Other Drivers

I used to be a bit of a hothead when I drove, impatient at the carelessness or selfishness of other drivers. If someone cut me off or changed lanes without signaling, I would usually respond aloud with an insult of some sort.

It was my young daughter's innocent question one day that made me realize I needed to change my ways.

"Mom," she asked, "are all the other drivers morons?"

Ouch.

Since Webster's gives one definition for moron as "a very stupid person," I'll go out on a limb and say that there are a lot of morons on the road. But that didn't make it right for me to call them that - and certainly not within earshot of my children.

Too many of us drive around angry these days. There's no doubt that many of us feel shortchanged when it comes to time. I've seen gals putting on makeup while steering one-handed. It's commonplace for folks to talk on their cellphones as they drive, and I am guilty of that. How many of us eat a meal while driving? And not just fast-food - once I saw a guy driving down a Dallas highway with a big pan of spaghetti propped on the steering wheel. My jaw dropped in amazement as I watched him scooping the strands of pasta into his mouth.

I can multi-task with the best of them, but I've come to realize that doing too many tasks at once can be dangerous. Juggling too many tasks can certainly be stressful, and when we take that stress behind the wheel, we are more prone to anger. And when we are angry, we put ourselves and others at risk.

Once as I entered the overpass from Interstate 35E to the Dallas North Tollway, the clutch cable broke, and my car wouldn't move. Passing drivers honked and screamed at me for partially blocking their way. There were numerous rude hand gestures. With my toddler and infant daughters in the car, I was terrified to get out in the heavy traffic. Fortunately an angel in the form of a truck driver came and pushed me to the tollbooth so I could exit. I have never forgotten the feeling of being the victim of so much hostility, so much anger over something that I could not help.

A few years ago, in a RoadRagers.com survey, more than 11,000 folks answered questions about their actions behind the wheel, some of which could be considered aspects of road rage. "I try to be a polite and courteous driver," said 76.9 percent of the respondents, but 69.8 percent said "I tailgate another driver to encourage them to speed up and go faster." I wasn't a math whiz in school, but those sets of numbers don't compute. Somebody's fudging.

One stress expert says that we set ourselves up for trouble when we don't allow ourselves enough time to do the things we need to do, then try to make up for lost time on the road. When we do that, everything that interferes with our attempt to gain that lost time adds to our frustration level, and has the potential to erupt as road rage.

We can control whether we let the stress in our lives become anger that we direct toward others. I have learned that if I allow myself enough time, drive courteously and safely, and don't take the bad driving of others personally, I stay a lot calmer. So nowadays when I see other drivers do stupid things, I try to remember that there are circumstances of which I'm unaware. I say a prayer that they'll realize that their carelessness behind the wheel could be dangerous, and I hope that they'll do better next time. And I try not to call them morons (at least not out loud).

Unless they're texting. Then they're morons.
(Dallas Morning News Community Voices 8-23-09)

A Community of Believers - So Why Don't I Feel Welcome?

Some years ago I visited churches in connection with my job. One day I stopped by 

a church to leave some information. The secretary glanced at me as I approached 

her door, but when I saw that she was on the phone, I stepped away to give her 

privacy. I waited. And waited. While she chatted away on what was clearly a happy

personal call. After nearly 15 minutes, a man working outside, seeing through the 

glass door that I was still waiting, came in and apologized profusely, and took the

brochure from me. I was there on business, but I remember wondering, "What if I 

were looking for a new church?" The rude behavior of that secretary -- the first

point of contact for a stranger -- dissuaded me from wanting to return for any 

reason.

In the 46 years since I became a Christian, I have been a member of two Dallas 

churches, the first one for more than 30 years. In 1996, we moved our membership

to a church of another denomination. We were happy there for a long time. But a

couple of years ago, I felt drawn to find a church nearer home and decided to visit

Protestant churches in the southern suburbs. I had two primary criteria: the church

had to recognize my infant baptism, and it had to be one where I felt a real

welcome.

Ah -- there was the rub. 

I had thought my experience with the unwelcoming secretary was an aberration. 

