yesterday we had lunch on the deck. in our pjs. and it was not saturday. so – voila! – there go the rules! besides…what are the rules AND who makes them???
we were not – unfortunately – in our matchy-matchy red buffalo plaid flannels. it’s too warm for those. but pjs nevertheless. though, i must say, we have seen plenty of people out-and-about in their pj bottoms – i mean, anywhere and everywhere. i have encouraged d to not be so modest about his pj-wearing. we are right in fashion, apparently.
regardless of our hesitation to be pj-forward in all places, there is nothing quite so delicious as breakfast-on-the-deck followed hours later by lunch-on-the-deck…all in our pajamas.
it was a week of weeks and that discounts all the rules. period.
we played spud as kids. the abby drive kids ran through yards trying to escape the inevitable impact of the ball.
i was “it” a lot. i lived next door to a family with eight children, all of whom were athletic whizzes. when one of these athletes was “it” they’d throw the ball up, call out a number and we’d scatter, in my memory, in the grass close by. the catcher of the ball – the new “it” – would easily lob the ball over to someone frozen on the lawn and that kid would be the new “it”. easy-peasy.
but – there was a tad bit of hypocrisy here. when i was called “it”, they would scatter rapidly, their feet sailing across grassy yards, barely touching as i ran for the ball to yell “spud”. and then they froze what-seemed-like miles away, hiding behind any objet d’art disguised as a towering oak or big forsythia. my measly throw, complicated by those trees and bushes, would ensure my continuation as “it”, sometimes ad nauseam. this did not make playing spud fun.
in a few ptsd moments, i just read the rules of spud online – and it appears that you are not allowed to hide behind things. you are to run out in the open so as to move the game along and pass “it” status around. ahh. somehow, i’m sure i guessed that back in 1968 when i was in the middle of catching the ball yet again and calling out “spud” yet again and throwing at the targeted kid once again. but the rules were not quite objective and, when you have a family of eight vs one or two others, you are definitely at a deficit. things are not stacked in your favor. this is probably why i loved hopscotch so much.
bullies are everywhere. we encounter them in our daily lives: at work, at school, out in public, in the political arena. they change the rules willy-nilly to suit their agenda; they justify changing them with empty words of hypocrisy.
and now, people are running spud-ptsd-scared away, hiding behind each other, their integrity underground, “it” – the truth – unable to touch them behind their objets d’art: the smug all-powerful-makes-his-own-rules-to-suit-himself senate majority leader and the sinister autocratic-wishing-wishing-wishing president of this united states. the ball, so to speak, is in their hands and they are hiding, clutching their (non) great america and its questionable future, in plain view.
clearly there are a lot of people who own registered cars in wisconsin who do not read.
how do i know this, you ask?
drive behind anyone with a wisconsin plate and notice where they have put the year sticker. people place these stickers all over the license plate. when you start looking you will see a variety of methods – in the middle of the plate, stickered all around the edges, smack over the raised lettering. however, these stickers are delivered to you in the envelope pictured above. this envelope leaves little doubt as to where to place the stickers – any and all of them. they are not meant to fill in the white space on the plate, nor to cover the numbers and letters metal-stamped on the plate.
so do they not read? that, in itself, i see as a bit of a problem. somehow it seems necessary to be able to read and follow directions in order to be safely out on the road, driving around.
now, i would understand if the state of wisconsin department of motor vehicles just sent you a sticker in a plain envelope, without specific directions attached. you might wonder, “golly gee, where does this sticker go?” but to receive such clear and concise and labeled instructions, how is it that a vast number of drivers, supposedly responsible drivers, have scratched their heads and tore off the backing and stuck ’em anywhere they wanted? what are they possibly thinking? what is the point of this stuck-anywhere-sticker-thing? is it a display of rebellion? is it a display of apathy? do they think it’s artistic? i wonder.
because it just looks like they over-and-over-again don’t read the directions. it’s not like you need cliff notes for the eleven words, “place year sticker here first time and at time of renewal.” plus there’s the arrow. pointing. to the place the sticker goes. what’s so hard about this?
it makes me wonder what else they don’t read or pay attention to. in a world with a global pandemic, we surely need people to read, stay apprised, follow safety instructions and directions for flattening the curve. we need people to be responsible and care about guidelines put into place, specifications to fairly regulate, to simply be in accord.
now, i can’t help but wonder: are the people with stickers all over their license plates the same people – the customers at the corner store – who sneered at us because we were wearing masks during this pandemic?
reverse threading 