Just Jazzy 149

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
― Mark Twain

Your words have power – speak kind ones.

Promises to Keep and Reasons to Weep

Man, sometimes my titles are about a hundred times better than whatever comes next!

Someone told me today that vacations are like a bunch of weekends all strung together.  I’ve been back from my holiday for just under two weeks and already I’m longing for another stretch of strung-together weekends.  But no one wants to hear a person whine about how badly they need another holiday. So I’ll just keep that to myself and enjoy my disconnected weekends like everybody else who has no more travel plans for the summer.

There are a couple of promises I’ve made to myself, meant to improve my attitude and my life.  One is to stop saying the F word on my drive to work.  And also on my drive home from work.  And at all other times of the day or night.  Well, two out of three isn’t so bad.  Anyway, I broke this promise to myself today.  Twice I think. Maybe three times, I don’t know, I can’t keep track of what slips out of my mouth in traffic.  Whatever, tomorrow is another day.

The other promise I’ve made to myself is to avoid like the plague talking about work or anything work related here, simply because I rarely have anything pleasant to say about it.  And nobody wants to listen to whining about that either.  However…. it appears to be a day for promise breaking.

Our optical office has recently acquired one of these giant dog statues from the Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind charity.  Notice the hole in his head for donations.  This is probably harder to walk off with than a coin box sitting on a counter, plus a lot cuter.

What I have a problem with is the “contest” that’s currently underway to “name our guide dog.” No one asked me for my opinion about this, because they’re all smart enough to know I would think it’s stupid. Which I do.  A big plastic dog doesn’t need a name.  So with no input from me they have made a big poster asking for name suggestions and promising a “prize package” for the winner.  All you have to do is write your dog name, your human name, and your phone number down on a piece of paper and drop it in the draw box.    Would it not make more sense to give out the ballots in exchange for a small donation, rather than for free?  Otherwise doesn’t it all seem just a tad pointless?  And kindergarten -ish?

It appears that no one put any thought into how the winning name is actually going to be chosen, or what the criteria is for submitting a winning entry, or even what the prize package will be.  This lack of planning is what drives me crazy. And then it turns out it’s not a random  draw at all, because now everyone (except me) has been asked to go through the ballots and choose their favourite dog name from the ones submitted, and then the draw will be out of those names only.  How is that fair?  But more importantly, why do I even care?

Well of course even though I think the whole idea is dumb I’m a little miffed that I wasn’t consulted about any of this and thus didn’t get the chance to tell everyone they’re nuts.  And when potential dog namer customers ask me what the prize is I want to tell them I have no F’ing idea.  But I’m not saying that word.

Anyway, tonight, left on my own with the ballots, I decided to go through them and choose one for the bowl of finalists.  Seriously, we have a yellow cereal bowl for the blank ballots.  Professional is a word we don’t appear to understand.  But anyway, that’s beside the point.  The point is I ended up with twelve names that I think deserve consideration.  But they won’t get it, because I like them, and I don’t take this whole thing seriously enough and I’m just making fun of everything.  All true.

Here they are, in random order:

1.  Moneydog

2.  Blindy

3.  Princess Glitter

4.  Seesaw

5.  Barky

6.  Taxicab

7.  Cat

8.  Batdog

9.  Fluffy

10.  Cheezie

11.  Melonhead

12.  Woofy

The ballot I snuck into the pile of finalists was “Seymour” because I think that one might actually have a chance.  But these other dozen?  Priceless.  All deserving of a prize package for originality if nothing else.  Perhaps I’ll suggest that we hang each of these names in turn around the plastic dogs neck at hourly intervals throughout the workday.  See, if anyone would just bother to ask, I do have some really good ideas.

One Day

Imagine that you’re blind, but you have been granted one day to see. What day would you choose?  A day from the past? Today? A day in the future?

If I had to do this I suppose I would choose today just to get it over with.  Starting right now.  Because the first thing I’d like to do is look that deluded sight-granter in the eyes and tell him what I think of his stupid gift.  Unless its some kind of punishment or a cruel joke, in which case it all makes more sense.

Not to appear ungrateful or anything but why would you want to do that to someone?  What a terrifying experience for me if I’ve been blind since birth.  Twenty four hours of trying to cope with a whole new reality and then back to the way things were.  Except for the nightmares.

And what a crushing blow if I’ve lost my sight, accepted my blindness and learned to deal with all the changes and then suddenly I get my sight back for a measly DAY just to have to give it up all over again.

There’s a reason why strange things like this aren’t possible and bizarre wishes don’t come true.  When you’re given a choice of this hell or that one, your third choice should always be ‘neither of the above’, thank you very much, please go away now and leave me alone.  Inflict your miracles on somebody who asked for them.

First Impressions

There are so many things we are cognizant of in other people without being conscious of it, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what comes first.

I meet new people every day at work.  Whether they are male or female is a good place to start I suppose.  Sometimes it’s surprisingly hard to tell, especially with little kids from other cultures. I tried to sell a small boy pink glasses once.  He looked quite pretty in them but it wasn’t the look he was going for I guess.  The male/female thing is important to sort out when directing a customer to the right section of the store, but when in doubt I just advise them to look wherever they want.

Then there’s the people who give you little choice in what you notice first.  Why else would someone do something weird and extreme to his hair if that’s not something he wants everyone who’s not legally blind to pick up on.  It’s the unremarkable ones that are harder to read or easier to ignore, and I assume that whichever it is, they’ve chosen to be that way and I respect them for that.

We look at people’s faces and we look into their eyes, listen to what they say and how they say it.  And then we kind of mirror each other back and forth.  Smile for smile, frown for frown.  I don’t really care about what you’re wearing or the length of your hair or the fact that you may have sixteen rings in your left eyebrow.

But I do care very deeply about how we choose to make each other feel.  And if you think that isn’t something that happens immediately upon meeting, you are deluding yourself.