When I began my hunt for a new church home, my daughter and young grandsons

came along one Sunday. We followed the "Nursery" sign arrow to find an empty 

room. After several minutes of waiting in the hallway, wondering what to do, a 

young women walking by said, "Oh, sometimes the nursery lady just doesn't show

up. Somebody will probably be here soon," and away she went.

At another church we visited, where our family made five of the 40 or so in  

attendance at the early informal service, not one single person spoke to us, not

when we entered, not during the time allotted for greeting, and not as we exited.

But even that wasn't the worst experience. One summer Sunday my husband and I

visited a church for the first time at the invitation of some friends. We were the only

newcomers in the congregation. In fact, the minister commented on it: "It's easy to

see who are visitors are today!" We were greeted warmly by several folks and stayed

after the service to talk with the minister for about five minutes. Two days later,

we received a "welcome visitor" letter which said, "Sorry I didn't get a chance to

meet you. I hope you'll come to visit again so that I can meet you and get

acquainted."

We talked to the man. We were the only visitors that day. And he sent us a form 

letter that he apparently didn't even read before he signed it. 

A Christian church is a community of believers in Christ. Christ taught us that God is

Love and we are to love one another. Unfortunately, in some churches that love

appears to be reserved for those who are already "in the group." 

Don't get me wrong: we visited other churches where we were definitely made to 

feel welcome and were invited back. I'm already a Christian, and I'm a persistent

person who kept looking even after some negative experiences. But I can't help

but wonder: what if I had been a nonbeliever who was searching for Christ, and

the secretary wouldn't give me the time or day, or none of the people around even

said 'hello,' or the pastor couldn't remember talking to me two days after the fact?

So maybe we need to take a hard look at how we show that love. Starting at home.

(Dallas Morning News 7-12-09)

The Child Obesity Challege

An elementary school held a Physical Fitness Challenge day earlier this spring. Kids were assessed for their fitness, and were weighed and measured for height. Many of these kids – all of them under the age of 12 – weighed in at 150 pounds or more. What used to be the average weight of a 16- or 17-year-old boy is fast becoming standard for grade-school kids.

Until the time I graduated from high school, I could not have counted ten grossly overweight kids in all of my school years put together. Now I can count ten obese children in five minutes of walking through a mall.

It’s pretty much the norm that adults gain weight as they age. Probably most of us had parents or grandparents who were a bit overweight. But when we were children, it was almost unheard of to have friends who were obese. What has happened?

The U.S. didn’t even collect data on obesity until the 1980s. Back then, the prevalence of obesity (for all ages) was less than 14% nationally. By 2006, there were states that exceeded 30% obesity in their populations. These percentages are not people who are slightly overweight, these are people who are obese. And far too many of them are children.

In the past 20 years, the prevalence of obesity among children ages 6-11 more than doubled, to 17%. For adolescents between 12 and 19, the rate more than tripled. Type 2 diabetes mellitus was formerly an adult condition; now it is being diagnosed with alarming frequency in children. An estimated 6% of obese young people have at least one additional risk factor for heart disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. A generation ago, these types of medical concerns were barely conceivable in relation to children.

If we agree that obesity is usually the result of an improper balance between the calories we consume and the energy we expend (the calories we burn up), then we have to ask how it is that these thousands of children are burning up so many fewer calories than they are consuming. There’s no doubt that, for multiple reasons, many kids today get less exercise than kids of previous generations. Fortunately many school districts are revamping their curricula to once again require more physical activity. But if kids have P.E. at school a couple of times a week, but when at home sit for hours in front of the TV or computer, that little bit of exercise may be negated.

Studies point to the impact of food marketing on children, but the bottom line is that for most children, the food they consume is not food they buy for themselves. It’s food provided by their parents. Fast food. Junk food. Lazy food.

I don’t for a minute believe that parents set out deliberately to sabotage their children’s health. Every one of us has dealt with kids crying for a Happy Meal, or candy, or soft drinks, and sometimes we give in, in spite of knowing that we shouldn’t. But when we give in over and over again, when we throw in the towel and rationalize and make excuses, when we fill our refrigerators and our pantries with junk food because it’s too much trouble to take the time and make the effort to feed our families healthily, then we’re sliding rapidly down the slippery slope of irresponsible behavior.

