And Here We Are

A blog. Like a new journal. Full of possibilities. Full of hope. Full of potential... pitfalls.

Am I going to use this to express great thoughts, or at least amusing thoughts? Am I going to write this opening entry and forget about it for a few months? Am I going to begin great conversations about important (or at least amusing) things? Am I going to use this as one more excuse to avoid the long long long to do list?

What am I going to do with this blog? I'll probably whine. I don't do that IRL and so I vent on paper, or keyboard, or whatever. When I say I don't whine in real life, I mean, I have a very low tolerance for whining in others and I hold myself to those standards as well. There is something about the pitch of a whine. Maybe I'm part bat and it sets off a radar that makes me want to hone in on the whiner and bite him or her.

My children don't whine. They do other things that I probably shouldn't mention, but they do NOT whine. It was one of the few parenting skills I was able to master consistently, probably because of my bat-like intolerance for the noise. When they'd whine at me, I'd look at them with a pained, sympathetic grimace and say, "You seem really upset, but I can't understand a word you are saying." After awhile I just had to give them a confused smile and point at my ear.

A good friend of mine looked at a whining high school freshman and said, "Put a little bass in your voice, son." The young man immediately stood up straighter and repeated his request in a Barry White voice. My friend still said no, but he didn't bite him.

Part of teaching Not Whining is teaching children that "please" is not literally a magic word. Conversation:
Child: May I have a cookie?
Me: No.
Child: Please.
Me: I like your manners. No.
Child: PLEEEEAAASSSEEEEE!
Me:
I'd like to say it ends there, but children sometimes think that please is a magic word as long as you say it with just the right inflection (thanks a lot Harry Potter) and so they try it over and over again until they get it right or I bite them.

And so, at the risk of being bitten, I may whine in this blog. But I hope I do it in an interesting, important (at least amusing) way. Or not. Where is my To Do list?