But I Didn't Mean To...

Accidents happen. I'm a klutz--both physically and socially, so I have much empathy for the spilled wine glass, or the joke that comes out poorly and unintentionally offends. I vowed long ago to never yell at anyone who spilled, broke or otherwise accidentally despoiled any items in my household. I always try to take comments with the best possible context from those I trust or care for. Intention matters--even our courts acknowledge this and mete out lighter sentences for manslaughter than murder, even though a person is dead at the end of both crimes. So, when uninformed pals make jokes about mental institutions, I do not hold their ignorance of my mother's frequent visits against them. If someone is late because their bike got a flat, I will not be upset at their tardiness. And when red wine is spilt all over my nice rug, I try as hard as possible to alleviate any guilty feelings the other party has (while pouring salt on the spill, of course...).

However, there are occasions wherein "I didn't mean to" just doesn't cut it. If you knock a glass over and break it because you didn't see it, I won't be angry. If you try to take the tablecloth out from under a fully set table and all of the dishes crash and break, then we're going to have words. In neither case does the individual "mean to" break something, but in the latter, the offender knew there was some probability of breakage and proceded anyway, hoping to land in the "happy" tail of the probability distribution--hoping to "get away with it." In the courts, we call this negligence. If you own a pit bull and build a ten foot tall impenetrable fence and the dog escapes, you are not held liable when Fido bites someone leg off because you took reasonable actions to guard against such misfortune. However, if you are a pit bull owner and built a 3 foot tall shrub around the back yard, you are liable under the law for negligence. Further, even if you are the responsible fence-builder, the second time that dog escapes, you're in trouble. Almost every known set of laws from Hammurabi's Code to the Laws of the Old Testament lay out punishment for such negligent behavior.

I have recently broken up with a pal. One evening, pal and I walked a mile to a local bar, reached the door and were phoned by her love interest--to whom I had introduced her a week earlier. Love interest had unexpectedly come back into town a day earlier than planned, and wanted to see "us." I begged my pal not to invite love interest; further, I said they could make out all they wanted to after we left the bar, but I had zero desire to feel like a third wheel for the next two hours, and really would not gracefully handle being ditched. Pal invited love interest, and then the two waited about three minutes before leaving me alone in the bar by myself.

My pal was confused as to why I was so upset. "I would never intentionally hurt you. Really, I did not mean for you to feel ditched."

Uh-huh. This felt to me like she tried to pull the tablecloth out and the dishes fell to the floor. I have no doubt there was no malice involved, no pre-meditation, no ill will. However, she knew before taking said actions that there was a very real possibility of my feelings being hurt, and she decided to take her chances. We did not land in the happy tail of the distribution.

There's also the problem of cumulative emotional neglect. When you see that someone has rolled the emotional dice with your feelings and their actions, you begin to question their innocence for past transgressions you might have assumed at the time were cases of true accidents. I have the problem that until some transgression really pisses the hell out of me, I smile, rationalize their behavior for them using much better excuses than they could ever contrive, and sweep it under the rug and out of my mind. It's like putting the raging pit bull back in the yard without telling the owner it escaped. When the dog finally takes a bit out of my hand, I'm out of grace and understanding and am ready for the pruning scissors.

We all know how I feel about conclusions by now.

9 out of 10 Dictators Can't Be Wrong!

I sometimes wish I lived in "communist" Russia (hey, I'm a political scientist, I get to use quotes around "communist"!). Really, any socialist country which offers only one brand of anything, and you stand in line for a few hours, relaxed because, the choice made for you, you know that you could have done no better.

I tried to buy toothpaste today. As per my usual routine, I was trapped in the oral hygiene aisle for about 17 minutes.

That's a long time to look at toothpaste boxes.

Some are gels and some are pastes. They all promise to clean my teeth--some "naturally", some with baking soda, some with fluoride, some with tiny elves with pickaxes. The fact that there is a choice seems to suggest that one might be better suited for my teeth's needs. What if I pick the toothpaste only recommended by 3 out of five dentists? What do those last two dentists know that I don't?!?

I just feel overwhelmed. And the fact that there are so many choices means there are so many opportunities to choose unwisely (I did this once when I bought the 'natural' toothpaste. "Natural", as far as I can tell, means squeezed out of Tom's rectal region and straight onto your toothbrush).

anyway. Some people think our society is full of depressed people because we have too much time on our hands, we don't have to hunt the wild boar and shuck the corn for dinner, anymore. Our houses come built by other hands; our clothes, by the good people of Taiwan. But I think it's a bit more subtle than that. I think so many first-worlders are depressed because we are given choices at every turn, and we must accept responsibility for most of our lives. If we don't like where we are, it's because of some choice we made at the beginning of the game tree. And knowing that every choice has the potential to ripple far into the future makes the breadth of options overwhelming and, for me--many times--a bit terrifying.

When do you stop trying to get 'the best' and settle for 'the good enough'? Given that you will never know for certain, will you ever believe you succeeded?

So, sometimes I wish I were in my Indian friends' sandals and could just leave the matchmaking up to the parents and the astrology charts. I could leave the toothpaste choice up to my dictator (or his sprawling bureaucracy). Or, ideally, that there was some sort of probe which could map all of my preferences and choose the best option for me given those preferences.

Of course, there would probably be 14 different models and brands of mind-probe machines to choose from.

My One-Month Boyfriend

My one month boyfriend will be like my other one-month boyfriends, only he will know his title. Knowing this, he will take me on the the trips we plan within a week. He will talk about important matters with the urgency that comes with a solid time table. My OMB understands that there will be much passion in that month, and he will make love to me as though every time were his last...because in a month, it will be. We won't waste time getting to know about each other's families. We don't care about those peculiarities which will irritate in the long-run, we're only in this for four weeks. We won't interview each other to see about the other's fitness for marriage, how much our friends will like each other, where we want to be in twenty years, how many boys or girls each wants, what kind of genes the other will pass on, or how much income we can expect to bring in. My one-month boyfriend will not care about dating anyone else; we only have thirty days with one another, the others can wait. My one-month boyfriend and I will not have "The Talk."

I want a one-month boyfriend. He'll last as long as the rest, but he'll know his expiration date at the outset.