hadn't heard her correctly. Anyone who has seen me knows that my skin tone is the shade of Cool Whip, and I couldn't figure out why someone who appeared to be Indian herself was asking me if I was. So I asked her to repeat the question, and she did. I don't remember how I responded.

All I can think of was that I had ordered a veggie sandwich, and that many of my Indian friends over the years were vegetarians...so maybe she thought veg sandwich equals Indian heritage? That's the only explanation I can think of.

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When I was in high school, I liked the quote from Edgar Lee Masters: "It takes life to love life." I interpreted it to mean that the bad times help you appreciate the good times and you need a bit of both.

Like I sure appreciate the 17 days in a row I had off from work...now that I'm back in the grind today!

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Some of my friends are surprised when I say this, but I'm a really good public speaker. I can really shine when I give a presentation or facilitate a training session. I think it's all natural (as opposed to something I had to work at) because I remember doing this really well even years ago as a schoolkid in "oral communication" classes. I like doing it too.

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I'm not really sure what I believe in terms of the afterlife, but I am open to the possibility that reincarnation might happen.

If that is the case, I worry. I feel like I've been given so many priviledges in this life in terms of education, resources, the time/place I live, and I feel like I haven't used them to benefit humanity. I think there's a lot more I can be doing to make the world a better place, but I let myself get weighed down with my long hours at my job and I don't try to do as much as I could.


(Am disabling comments because I'm not fishing for compliments).

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In college, I had a history professor from Africa and he had a perspective on this. He said that racism was invented. Slaves originally came largely from Eastern Europe (the word "slave" is dervived from "Slav", and Slavic people are European). Eventually it became more profitable to get slaves from Africa. Then, Professor Yeboah-Sampong said, racism developed as a result of the desire to justify the African slave trade. Because racism was made by society, it can be undone.

I'm an optimist at heart so I tend to agree with him.

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When I was younger (you know, when I didn't have a full-time, 50 hour a week job) I would re-watch over and over and over again. Some of the fandoms I had when I was young (Jem, Alien and Aliens, etc) I can still recite entire scenes/episodes from heart because I saw them sooo many times. I can't even guess what my upper limit on re-watches was.

Nowadays I can't do that, thanks to working a lot. Like when I first got into X-men 10 years ago, I did see the movie in theaters 4 times. As soon as I got my own copy, I'd thought that I'd watch it more but only saw it again a few times. (I was working full time back then too). And of course I love X-men: The Animated Series. If I'd gotten into it when I was 15, I'd probably have seen the entire series dozens of times. I can't do that now, but I have seen the episodes several times.

Firefly was/is another recent fandom and I think I saw all the episodes about 5-6 times. Had I been into it when I was 15, I'd have watched the episodes many more times and would be into able-to-recite-by-heart territory.

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I am really really lucky here. Although a few decades ago I used to have trouble sleeping, now I rarely if ever do. I think two things have helped: I exercise in the mornings and generally I get up and go to bed around the same time. My days of insomnia are gone!

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I have two thoughts on this one.

First, I think we need to teach people some basics on finance. I went all the way through grad school and never learned any basics about how to do a budget, how to save for the future, credit cards and credit card debt, etc. I think some basics on financial literacy are necessary.

Secondly, I noticed LJ used the tagline "Tolerance 101". I definitely think we need to teach students about respecting others and valuing diversity. But tolerance sets the bar too low. Me, I don't want to be tolerated like ants at a picnic. I want to be valued and treated fairly, and I want everyone else to be as well.