I Don't Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)--Glass Animals

Thank God that I only had to deal with this lady for about an hour and a half today. It’s a good thing that she didn’t stay the whole two hours because I don’t know that I could have sat here the whole time without eventually being like WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, LADY?!?!

We talked about fires. I am not sure why this lady keeps bringing it up but every time she comes here, I have added a new candle to the growing collection on the kitchen counter (besides some icing-crusted birthday candles there are a whopping four). The latest two have Jesus on them and I’m pretty sure they’re made for super religious people or something, but, they were on sale and it’s almost Zombie Jesus Day, so I found it pretty fitting and I can light each one and say a prayer for each child. It seemed right to me. I didn’t share any of this with the woman who comes to teach me about bad parenting. 

Well, anyway, today she tells me about her brother setting shredded paper in bags by the kindling on their back porch on fire with a lighter. TWICE. And both times he ran away and the mom put the fire out and the Dad “wore him out” when he got home from work. And I’m like ooooookkkkkkkk….and proceed to say that I guessed that we learned about how to deal with fires because our family goes camping every year and we were taught how to make a fire with a big ring of stones and when breaking camp, you separate all the remaining coals and pour water over everything until there is no more smoke at all so there aren’t forest fires. 

What I don’t understand about any of this is that—and let’s be clear: I was prepared to teach people how to teach other people English as a subject for higher education—what I understood about teaching is that making a connection is important to a degree, but coming to a basic understanding of what their knowledge is about whatever the subject is and then working from there is also pretty fucking important. So is having a lesson plan and being able to stick to it even when being distracted. I've tried it before. I didn't particularly like it but I know how it's supposed to be done. What am I to understand when every conversation with this lady has an ever increasing severity of alarming behavior related therein? That she is purely a psychopath? Or that she has no idea what she’s doing for her job and so is sharing really “relatable” stories to me in some kind of weird effort to get me to confess..what exactly? That I’ve yelled at my kids? I told her today, the kids act like they’re offended by yelling but we’re all yelling all the time just in a different sort of way. I told her about yelling at them the other morning for waking me up to tell me they were worried that they wouldn’t get enough sleep and I’m like uh…wake from a dead sleep and suddenly I’m like uh yeah, me too! Now I’m worried about it and when I woke up later that morning, instantly angry about it I got up and yelled at everyone about guess what guys!!! You weren’t very nice to me and woke me up and now I’m mad about it, it’s time to get up, then I turn on music and yell about being tired again before they get ready and go on to school. And over the weekend I yelled at Addison about her not pulling out to make a left turn during church traffic! How horrible! Yes, was I being overly dramatic? Could I have stifled myself and we all have been a little happier, maybe. But I didn't I yelled because I'm afraid to die while listening to someone else's playlist!

Part of what she said today was that her niece and her daughter would fight so much that she felt like she was just the referee and mimed pulling them apart. I don’t think I even bother to hide my horror at all anymore because what is the fucking point??? If you aren’t telling me this because you are trying to increase the shock value to eventually provoke some particular response—I’m not quite sure yet what that is—then what are you even doing? Are you actually a complete and utter psychopath or moron or both? What is happening here? 

What I wanted to say at this point is that I don’t even allow my kids to fight in the house. If they want to hit each other, they have to go outside in the front yard or the street or something [lol, like the hooligans they are *shaking my fist in the air while I tell the kids to get off the grass*]. How I wanted to respond to this tidbit here was not how things went. She wanted to leave, she kept looking at her phone. Her kid texts incessantly and calls her multiple times sometimes, which I can totally understand, so at least some of what she says may be true? Who really knows or cares? Once I’m done writing this, I’m done with that whole situation. BUT ANYWAY, back to my kids. They can fight, that’s fine, but it better not get beyond some quiet squabbling because if I hear anything more than that I’m intervening or yelling too and it gets really annoying if every one is yelling, “Mah-ooooooooooooom!!!!” like three different Quinns. Because, sometimes I will either join in at yelling for Mom or yell, “Kids!” Or, “I heard everything from in here and you are gonna have to settle that between yourselves! That’s kid’s stuff!!” Because it is! And I cannot always hear exactly what was said in the other rooms, but most of the time I can tell it’s not that serious. It never really is. Sometimes, if I am privy to the whole argument—usually a “joke” at the other’s expense that falls flat, then I will intervene and say, “Hey, that’s not very nice!” when necessary. 

During these...meetings I am quite reluctant to deem classes, it sometimes it feels like I barely get a word in edgewise. Today she had told me she wasn’t going to stay the whole time so it seemed even more rushed on her part, to tell me all these weird and differently shocking things. And unless I interrupt her (and even then she looks offended and STARTS BACK WHERE SHE LEFT OFF LIKE I HAD NEVER SAID ANYTHING IN THE FIRST PLACE) and anyway… She made a whole big deal about describing in detail what empathy is—putting yourself in someone else’s shoes—and then asks me about it and I’m like but of course, because that’s how I actually feel about everything. What if that was you? I wanted to ask her if she ever thought about that lady that in last week’s story whom she claimed to have thrown the marker at her head, but I didn’t because I figured it wasn’t very nice to point out other’s bad behavior. Not only are you a grown up motherfucker, but you should actually know more than I fucking do on this subject if it is your goddamn job to be able to teach other people to do it. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. 