And we’re killing our children in the process.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website contains links to thousands of publications that address the problem of childhood obesity. The U.S. Department of Health and the National Institute of Health have instituted programs aimed at enhancing children’s activity and good nutrition efforts in order to fight the problem. Dr. Matthew Miller writing in TimesBulletin.com says that if we don’t take drastic measures to curb childhood obesity, kids of this generation are at risk of having a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Shouldn’t we all be appalled by that prediction?

This is a problem that we have created. This is a problem we must eliminate. Our children’s lives may depend on it.

(Dallas Morning News Opinion Page June 19, 2009)

Rounding Those Corners

When I was a teenager I mowed my grandfather’s lawn as a way to earn money. It was a big yard, and it took an hour to cut the grass. Granddaddy taught me how to save myself time and effort on such a job. He called his technique “rounding the corners.”

Instead of mowing in a rectangular shape, with corners of 90 degrees, he would cut a row diagonally across each corner. That way he did not have to stop and turn the mower when he got to the end of each row; he just slowed down a bit and followed the angle around. The lawn looks great afterward, and you haven’t worked as hard as if you made those right-angle turns.

We recently had our air conditioner compressor repaired again. The builder-installed unit has been a recurring problem since we built the house. Every repairman has told us that the unit was poor quality. Same goes for the stove, the light fixtures, the plumbing. … In ways that were not immediately obvious, our builder cut corners, saving himself money, and leaving us with long-term headaches.

Cutting corners. Is that so different from my grandfather’s rounding of corners? I asked some friends and family members. A few folks defined it as saving precious time. One friend, who loves finding bargains at thrift stores, says you might call it cutting corners when you buy used instead of new in order to save money. But most respondents considered the term as a negative, with descriptions including “leaving something out of the equation,” “getting the job done quickly by doing it cheaply but not necessarily thoroughly,” “not doing something to the best of my ability,’ and “the lazy way to do something.”

My daughter, a former police officer, pointed out that if you drive across a corner parking lot at a traffic light or stop sign, it is considered “cutting a corner to disregard a traffic control device” and is a ticketable offense. “How can that be a good thing?” she asked. I agree. I’ve always felt that cutting corners meant giving less than my all to the task, omitting something that should be there.

A student copies someone else’s work and passes it off as his own. A company replaces customer service personnel with an automated telephone system that adds layers of complexity to the attempt to obtain assistance. An auto repairman installs a used part and charges for a new one. Aren’t these all forms of cutting corners? In each case, someone is shortchanged.

The student takes credit for another’s effort and doesn’t learn what he ought to. The customer is frustrated at the difficulty in reaching a live person to handle his problem. The car owner may be put at risk by driving a vehicle containing an unsafe part. All because someone decided to cut corners.

If I cut corners in what I do, I might save myself some time and effort, but I might cause extra work or problems for someone else. On the other hand, if I round the corners in my work, I find a way to do the same good job more efficiently. The phrases may sound similar, but their meanings are very different. So I try never to cut corners.

But I’ll round them when it’s OK. I’m the one mowing in circles.

(Dallas Morning News 5-16-09)

Genealogy for fun and intrigue

Look up ‘genealogy’ in the dictionary and you’ll read something along the lines of “an account of the descent of a person, family or group from an ancestor” or “the study of family pedigrees.” Sounds a little ho-hum, doesn’t it?

But Google the phrase ‘genealogy research’ and you’ll get more than 1,600,000 hits. That’s an awful lot of listings; maybe genealogy isn’t so ho-hum after all.

My high school Civics teacher, who taught a genealogy class at night at El Centro College, gave the class an extra credit assignment to draw up our family trees. I discovered that I knew little about my father’s family. That wasn’t unusual, since my parents divorced when I was very young and my dad lived in another city, but what surprised me was that neither he nor his father could tell me much about their ancestors. I started researching to see what I could discover.

