I wet my pants and nobody noticed: a lesson in self-esteem

This morning started just like every other morning. Got to my cube, checked my email, caught up on the weekend with some cube neighbors. My stories were mostly about the new car I just bought, so I bragged about being the proud owner of not one, but FOUR, cup holders. And a remote keyless entry system. And brake lights that work. I was feeling very good about myself.

Then my good friend RD gave a call. It's always good to hear from him. This time, though? His timing could not have been worse. I suppose it's not his fault that he caught me in the middle of an ADD moment, when I was simultaneously rereading an old email and checking to see who sent a new one, all the while having the thought in the back of my head that I needed to refill my half-full water glass before I started on any *real* work this morning.

What happened next is sort of a blur. You know how people can only vaguely remember a car accident? They say things like, "I was four-wheeling through the field, doing donuts and other rad stunts, and then, like, I remember seeing this huge cow and BLAM! I don't know, dude. All I remember next is waking up in traction three days later. Wild."

Well now I know what they're talking about. Because I remember rereading the email from Erik (ping etcetera) who was inviting me to participate in his podcast sometime (!!!!), then reading an incoming work-related email, and then reaching for my cell phone that was inches from my water glass and then BLAM! All I remember next is watching the whole damn cup spill into my lap and then trying to blame it on RD, who heard all about it when he asked how I was doing.

"Hello?"

"Hey! how are you doing?"

"Not real good. I just dumped a whole glass of water in my lap while I was trying to answer your phone call."

"Oh. Bummer. Hey are you still looking for a new car? I found one for you this weekend."

"Now I look like Steve's Grandma the day she tested how much a Depends will hold while standing in line at Target."

"It's a '99 Corolla, I know the owner!"

"It was a 16 ounce glass. I have 16 ounces of water in my pants now."

"It's in your price range!"

"It looks like I had 5 beers and hang to the right."

"What are you talking about?"

"RD, I told you! I just spilled a whole glass of water in my lap when I TRIED TO ANSWER YOUR DAMN PHONE CALL!"

"Oh. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I wonder if anyone here has extra pants."

"Why don't I give you a call back later?"

"Umyeah. I'll talk to you later."

Then I just sort of stood there. Stunned. Soaking. Not sure what to do next. So I did what I always do when I'm not sure what to do next. I checked my email. Turns out that Mikki from finance had an expense check for me, and all I had to do was walk down the hall to get it.

Aye! There's the rub! I had to leave the relative privacy of my own cube to get the damn check. I couldn't really sit down in my sopping chair to do work, but then again, I didn't want to be in public with a huge stain in a very embarrassing place. What to do, what to do?

I decided to brave it. I mean, come on. If I really wet my pants, would I be parading them around the office for everyone to see? Like most things, if you have the right attitude, you can get away with anything. So I decided to try it.

I poked my head around the corner, saw that no one was around, and walked reallyreallyfast to Mikki's cube. She said hello, how are you, oh yes, I've got your expense check, I've had it for a while. Took her keys, opened the drawer, got my check, handed it to me, then asked me how my weekend was.

Are you kidding me? I was standing in her cube, sopping wet from my waist to my knees, and she makes conversation with a straight face? So I said, "It was good! I went to a couple of parties, met some new people, bought a new car and did you really not notice?"

"Notice what?"

"You really have no idea?"

Nervous laugh. "What are you talking about?"

"My pants, Mikki. My pants."

She looks down. "Oh noooooo! What happened there?"

So I told her I spilled some water and I was a little uncomfortable, but no big deal. She really hadn't noticed.

Huh.

So I decided to try again. I stopped by to see Jake, a couple cubes down from me. I stood in his cube, he said good morning how are you, and I asked him if he noticed anything different about me. Probably trained by his wife, he told me that my new haircut looked great. Thanks, Jake! Have a good day!

This was liberating. I decided to take a walk around the whole office just to see what would happen.

I walked between a group of people by the printer, waved to two people behind their desks, thanked my IT guy for fixing my laptop last week, and NOBODY NOTICED MY PANTS.

No one!

I suppose I don’t look at peoples’ pants either. I’m usually pretty sure they’re wearing them, so I don’t bother to think much about it. But still! If I can walk around the office with the world’s biggest stain in my crotchal area, imagine what else I could get away with?

