(original post-date: August 4, 2010)
Last week, one of my favorite clients sent me an email. She let me know that they’d soon be “adding a sub-domain to their splash page,” and so… she might need my help with some language. Before ending her missive, she commented on the jargon she was using, and I could sense that her eyes were rolling with irony and amusement as she typed.
I appreciated what drove her comment about the jargon. The fact of the matter is, she and I have laughed – for a few years now – over our common (and often reluctant) emergence from the luddite trenches. Both of us baby boomers, we are doing our best to keep up with the times.
That same day last week, I sent an email to another client. This particular email was sent to assuage my client’s concerns. I wanted to ensure her that I had not missed a prospective grantmaker’s automatic reply to our online Stage One application. In fact, I had retrieved that reply from my “Suspect Mail” just an hour before my client sent her relatively alarmed message.
“Don’t worry,” I shared, typing quickly before hitting SEND, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Imagine, for a minute…
Imagine if, 15 years ago, someone had said to you, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
How many red flags?
Okay, the first and most obvious one is the OCD flag. And, mind you, I’m not belittling that issue; I’ve got some of my own OCD manifestations. I’m big on expiration dates, for example. (Don’t get me started.) And, the checking thing? There’s a pre-departure routine that revolves around my kitchen; I always do it at least three times.
So, okay, that’s one way the statement might have seemed alarming 15 years ago. The “checking” … The “four times a day”…
But what about the reference to spam?
And what's in those cans, anyway? Does that weird meat concept even exist anymore?
(Pardon me while I do a Google search...)
I’m back, folks, and guess what. Spam does exist anymore. Not only that, it was the first hit!
Forward-thinkers, those meat canners. How smart they were to grab the domain of “www.spam.com” and make it their own before the cyber-geeks had a chance to take it and run with it. Damn. Good for Spam. But still, I’m not quite sure what it is… And, that site of theirs (however primary on the search results page) isn’t helping.
(Pardon me while I go to Wikipedia…)
Okay, I can’t possibly paraphrase (nor do I want to, really), so I’ll just share here what we might as well call the Wiki Executive Summary of Spam. (And if this whets your appetite, I strongly suggest a nutrition counselor.)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam’s gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock. The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Pop culture and folklore, huh?
It’s kinda nice to know those concepts have a shelf life in our fast-paced cyberworld.
… I’ve never eaten Spam, and I don’t think I ever will (despite its undoubtedly seductive gelatinous glaze). And so I am especially glad that there aren’t seven or eight cans of it confronting me when I peer into the kitchen cupboard. If there were, I’d have to throw those cans in the trash. I’d have to make room for the seven or eight more that are likely to appear out of nowhere in the next several hours.
Showing posts with label OCD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OCD. Show all posts
Monday, August 8, 2011
Monday, November 15, 2010
Monday Reruns: Laughing at OCD
(original post-date: November 18, 2009)
I appreciate that, for some people, obsessive compulsive disorder is no laughing matter. In one manifestation of OCD, an afflicted individual must constantly stop his car, get out of it, and check to make sure he didn’t just run over some formerly living thing. In another, the disordered person is compelled to wash her hands so frequently that the skin becomes raw and is rid of its capacity to stave off bad bacteria.
I feel for these people. I really do. A brain disorder can disrupt personal freedom in a big way. It can become the monster in the room that breaks deals and thwarts growth.
My manifestation of OCD, however, is downright comical, and my former husband (whom we’ll call Ben) knew how to make us both laugh at it. Once, when we were shopping at Ralphs together, I tossed a box of tampons in our cart. “Did you check the date?” he asked, with deadpan delivery.
An hour or so later, after we had returned home and put away the groceries, I went into the living room. Ben stayed behind in the kitchen to make a sandwich. We had just bought peanut butter, jelly, and bread, so how could he resist?
After a few minutes, Ben entered the living room. He was carrying the jar of peanut butter and wearing an expressionless face. He approached the couch, where I was sitting. And as he slowly opened the jar, he asked, with feigned concern, “Do you think this is okay?”