I began at the Dallas Public Library’s genealogical division downtown. It was a tremendous resource, and I spent countless hours scrolling through microfilmed census records. Until it happens to you, you might not understand the thrill of seeing the name of an ancestor written in the spidery handwriting of a census taker. Even when you can’t find a name you’re looking for, it’s still interesting to look at those old records. Once I found an address where numerous women shared the same residence, and the occupation of each was shown as “Bawd.”

Genealogy can increase your vocabulary.

Before the advent of the Internet, unless one could afford to travel, research was often limited to the local library, court, cemetery or church records, correspondence, and stories from relatives for information.

For many years the LDS (Latter Day Saints) church has shared its vast collection of genealogy records through inter-library loans and now on the Internet. These days literally millions of records are online and available with a keystroke. Unfortunately, there are lots of those resources that are full of errors and careless assumptions made by those who are less than diligent in their research, and it’s important to be cautious in what you take as true.

There are legitimate professionals who will research for a fee, but there are also some who, for a price, are miraculously always able to discover that you are related to British royalty, or the Kennedys, or President Barack Obama.

Let’s face it, most of us are descended from just plain folks. But those folks might have had interesting lives. I was astonished when I learned that my family lore held that a great-great-grandfather had killed a man over a poker game, and that another ancestor was a sharpshooter in the Civil War.

My favorite story was of my own great-grandfather John Tomlinson, whose wife died at age 35 (probably of exhaustion) after bearing him nine children. With five of those children being under the age of ten, that practical gentleman headed off to Tennessee to “court an old maid” he knew about.

On the way he stopped off in Arkansas to visit a cousin. Lou Ella Shofner, age 24, was in Arkansas visiting her sister, who introduced her to the rich widower. John embarked on a whirlwind courtship, married Lou Ella and brought her home to Texas.

And then he told her about the nine children.

I’ve tried to picture the moment of the great revelation, without much success. “Oh, Lou Ella, I KNEW there was something I forgot to tell you…”

But I got the story straight from her daughter’s mouth. Aunt Birdie told me “If Mama had known what she was getting into, she wouldn’t have done it.” In 1890, a woman couldn’t easily divorce her husband, so Lou Ella, only seven years older than her oldest stepdaughter, stayed with it and gave her husband seven more children, the youngest being my grandfather.

Who needs celebrity ancestors? There’s enough excitement and intrigue in some ordinary-folks' stories to rival any current reality TV show. But the only way you’ll ever know that is if you start looking into your own family history, asking questions and seeking out the stories. Your local genealogical society or Public Library will be glad to help you get started.

(Dallas Morning News online 4-08-09)

Who are you?

The class period was nearly over.

“Pop quiz,” announced the teacher. The entire class groaned in unison. It was ten minutes until the bell on a Friday afternoon!

“The test has only three questions.” Three questions? Miss one question and you’ve failed! This is crazy!

“I won’t be collecting the test. It is for your own information only. Take out a sheet of paper and a pencil.” I looked at a classmate in puzzlement. What was going on?

“Question 1: Who are you?”

I wrote my name, assuming that my classmates did the same.

“Question 2: Who are you?”

I heard someone snicker behind me. I wasn’t sure anything was funny, I just thought it was weird. “I am a high school student,” I wrote.

After another pause:

“Question 3: Who are you?”

We all looked at each other in confusion. I think I wrote that I was a daughter, sister, and granddaughter. I was very glad that the papers weren’t to be turned in.

We put down our pencils. The teacher rose from his chair and moved in front of his desk. “I know you’re confused by these questions,” he said. “But I’ve asked them for an important reason. In a couple of years you will leave this building for the last time to make your way in the world. Some of you will go to college, some will go to work. Your lives may go in very different directions. The one thing you all have in common, the one way in which you are all alike, is the need to discover who you are.”

Every eye was on him.

“Is your name who you are? Is it your athletic ability? Your grades? Your popularity? Is it your occupation? If you are a Christian, did you say so?

“Only you can answer the question, ‘Who are you?’ But it’s a question that you must answer. If you don’t know who you are, you run the risk that someone else will define you, and wrongly. It’s not too soon to figure it out. Who are you?”

As if on cue, the bell rang. “Dismissed,” the teacher said.