Imagine all the things I used to worry about but really didn’t have to?

I wish I had done this experiment in high school. I could have saved so much anxiety by realizing the things I obsessed about were really of no consequence to anybody else but me. Bad hair day? No worries. Big fat zit on the nose? Whatever! Sneakers out of style? Bite me!

This sort of thing crops up all the time. I’ve watched friends worry about what other people are thinking of them:

• I used to eat lunch with Jessica, who would apologize every time something dropped to her plate from her burrito.
• Most Japanese women I know cover their mouths when they laugh.
• This last weekend I was at a Halloween party and a person wearing one of the best costumes in the room was obsessed by the fact that her vest wasn’t exactly the way she wanted it to be.

I suppose as humans, we can’t help it, it’s what we do. Acceptance by others is what makes the world go round. Not everyone has been as lucky as I am, having had the opportunity to build character one humiliating experience at a time. After 31 years of tripping over my own feet, forgetting words mid-sentence, speaking my mind with no filter, flushing keys down toilets, spilling stuff in front of everyone, farting at business meetings, getting diarrhea from eating the centerpieces at weddings -- well. I don’t mean to sound righteous or anything, but maybe we should all just relax a little bit. We’re all in the same boat, everyone is human, everyone was once a fetus too, and we all wipe our ass. If we all do the same stupid stuff, then where does embarrassment come from?

After my little stroll around the office I went back to Jake’s cube. I told him that I was surprised that no one noticed my pants. He started laughing when he looked down, then told me not to worry, it would dry in half an hour.

Then he told me not to ask how he knew.

Pants in the ocean. Fa real!

Brings a tear to my eye.

Take that, Steve! I win!

(btw, I shamelessly ripped this image off http://ministry.lmu.edu/service_justice/de_colores/jan2004/index.htm#90. I would like to personally thank you, http://ministry.lmu.edu/service_justice/de_colores/jan2004/index.htm#90!)

Disaster fatigue and the Kumbaya Bandwagon

I believe in God, but I'm not sure which parts of which religious book to believe. I do remember Irene Bennett, who lived next door to my Grandmother when I was really young. She was 150 years old, lived among many doilies in a dark house, smelled like an old lady, made me grilled cheese sandwiches and, in a fit of cold-war fear, once told me that God promised he'd never destroy the earth again with water, but he didn't say anything about fire.

Um yeah, thanks, Irene. I was a 7-year old Catholic schoolgirl who already believed was doomed to an eternal afterlife of hellfire because I hadn't changed my underwear in three days. I knew the story of Noah, and figured we were in the clear until you just HAD TO PIPE UP ABOUT OTHER POSSIBLE DISASTERS too. I could barely finish my grilled cheese that day.

I eventually healed from the paralyzing fear of imminent-death-by-anything, but you can see that it hasn't left me completely. Maybe the crazy lady was more of a prophet than doily-hoarding spinster after all. Just click anywhere on CNN.com and tell me we're not in big trouble.

We're in so much trouble that CNN polled its readers today with this question: “Has your reaction to the quake in South Asia been affected by 'disaster fatigue'?”

93,819 people said yes.

Earthquakes, landslides, flooding. Do I think we’re suffering the wrath of an angry God? Not really. If anything, maybe He’s trying to kick us in the ass to be better people. There’s at least one silver lining in the dark cloud of all these natural disasters that deserves big, huge kudos. In the wake of name-calling and finger-pointing about the (non)rescue efforts in New Orleans, the 30 seconds of media coverage on the hurricane that followed Katrina and did just as much damage to less famous cities, and overflowing rivers in the Northeast that killed “only” 10 people, it sure is nice to hear about India putting down its nuclear weapons long enough to help the earthquake relief effort in Pakistan.

Think about that for a minute.

INDIA is helping PAKISTAN. In 2001, I declined an invitation to attend a wedding in Pakistan because I was worried it would be blown to bits by India while I was there. This is a region where seemingly nothing could ease the conflict – nothing, that is, except 41,000 deaths in a 48 hour period.

I can hear India saying, “Um … Oh. Heh.” as they back away from the red button.