He then held out the opened jar. Written into the smooth top of the fresh peanut butter was the word, “DIE.”
Quite a card, that ex-husband o’ mine. With the tine of a fork, he could make me laugh at myself.
These days, I share OCD laughs with my neighbor and friend, Neil*. We are afflicted by similar manifestations of the disorder. Which is to say, we both tend to check things multiple times (particularly things that might catch on fire). And we share the concern that otherwise edible foods and beverages might be tainted.
One afternoon a few years ago, I was returning home, and Neil heard me approach the courtyard we share. Before I’d had a chance to head upstairs to my apartment, he flung open his door across the way. He had that deer-in-headlights look – clearly upset about something.
He then explained that his cat had just walked across his desk, and when she did so, her tail brushed against his teeth. He wondered if…
Neil didn’t need to explain. Adapting a comforting tone, I said, “I’ve got some Listerine upstairs. Do you wanna come up and have a quick gargle?”
He thought that was a good idea, and so we headed up my stairs together.
Once we were in the kitchen, I pulled a small glass out of the cabinet and filled it with about a quarter-inch of Listerine. I handed it to him. Then, like two athletes in some relay event, we crossed paths. He headed to the sink as I went in the other direction.
But my eyes widened in a big way when he reached for the cold-water knob and began, “I’ll just dilute—”
“Not THAT water!” I screamed, interrupting him.
With no further ado, we both doubled over laughing.
Neil’s concern for what his cat’s tail might have left on his teeth was trumped in that moment by my fear of unfiltered L.A. water.
Crazy advises crazy. Nuts is there to provide solace to nuts. Our fears are absurd, and we both know it. But they’re our fears. Our often humorous fears. We own them, and we’re there for each other.
We’re there to laugh together at the people we just can’t help but be.
+++
*not his real name
I appreciate that, for some people, obsessive compulsive disorder is no laughing matter. In one manifestation of OCD, an afflicted individual must constantly stop his car, get out of it, and check to make sure he didn’t just run over some formerly living thing. In another, the disordered person is compelled to wash her hands so frequently that the skin becomes raw and is rid of its capacity to stave off bad bacteria.
I feel for these people. I really do. A brain disorder can disrupt personal freedom in a big way. It can become the monster in the room that breaks deals and thwarts growth.
My manifestation of OCD, however, is downright comical, and my former husband (whom we’ll call Ben) knew how to make us both laugh at it. Once, when we were shopping at Ralphs together, I tossed a box of tampons in our cart. “Did you check the date?” he asked, with deadpan delivery.
An hour or so later, after we had returned home and put away the groceries, I went into the living room. Ben stayed behind in the kitchen to make a sandwich. We had just bought peanut butter, jelly, and bread, so how could he resist?
After a few minutes, Ben entered the living room. He was carrying the jar of peanut butter and wearing an expressionless face. He approached the couch, where I was sitting. And as he slowly opened the jar, he asked, with feigned concern, “Do you think this is okay?”
He then held out the opened jar. Written into the smooth top of the fresh peanut butter was the word, “DIE.”
Quite a card, that ex-husband o’ mine. With the tine of a fork, he could make me laugh at myself.
These days, I share OCD laughs with my neighbor and friend, Neil*. We are afflicted by similar manifestations of the disorder. Which is to say, we both tend to check things multiple times (particularly things that might catch on fire). And we share the concern that otherwise edible foods and beverages might be tainted.
One afternoon a few years ago, I was returning home, and Neil heard me approach the courtyard we share. Before I’d had a chance to head upstairs to my apartment, he flung open his door across the way. He had that deer-in-headlights look – clearly upset about something.
He then explained that his cat had just walked across his desk, and when she did so, her tail brushed against his teeth. He wondered if…
Neil didn’t need to explain. Adapting a comforting tone, I said, “I’ve got some Listerine upstairs. Do you wanna come up and have a quick gargle?”
He thought that was a good idea, and so we headed up my stairs together.
Once we were in the kitchen, I pulled a small glass out of the cabinet and filled it with about a quarter-inch of Listerine. I handed it to him. Then, like two athletes in some relay event, we crossed paths. He headed to the sink as I went in the other direction.