Unusually preoccupied with fire, as always, she brings up her daughter has taught another small child how to light a lighter and that’s how that whole brother lighting the back porch on fire story started. And I had said that Steven had taught them at the 4th of July. But maybe it was really only Bella and maybe Addison who didn’t know? I’m not completely sure but that’s not the most important thing because, and she’s said this at least once before, if not multiple times as a passing comment, but she keeps saying that all kids are bad. And today I just couldn’t let that go. I did say something. I said that I don’t really believe that because I was the kid who didn’t want to ruffle feathers, cause problems, get into trouble, be the reason that there is unnecessary conflict. This lead to me saying that I would rather just avoid any sort of conflict or whatever with seeing the same MH provider as my children. (Why would I change something again if it's unnecessary?) I don’t get it, but anyway, I told her that I had stopped seeing the therapist here mainly because she would cancel a lot at the last minute and that me and one of the kids had the same therapist for a little bit but that I had to stop seeing them because I needed to be more consistent with when I was being seen. I never had a chance to tell the lady that my actual past therapist was always ill too, and I knew that, which is why I wasn’t angry about the situation, but I didn’t get to comment on any of that at all, of course. Not only that, but the fact that she immediately went on a whole rant about turning in someone (look it was confusing because she was talking about two different things and then she switched in the middle and I just don’t ask questions if I can help it BECAUSE IT’S QUICKER) to their staff manager or some shit like that because they had kept cancelling client’s appointments and she “wasn’t doing her job” and my comment, which I have said before and I will say it again, if you can’t be kind to the people that you are serving as part of your position, be it teacher, doctor, or literally any other profession where you interact with other people at any time, if you can’t have the decency to both be competent at your job and also be prepared to learn new things, ask for help, be humble when you don’t know something, let someone correct you while doing something incorrectly to show you the proper way…OR if, in any of those situations, or any other situation that has to do with your job you can’t NOT ACT LIKE A COMPLETELY DERANGED PSYCHO then WHY ON GOD’S FUCKING EARTH WOULD YOU TAKE SUCH AN IMPORTANT, PEOPLE-CENTRIC POSITION!?!?!?! 

[Side Note: Like, I don’t care how many times that you tell me that serial killers play in candles, I’m still gonna pour hot wax right out onto this table glass whenever I feel like it and make a little wax sculpture out of it JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO!!!]

And the truth of it is that a lot of there pressure to remain in a job that you're neither good at or qualified for is that we live in a capitalist society. Because what I am really hearing is that this lady is struggling. And not just in her personal life. It really seems like she is struggling to also understand what it takes to be a "professional" at work. (Believe me, I know exactly what it takes, I am just unwilling to do it for any amount of money--corporate ass-kissing will never be something that I secretly yearn for) I believe I said that in my other post (not the very last one, I was a little hangry, I will admit, while writing that last one), and that she, like me and everyone else, probably needs some therapy or a friend in which to confide. Probably a job or even--dare I say it--a CAREER change?!?! Possibly some more job training, education, and an etiquette lesson. I have a list. But that is neither here nor there. This is the job she has and she has to go to it every day so that she can raise her own children, however poorly she likes. I decided that I didn’t want to do that kind of thing as a job. No office, no boss, no quota, no baseline. People I meet and help in my life aren’t a quota to meet, a baseline to hit. When I commit myself to helping someone, I usually do it simply out of the goodness of my heart, because to NOT do it —whatever the sometimes small and simple kind task may be—would pain my heart so and weigh on my soul. 

I guess I just keep coming back to the help not being worth getting sometimes. The hoops that you have to jump through to receive the bare minimum help in a situation in which you haven’t ever lived before... Of course you’re going to trust that whoever has come claiming to be able to help you will be capable of doing so. But. Don’t sit in my tiny kitchen and tell me that all children are bad. A person who says that all children are bad must truly be a non-empathetic and especially non-clairvoyant asshole. All children are tiny clones of the people around them. The learn what they see, they say things that they hear, they do things that they see other people doing. They know what is ingrained in their genes from before they were born because of the trauma of their lineage. Pick up a journal article and read some cutting-edge science. Do anything to educate yourself on any of the things that you should not only already have an extensive knowledge of, but should also always be staying abreast of for the sake of always knowing the latest advancements in your field. But, please, for the love of God, do not blame these little children for their environments and do not label them all bad.

The post before last, I was very careful to say how can I sit in judgement of others and still learn? Now I am saying, you know what, “yeah, I don’t believe all kids are bad because I lived it. I never waned to be bad. I never wanted to get into trouble.” The truth is that the few times that I got into “trouble” it was because I didn’t understand either the rules of the society (like a fucking new human), because I was defending myself, or because I didn’t understand the rules of the environment, be it home, out in public, at church, at school, as a visitor in someone’s home, as a hostess in a home, or even at a job. I may not be able to say anything (can you imagine how long the conversations would be if I commented on everything that I wanted to!?!?!) or even do anything about all the other crazy fucking stories that I hear every time I see this lady, but I can come here and let you guys know all about it.

So just to wrap up, come back to the campfire circle with me and put a stick in the flames. We have rules around here, ya know. I’d tell you what they are, but then I’d have to make you ACTUALLY learn something USEFUL, and who has time for that? 

Don’t forget to tip your servers and tell people when they suck! Thanks for coming to my BethTalk.