In the words of Alanis Morisette, “Thank you, India.” I think we can all learn something here. It took the world literally shifting under their feet, but Indian Life and Death Decision Makers are choosing life. Maybe our own administration should take notice.

But why would they? My heart is still aching from our reaction to September 11, when my inner Pollyanna was hoping we’d respond to our own tragedy with dignity and peace, not with our typical Schoolyard Bully persona en force. Dubya warned us all so eloquently that no one can take our lunch money without paying some serious consequences, and pay we have. The entire Axis of Evil and their brothers and their kids and their dogs and their old people and England and Indonesia too, and all of our soldiers overseas and their families that worry about them, and every single American who watches low-flying planes and wonders if maybe that’s the one that will kamikaze into a nearby school – we’ve all paid more than Dubya had in the budget.

I’m afraid crazy Irene may be on to something. When you fight fire with fire, all you get is a big ass fire. If she’s right, and God isn’t sending any more water, what’s going to put out all the flames? Seems that all we have is a lot of hot air stoking up a raging inferno.

Wouldn’t it be better to buy the world a Coke? To all hold hands and sing “Give Peace a Chance”? Can’t we just let Michael row his boat ashore?

India isn’t the only country to jump on the Kumbaya Bandwagon. Japan was first. I spent the first several months of my year in Hiroshima in constant guilt-mode, harboring a desire to apologize for the whole A-bomb thing. It finally overtook me one day, while teaching one of my adult English classes. I had asked everyone to tell me when they were the most surprised. One of my older ladies said that she was the most surprised when her house fell down on her head and she had to pull her father out from under the ceiling beams. A nuclear explosion wasn’t exactly what she had in mind that morning, while she was getting ready for school.

I’m not sure of exactly what I said, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I may have said it was a horrible thing for us to do to them, what a terrible thing to endure. I might have said that I wish I could do something to take it back. But guess what this lady said? This lady who had to save her own father’s life after we bombed the crap out of her city? She said that Japan learned a lot from the explosion. Namely, that war is bad. She is not alone in that opinion. Ask the average person on the streets of Hiroshima, and they are likely to tell you the same thing. Instead of seeking revenge, they fold bazillions of paper cranes and leave them on monuments all over their Peace Park.

Everything is complicated. It’s hard to run a country with all of its own natural disasters AND police the rest of the world. Right, wrong, indifferent or otherwise, no one can choose the best thing to do all the time. But here’s to hoping that India’s change of heart does not slip into the news archives too soon. It’s downright refreshing to know that at least some major country has its priorities in order. I’ll pray to God, Dubya and Irene that someday we get the chance to join the Kumbaya Bandwagon and live to tell about it.

Can't not.

Music theory has been kicking my ass, but tonight I think I finally reached the point of understanding what I don't know yet. The concepts are beginning to gel, but I still have a lot of memorizing to do. My instructor keeps telling us that, once we get it, we won't think there's very much too it at all.

So many things are like that, I think. I call it the "Magic Eye Effect." Remember those weird pictures that were all the rage in the late 80's/early 90's? The ones that look like pointless patterns until you set your gaze just right, and then you can see the images that are buried deep inside of them? I remember the challenge of finding in them what everyone else could see, but I could not. So many pieces of advice: "Let your eyes get soft." "Hold it at your nose level." "Don't look at the paper, look beyond the paper." I tried and tried, getting close then losing ground, again and again until, finally, I could see a dolphin. Hurrah! I didn't care as much about the image as I did the fact that I could finally see it.

Typing is another thing that absolulely did not come naturally, but when I finally got it, I was thrilled. There's no turning back! I'm a typing machine!

I have a feeling that understanding music theory will be something like that. I'll be sitting there, eyebrows crinkled, cursing my instructor's name, half way through my 12th Cadbury Fruit and Nut, when all of a sudden, BLAM. I'll get get it. And I'll string together sweet chords and riffs and licks and all those other guitar words I don't know yet, and I'll record my album, do the coffee shop circuit and all together be quite pleased with myself. Can't wait.

But I'm not there yet. The more my instructor explains the theory, the more I wonder how anyone ever thought this stuff up AND had any sort of a life at the same time. I wonder how musicians find it inside of them to sit down and figure it out. And so finally I asked him when it was all going to come together and I'd be able to turn the concepts into music. When, for example, will I instinctively know how to sound bluegrassy?