But my eyes widened in a big way when he reached for the cold-water knob and began, “I’ll just dilute—”
“Not THAT water!” I screamed, interrupting him.
With no further ado, we both doubled over laughing.
Neil’s concern for what his cat’s tail might have left on his teeth was trumped in that moment by my fear of unfiltered L.A. water.
Crazy advises crazy. Nuts is there to provide solace to nuts. Our fears are absurd, and we both know it. But they’re our fears. Our often humorous fears. We own them, and we’re there for each other.
We’re there to laugh together at the people we just can’t help but be.
+++
*not his real name
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
This is Going to Sound Weird, but...
Last week, one of my favorite clients sent me an email. She let me know that they’d soon be “adding a sub-domain to their splash page,” and so… she might need my help with some language. Before ending her missive, she commented on the jargon she was using, and I could sense that her eyes were rolling with irony and amusement as she typed.
I appreciated what drove her comment about the jargon. The fact of the matter is, she and I have laughed – for a few years now – over our common (and often reluctant) emergence from the luddite trenches. Both of us baby boomers, we are doing our best to keep up with the times.
That same day last week, I sent an email to another client. This particular email was sent to assuage my client’s concerns. I wanted to ensure her that I had not missed a prospective grantmaker’s automatic reply to our online Stage One application. In fact, I had retrieved that reply from my “Suspect Mail” just an hour before my client sent her relatively alarmed message.
“Don’t worry,” I shared, typing quickly before hitting SEND, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Imagine, for a minute…
Imagine if, 15 years ago, someone had said to you, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
How many red flags?
Okay, the first and most obvious one is the OCD flag. And, mind you, I’m not belittling that issue; I’ve got some of my own OCD manifestations. I’m big on expiration dates, for example. (Don’t get me started.) And, the checking thing? There’s a pre-departure routine that revolves around my kitchen; I always do it at least three times.
So, okay, that’s one way the statement might have seemed alarming 15 years ago. The “checking” … The “four times a day”…
But what about the reference to spam?
And what's in those cans, anyway? Does that weird meat concept even exist anymore?
(Pardon me while I do a Google search...)
I’m back, folks, and guess what. Spam does exist anymore. Not only that, it was the first hit!
Forward-thinkers, those meat canners. How smart they were to grab the domain of “www.spam.com” and make it their own before the cyber-geeks had a chance to take it and run with it. Damn. Good for Spam. But still, I’m not quite sure what it is… And, that site of theirs (however primary on the search results page) isn’t helping.
(Pardon me while I go to Wikipedia…)
Okay, I can’t possibly paraphrase (nor do I want to, really), so I’ll just share here what we might as well call the Wiki Executive Summary of Spam. (And if this whets your appetite, I strongly suggest a nutrition counselor.)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam’s gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock. The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Pop culture and folklore, huh?
It’s kinda nice to know those concepts have a shelf life in our fast-paced cyberworld.
… I’ve never eaten Spam, and I don’t think I ever will (despite its undoubtedly seductive gelatinous glaze). And so I am especially glad that there aren’t seven or eight cans of it confronting me when I peer into the kitchen cupboard. If there were, I’d have to throw those cans in the trash. I’d have to make room for the seven or eight more that are likely to appear out of nowhere in the next several hours.
***
A Post Script to my Post: It's still Wednesday (barely, here on the West Coast), and what I've come to share has nothing to do with spam. Just want to alert you to my being a featured guest blogger on Eliza's Silver & Grace website, which is dedicated to "guiding graceful women into beautiful aging." Eliza has deemed me "spunky," which is not -- to my knowledge -- a synonym for "grace." Regardless, she is kindly featuring my little rant on menopause, which I originally posted here, some months ago. Go there, enjoy, and check out her site!
I appreciated what drove her comment about the jargon. The fact of the matter is, she and I have laughed – for a few years now – over our common (and often reluctant) emergence from the luddite trenches. Both of us baby boomers, we are doing our best to keep up with the times.