We walked out of the room into the crowded hallway. I didn’t talk to any of my classmates about what had happened. I was embarrassed that, although I had been a Christian for several years, I hadn’t written that down.

A teacher in the public school system today would probably be fired for mentioning Christ in the context of such a quiz. But the question, “If you’re a Christian, did you say so?’” haunted me for years. At the time, I had made a profession of faith in Christ, but had not even thought of that when asked “Who are you?”

We spend years developing external identifiers. I am now a daughter, wife, mother, friend, volunteer, musician, employee, organization member, citizen, and more. Those are all important aspects of who I am. But external identifiers can change or even disappear. If my self-definition is completely linked to those, I am on shaky ground. The world is a fickle place. Families evolve, jobs end, friendships fizzle, glory days fade into the distant past. But my connection to God, and to his Son Jesus, is unbreakable. So I want my identity to be grounded in that.

During the season of Lent, Christians are encouraged to engage in a time of meditation, reminding ourselves of our need of God’s grace as we move toward the Easter celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. In my meditating, I think about that long-ago teacher and his pop quiz. That question set me on the journey to discovering just who I really was.

So ask me ‘Who are you?’ and I’ll tell you: I’m a child of God, and a follower of Christ. You won’t have to ask me three times.

(Dallas Morning News 3-08-09)

First, take care of yourself

Recently while surfing the Internet, I learned about Ambush Makeover, wherein selected fans of the Today Show receive new hairdos, makeup and updated outfits. As I scrolled online through the photos of women who have received makeovers, I was delighted to see the transformations from "before" to "after." But one thing struck me: a lot of the "before" pictures were of women who looked tired. Really tired.

It was easy to guess why. A common denominator in the descriptions of many of the makeover subjects is that they are women who are so busy caring for the others in their lives that they neglect themselves.

Most mothers can relate to that. During the years that I was a stay-at-home mom, my focus was on my family’s physical, spiritual, and emotional care, often to the detriment of my own needs. In addition, I volunteered in schools, at church, and in the community. When you’re reaching out in so many directions, taking time for yourself is often the last thing on your mind. It is much easier to throw on any old clothes, apply minimal makeup and run a brush through your hair so that you can get busy doing things for others.

Similarly, though they probably spend more time on makeup and wardrobe, moms who work outside the home and then come home to care for their families and handle other obligations are often so exhausted that they don’t take the time to nurture themselves emotionally, much less worry about updating their appearance. Those of us who are caregivers for aging parents are often in the same boat.

We don’t want to let others down. There are so many people and endeavors that clamor for our time and talents. We usually don’t devote much time to thinking about how we look.

So how do we look? We look tired.

Remember that perfume commercial from the 1970s where the business-suited woman sang that she could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never ever let you forget you’re a man"? Wow! If the song had gone on, it might have described how she helped the kids with their homework, got them fed, bathed and into bed, organized their supplies for the next school day, did a couple of loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and paid some bills. By the time that woman did all that, I guarantee she had no energy left for herself.

Not to provoke argument, but I think there’s a good chance that women really are wired as caregivers, that it is in our very nature to want — perhaps even to need — to nurture and care for those around us. Humans need nurturing, so the desire to nurture is a good thing, a necessary behavior. But we women sometimes feel selfish if we stop to re-charge, to take care of ourselves. And that’s a bad thing. Because while we’re so busy taking care of others, we often find, to our dismay, that there’s no one taking care of us.

Maybe that’s why I like makeover shows on TV. It’s OK to stop for a makeover, even if it’s just a psychological one. That may mean going to bed earlier at night in order to get more rest, asking a family member to take on extra responsibilities (even if the results are not quite up to our standards!), and learning to say no (and mean it!) to burdensome requests. It could mean regularly taking time to exercise, to read a book, to walk through the park, or hang out with a friend.
Or maybe even spending a little extra on a haircut without feeling guilty.

A lot of us seem to be afraid that the world will stop spinning if we don’t always do everything that everybody wants us to do. It won’t. Letting go of that burden might be a makeover in itself.

(Dallas Morning News online 1-30-09)