His response was a story from his own learning. He worked full time at an elevator factory in New England, back in the early 70's. He knew of some other guys who liked bluegrass, but did not know how to play it. They lived in New York, so together they'd decide which songs to learn on their own, then get gigs all over the North East. They'd show up, practice for an hour before the gig, play until close, sleep on the floor of the bar, then drive home. He said he played in a band with Bela Fleck, who would play five sets, go back to their room at 3am, sit in a closet and play some more. "If you want to learn bluegrass, that's how you learn bluegrass," he said.

I had to know what motivated him. What drove him through the frustration of theory? What compelled him to push his fingers past the pain? How did he find the patience with himself when he hit the wrong notes again and again?

So I asked him, "Why are you a musician?"

I don't know exactly what I was expecting. Lots of words, anyway.

What he said? "It's an urge. You can't not."

Can't Not.

I know Can't Not. I've known Can't Not since I was 11 and writing down everything I thought about in a journal. Since I was 12 and writing short stories. Since I was 14 and writing (albeit crappy) poetry. I know that urge -- it's like breathing. You can't not do that either. When you stop, you can tell right away that something is wrong. And so it is for me with writing. And so it is for musicians with music. And for artists with their medium. I was surprised I couldn't have answered the question myself, before he spoke it.

I know the urge, but I wonder where it comes from. Why do some of us have it, and others don't? Or does everyone have it, don't not act on it, and that's why so many people are unhappy? Do others not even recognize it as an urge? How awful to feel a longing for something you can't even identify. And how tragic to recognize it and decide to ignore it instead.

Question for my blogging audience: What is your Can't Not?

Procrastination gone wild

In an attempt to be brutally honest (and also to keep Baraka off my back because I haven’t posted in a bazillion years), I need to come clean about something.

The realization that I do this particular thing came to me tonight, ohhhhhh, about 8:00. Okay, 8:30. I know this, because that’s when I started studying for my music theory class tomorrow. I take this class once a week, so I’ve had aaaaaaaall week to study for it. But have I? Nope. Why not? Because it’s hard. It, like, takes concentration and stuff.

In my defense, in lieu of studying this weekend, I did do 6 loads of laundry, give my apartment a fantabulously deep clean, scrubbed stuff I didn’t realize I owned, balanced my check book, had some quality time with 2 friends, pretended to pay attention while my friend explained where the Red Sox are in the whole baseball thing that’s going on now, talked with a cute boy on the phone, downloaded music (it was legal, so I get extra points), organized my closet, organized a party… you get my drift. I was very productive. And social! Socializing makes you a well-rounded person, you know.

But I still can’t remember what makes a major chord major and not minor, and I certainly can’t tell you which notes make EVERY DAMN CHORD THAT EVER EXISTED, like I was supposed to be figuring out all week.

The thing is, I actually do want to learn this theory stuff. Knowing the science behind the art will only make me a better artist. I know this. But still, I would rather dig out all the hair in my shower drain than take the time to memorize it.

Why do you suppose this is?

It’s probably the same reason behind what happened when I founded a non-profit organization with a friend a few years ago. We made business cards that said “President” and “Vice President” (tossed a coin to see who was who), took a business trip, told a bunch of people that we have a non-profit organization, gave out our cards, put it on our resumes, and then … just sort of … didn’t do anything non-profity.

It’s probably also the same reason I longed for some time off to write my Great American Novel, finally got laid off, and then found it hard to do things like bathe every day, let alone get a jumpstart on my Opus.

My guess is that I’m a procrastinator.

What’s up with that? What’s with having dreams and not making them come true? It’s not like the world is at a loss for projects that need tending to.

It’s this sort of realization that makes me very, very happy that most of what goes on inside our bodies is involuntary. Because if I had to keep on top of things like making my heart beat or tracking glucose into my cells, well … it wouldn’t be pretty. I’d probably keep up on the essentials (I work well under deadlines), but spend waaaayyy too much time in the feel-good-chemicals part of my brain. I’d always be smiling, but all my fingernails would be different lengths. You get the point.