Allegedly Pinocchio’s last words

"Really I said that?"

(Allegedly Pinocchio’s last words)

The brouhaha over the content of last weeks latest and appalling  “I misspoke, I apologize, etc.” statement is not my issue of the nanosecond. My issue: this irritating trend has been gaining momentum over time and has reached pandemic proportions.

Similar to Elisbeth Kubler-Ross who wrote The Five Stages of Grief, two of which happen to be denial and anger; the Pinocchio syndrome has only four stages. It is now a clear cycle that starts with “Really I said that?”  The cycle moves to “I must have misspoke,” then progresses to gibberish about “biased press or words taken out of context,” and ends with a mumbled or insistent “denial.”

One has difficulty finding an example that could be used with humor or sarcasm to illustrate my four stages.  Real folks have a monopoly on the crazy and the extreme. My example, one would hope, was put to rest hundreds of years ago, but in our current regressive climate, there could be a comeback.

Number one: “Really I said that?”  Look and listen for these words when the outrageous statement hits the cosmos and goes viral “Really I said the earth is flat, are you sure?”  If necessary tack on the next statement with an extra folksy vocal embellishment, “That just doesn’t sound like me.”

The buzz is not stopping.  Mr./Ms. Pinocchio’s statement has garnered more notice as former tapes and articles start making the media rounds. Emphatically we hear the words “The world is flat” coming back to haunt our speaker from past interviews.

Number two:  “I misspoke. I didn’t mean to say the earth is flat.” If the person is receiving a media pounding, there is a second half to the statement, mumbled in a low barely audible tone of voice.  “If I accidently misspoke by saying the earth is flat, I apologize.”

Number 3: “My statement was taken out of context.”  At this point let us not forget, if interested, we have seen and read every past article and interview in full.  To turn the attention away from the speaker however, there is another addition to the out –of- context ploy. “The biased media has always been looking for ways to discredit, dishonor, and disgrace all the good people that stand with me.” The best defense is an offense.

Number four: “I never said that!”  The ultimate super Pinocchio play - the issue is not going away and has reached the strength of a Tsunami.  “I never said the earth is flat; what I said was the earth could start to flatten if an asteroid hit.”  

And there you have it - the denial and the lie.  The media and the folks they serve have goldfish memories.  Diver Dan located at the bottom of the goldfish bowl is always a new sighting.  We have no long or short term memory retention.  We have amnesia. I forgot; what was the topic again? Right, Elvis is still alive and living in a parallel universe. 

“Connect and addict”

Not my words but those of a retail market analyst reporting on the growing trend of high-end fashion designers creating clothing lines for the “Baby Gap” demographic.

The objective being: create demand among mommies and kiddies while connecting with both.  Win the loyalty of the child and hopefully he or she will become addicted to high-end clothing lines.  The desire and need for designer duds will be instilled in consciousness at birth and last a lifetime.  This is the perfect model of a cradle to grave marketing plan.

In discussing this trend over the last few years with women who have “baby gapped” their children, they have expressed publicly their disdain of such conspicuous consumption.  I see it differently.

This whole endeavor is to create “mini me’s.”   It seems that there is a campaign to transform children into miniature adults.  Pushing babies into accelerated adulthood allows our expectations to change.  Children should not look or behave like children.  Wearing at age five a $1200 designer leather jacket or carrying a $1200 designer bag, which they can identify, makes them cognizant at an early age of being special, different, and entitled.   The perfect gift for baby, the gift that goes on giving. 

Is this trend much different from the train wreck reality TV show “Toddlers and Tiaras” where we dress, train, and expect beauty pageant babies to imitate X-rated porn stars?  When I listen to the show dissected with primness and contempt, I look around at how many munchkins look just like mommy and daddy.  At the moment their babies don’t have spray tans, hair extensions or false eyelashes, but I am sure a less trashy look will soon be available.

The grownup look for children is with us; who knows if it will stay.  As long as it is here, I expect to see “Americas Top Modelete” TV show the perfect complement to the franchise.  Coming soon, potential fashion designers will be competing to have their “Connect and Addict” clothing line showing in Macy’s, their ages 5 to 10.  Another group will be competing for a design show to host makeovers for a lucky child’s bedroom or playroom.  Just do the whole house; make mommy and daddy proud.

What I find so appalling is the child who lives and works on the children’s network television world, the child that suffers the indignities of living with stupid and embarrassing grownups, is now alive and well living in real households.  This child is no longer virtual but now resides in homes where he or she must lead adults out of sticky situations that useless parents are no longer able to manage, only to be saved by the children.

I guess it makes sense that at birth infants should start dressing as bankers, politicians, celebrities, pole dancers, life coaches, real estate or pharmaceutical sales people. With their enhanced maturity and perfect career looks the youngsters can support all the lame adults who will not be able to afford designer clothes for themselves and will be completely reliant upon children to give them life advice.