That same day last week, I sent an email to another client. This particular email was sent to assuage my client’s concerns. I wanted to ensure her that I had not missed a prospective grantmaker’s automatic reply to our online Stage One application. In fact, I had retrieved that reply from my “Suspect Mail” just an hour before my client sent her relatively alarmed message.
“Don’t worry,” I shared, typing quickly before hitting SEND, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Imagine, for a minute…
Imagine if, 15 years ago, someone had said to you, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
How many red flags?
Okay, the first and most obvious one is the OCD flag. And, mind you, I’m not belittling that issue; I’ve got some of my own OCD manifestations. I’m big on expiration dates, for example. (Don’t get me started.) And, the checking thing? There’s a pre-departure routine that revolves around my kitchen; I always do it at least three times.
So, okay, that’s one way the statement might have seemed alarming 15 years ago. The “checking” … The “four times a day”…
But what about the reference to spam?
And what's in those cans, anyway? Does that weird meat concept even exist anymore?
(Pardon me while I do a Google search...)
I’m back, folks, and guess what. Spam does exist anymore. Not only that, it was the first hit!
Forward-thinkers, those meat canners. How smart they were to grab the domain of “www.spam.com” and make it their own before the cyber-geeks had a chance to take it and run with it. Damn. Good for Spam. But still, I’m not quite sure what it is… And, that site of theirs (however primary on the search results page) isn’t helping.
(Pardon me while I go to Wikipedia…)
Okay, I can’t possibly paraphrase (nor do I want to, really), so I’ll just share here what we might as well call the Wiki Executive Summary of Spam. (And if this whets your appetite, I strongly suggest a nutrition counselor.)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam’s gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock. The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Pop culture and folklore, huh?
It’s kinda nice to know those concepts have a shelf life in our fast-paced cyberworld.
… I’ve never eaten Spam, and I don’t think I ever will (despite its undoubtedly seductive gelatinous glaze). And so I am especially glad that there aren’t seven or eight cans of it confronting me when I peer into the kitchen cupboard. If there were, I’d have to throw those cans in the trash. I’d have to make room for the seven or eight more that are likely to appear out of nowhere in the next several hours.
***
A Post Script to my Post: It's still Wednesday (barely, here on the West Coast), and what I've come to share has nothing to do with spam. Just want to alert you to my being a featured guest blogger on Eliza's Silver & Grace website, which is dedicated to "guiding graceful women into beautiful aging." Eliza has deemed me "spunky," which is not -- to my knowledge -- a synonym for "grace." Regardless, she is kindly featuring my little rant on menopause, which I originally posted here, some months ago. Go there, enjoy, and check out her site!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Laughing at OCD
I appreciate that, for some people, obsessive compulsive disorder is no laughing matter. In one manifestation of OCD, an afflicted individual must constantly stop his car, get out of it, and check to make sure he didn’t just run over some formerly living thing. In another, the disordered person is compelled to wash her hands so frequently that the skin becomes raw and is rid of its capacity to stave off bad bacteria.
I feel for these people. I really do. A brain disorder can disrupt personal freedom in a big way. It can become the monster in the room that breaks deals and thwarts growth.
My manifestation of OCD, however, is downright comical, and my former husband (whom we’ll call Ben) knew how to make us both laugh at it. Once, when we were shopping at Ralphs together, I tossed a box of tampons in our cart. “Did you check the date?” he asked, with deadpan delivery.
An hour or so later, after we had returned home and put away the groceries, I went into the living room. Ben stayed behind in the kitchen to make a sandwich. We had just bought peanut butter, jelly, and bread, so how could he resist?
After a few minutes, Ben entered the living room. He was carrying the jar of peanut butter and wearing an expressionless face. He approached the couch, where I was sitting. And as he slowly opened the jar, he asked, with feigned concern, “Do you think this is okay?”
He then held out the opened jar. Written into the smooth top of the fresh peanut butter was the word, “DIE.”
Quite a card, that ex-husband o’ mine. With the tine of a fork, he could make me laugh at myself.
These days, I share OCD laughs with my neighbor and friend, Neil*. We are afflicted by similar manifestations of the disorder. Which is to say, we both tend to check things multiple times (particularly things that might catch on fire). And we share the concern that otherwise edible foods and beverages might be tainted.
One afternoon a few years ago, I was returning home, and Neil heard me approach the courtyard we share. Before I’d had a chance to head upstairs to my apartment, he flung open his door across the way. He had that deer-in-headlights look – clearly upset about something.
He then explained that his cat had just walked across his desk, and when she did so, her tail brushed against his teeth. He wondered if…
Neil didn’t need to explain. Adapting a comforting tone, I said, “I’ve got some Listerine upstairs. Do you wanna come up and have a quick gargle?”
He thought that was a good idea, and so we headed up my stairs together.
Once we were in the kitchen, I pulled a small glass out of the cabinet and filled it with about a quarter-inch of Listerine. I handed it to him. Then, like two athletes in some relay event, we crossed paths. He headed to the sink as I went in the other direction.
But my eyes widened in a big way when he reached for the cold-water knob and began, “I’ll just dilute—”
“Not THAT water!” I screamed, interrupting him.
With no further ado, we both doubled over laughing.
Neil’s concern for what his cat’s tail might have left on his teeth was trumped in that moment by my fear of unfiltered L.A. water.
Crazy advises crazy. Nuts is there to provide solace to nuts. Our fears are absurd, and we both know it. But they’re our fears. Our often humorous fears. We own them, and we’re there for each other.
We’re there to laugh together at the people we just can’t help but be.
+++
*not his real name
I feel for these people. I really do. A brain disorder can disrupt personal freedom in a big way. It can become the monster in the room that breaks deals and thwarts growth.
My manifestation of OCD, however, is downright comical, and my former husband (whom we’ll call Ben) knew how to make us both laugh at it. Once, when we were shopping at Ralphs together, I tossed a box of tampons in our cart. “Did you check the date?” he asked, with deadpan delivery.
An hour or so later, after we had returned home and put away the groceries, I went into the living room. Ben stayed behind in the kitchen to make a sandwich. We had just bought peanut butter, jelly, and bread, so how could he resist?
After a few minutes, Ben entered the living room. He was carrying the jar of peanut butter and wearing an expressionless face. He approached the couch, where I was sitting. And as he slowly opened the jar, he asked, with feigned concern, “Do you think this is okay?”
He then held out the opened jar. Written into the smooth top of the fresh peanut butter was the word, “DIE.”
Quite a card, that ex-husband o’ mine. With the tine of a fork, he could make me laugh at myself.
These days, I share OCD laughs with my neighbor and friend, Neil*. We are afflicted by similar manifestations of the disorder. Which is to say, we both tend to check things multiple times (particularly things that might catch on fire). And we share the concern that otherwise edible foods and beverages might be tainted.
One afternoon a few years ago, I was returning home, and Neil heard me approach the courtyard we share. Before I’d had a chance to head upstairs to my apartment, he flung open his door across the way. He had that deer-in-headlights look – clearly upset about something.
He then explained that his cat had just walked across his desk, and when she did so, her tail brushed against his teeth. He wondered if…
Neil didn’t need to explain. Adapting a comforting tone, I said, “I’ve got some Listerine upstairs. Do you wanna come up and have a quick gargle?”
He thought that was a good idea, and so we headed up my stairs together.
Once we were in the kitchen, I pulled a small glass out of the cabinet and filled it with about a quarter-inch of Listerine. I handed it to him. Then, like two athletes in some relay event, we crossed paths. He headed to the sink as I went in the other direction.
But my eyes widened in a big way when he reached for the cold-water knob and began, “I’ll just dilute—”
“Not THAT water!” I screamed, interrupting him.
With no further ado, we both doubled over laughing.
Neil’s concern for what his cat’s tail might have left on his teeth was trumped in that moment by my fear of unfiltered L.A. water.
Crazy advises crazy. Nuts is there to provide solace to nuts. Our fears are absurd, and we both know it. But they’re our fears. Our often humorous fears. We own them, and we’re there for each other.
We’re there to laugh together at the people we just can’t help but be.
+++
*not his real name
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