Behind closed doors - just let it go – not so easily done!

Just let it Go

I am editing and purging; let me clarify, stuff not food.  Wilfrida’s Closet started as a way to combine amazing amounts of strange items that Wilfrida had accumulated through the years with my need to do something distracting.

Wilfrida was an odd saver and collector, based on need, thrift and a great eye.  A pioneer re-purposer, sale shower curtains were ready to be taken out and used to cover the house should Guido paint again.  The fact that neither of them were painting our house was of no consequence, the shower curtains were on hand – just in case.  My argument; there would be no painting even if the mood hit, because the paint police would have arrested Guido in a heartbeat.

The visible areas in the house were lovely, a source of joy for Wilfrida and everyone that visited.  People always commented on how comfortable they felt in the environment she created.  But behind the scenes; in drawers and closets, holy moley, beware of closed doors.   I have used the greens stamps she saved in my cards.

 

I too suffer from behind closed doors.  Call and ask if I still have a form that was used 15 years ago and sadly the answer is yes.  Remember the picture we used on a photo shoot 10 years ago, I remember it, and god forgive me, I have it.  

My challenge has been to adios what is not needed because I have staged and cleaned out homes of others for years.  I am good at it except for me. And now we are moving and I am singing the adios tune.

I have decided hoarding takes many forms, not just stuff. As an only child family gatherings were always interesting to me, not just my family, any family that I visited.  I was the observer, the person behind the glass window in the police interrogation room.

As family dinners progressed there seemed to be a point that siblings started to regress. Several siblings were headed down a happy memory lane and suddenly a third one was headed down a dark and scary lane.  My conclusion: everyone has there own reality and the really unhappy relative remembers every bad incident, real or not and stores them just like stuff.

Italian family dinners were an audit, all would be jolly and then the one unforgiveable injustice would be taken out of the box relived, remembered, and put away for the next family event.  Of course there were operatic tendencies, solos, arias, and choruses.  It still seems like hoarding to me.

What about telling the same stories over and over about work or the family and not replacing them with new ones, isn’t that hoarding?  Listing everything that has gone wrong in life to validate the premise – “see this always happens to me.” Conversation over, no logic is needed; the truth has been declared, proven by the storage unit of past wrongs.

So my stuff, not so bad!  I can easily move it out and away, in fact I am.  But the storage units and filled luggage of old stories, bad stories that people fill up empty space with are not so easily given away.  Rather than the houses we see on the show Hoarding…I think of the hearts and bodies that are crammed with sadness.

Anyone need anything…Wilfrida’s paint/shower curtains perhaps, they must be here somewhere.  Act fast everything goes!

No where to run, no where to hide!

OM

The topic of a past blog was mindfulness, the title is The Art of the Theory: brought to you by a friendly zombie, Tuesday, May 15, 2012.  It dealt with everyday life challenges that take us away from our bodies and into strange places.   Here we are again with a different spin.

A recent story came from the Bay Area and stayed alive through social media. The tale goes like this: a yoga teacher is fired for giving a student an allegedly “disapproving” look for accepting and responding to a cell call during a yoga class.  End of story…not so much!

It gets better; the Facebook employee complained that the teacher gave her a look of “disapproval”.  A complaint was filed and the teacher was summarily fired.  The company holding the Facebook workout contract was sitting on the horns of a dilemma.  Support an employee or face jeopardizing a large paying contract.

There are countless layers to this incident that make my head spin.  Let us move to the first layer, yoga is a method of mindfulness that allows students to leave their “stuff”, focus and perhaps relax.  Having cell phones in a class is no different than listening to random fire alarms, police sirens and people screaming in your ear while attempting to deeply concentrate or sleep.

Next layer to unpeel, a logical question me thinks, if a person is expecting such an important call why attend class?  Could it be to share one’s importance with the entire class?  Perhaps this is the new grown up version of the old show and tell and now it is called yell and tell.  “Can you hear me now? “

And then there is the following layer: our practitioner, a legend in her own mind, is of such elevated stature that all social norms don’t apply.  A class would surely understand our yogini’s need to take a phone call during half moon pose.

Several articles mentioned that handling a phone during a complicated yoga pose could be dangerous. A politically correct way to step delicately around the elephant in the room, while dodging elephant droppings, allows safety to be the focus.  Bottom line… it is pure rudeness!  However, if there is no turning back to mindfulness, let’s have two classes one for “users” and one for those that crave mindfulness and need silence.

Next and last, where are we going with device boundaries?  My imagination sees several scenarios.  A funeral, must call, must text, must do email, and of course create a video for YouTube. A doctor delivering life-threatening news stops mid-sentence and checks a text from his tennis partner.  I would mention making love or in the middle of massage but that I hear is already fairly standard.

Apparently we all are so important that we must be connected during all rituals and silence is unacceptable.  We have become legends in our minds, thank you Carly Simon for giving us the future in a song.