December Manners

As always pick up the hard copy version of The Iowa Source, located all over Eastern, well, Iowa. Love our alternative selves. No issue in January but lots of good stuff in the works for February and March.

Dear Meg,

I could use some help with a Christmas gift. My daughter is difficult to shop for because she's done quite well for herself financially and if she wants something she just goes out and buys it. I've tried to ask her for a suggestion but she is always busy and on the go-go.

Zane


Dear Zane,

I have just the thing for you. Your timing is ideal as I only just heard about this. It sounds like what your daughter needs is more time for herself, the people she cares about and, subsequently, a bit of balance. Fortunately it's true you really can purchase anything over the Internet.

The poverty is so overwhelming in much of Russia and Eastern Europe that some industrious young "persons of diminutive stature" were inspired by the mail order bride concept to start a service called Deliver-De-Dwarf. These plucky entrepreneurs specialize in marketing themselves as a way of escaping abject poverty and coming to America for a better life. For a modest investment, these "volunteers" are guaranteed to clean beneath armoirs and butcher blocks, give those never read books on your bookshelves a more perused look, do floors and windows, keep your pets well-groomed and gait-ed and, here's the real kicker, pull together an elegant and tasteful dinner party for 8 with only a half hour's notice. Calgon take me away!

Did I mention the dwarfs say please, thank you, never talk on the phone and come with a certificate to always make you the primary topic of conversation? Otherwise, you may ship them back in the jiffy little postage paid bubble padded tube mailer from whence they came.

Zane, it sounds like you raised a woman who knows what she wants. You can certainly be proud of this fact. Happy holidays and here's the third world slave labor info if you're game - www.deliverdedwarfwink.com

Love,

Meg


Dear Meg,

You once said something about manners being sensitivity to the feelings of others. I don't think that anyone is sensitive to my feelings and I go around being sensitive to their feelings all the time. My friends tell me I'm way too easily offended and I should learn to lighten up. I think they're being mean and rude. What do you think?


Fred



Dear Fred,

Tough one. It's difficult to be a sensitive being in a world that doesn't always value or nurture that quality. I speak from experience. I'm one of those poor souls who can be walking around in the dead of winter and see a stranded glove buried beneath the ice on the sidewalk and fight back tears because there might be a person on the street somewhere in danger of frostbitten fingers.


It sounds as if your friends may be well meaning but perhaps a bit heavy-handed in their means of delivering the message. Any possibility you can shrug it off or, perhaps, see it as a chance to make some changes in either yourself or your community?


In my case, I have a whole cache of "Silly Meg" stories that grows larger by the year. I'll share a favorite. I've never had a facility for non-English languages unless you count Pig Latin in grade school. Once while visiting a boyfriend in Mexico City, we had determined to meet at a specific time. There was not a cloud in the sky and it was 76 degrees. I wasn't wearing a watch and feared I was running late after spending too much time at the Frieda Kahlo museum. In my not unusual Meg as Lucy Ricardo routine, I began asking people "Que tiempo hace?" which translates as "What's the weather like today?" After 6 or 7 people shook their heads at me, the stupid gringo (guilty), a gentleman pointed to his wrist and said "Que hora es, senorita, que hora es?" and allowed me to look at his watch. I might have been embarrassed but the whole episode was so ridiculous all I could was laugh and run to the shop where my boyfriend was to tell him so he could laugh about it too.

Fred, sometimes we all need to learn to go with the flow, worry a little bit less and as hard as it may be to do, maybe choose to be around people who don't hurt our feelings all the time. Have you tried writing any poems or making some art? Good therapy and nice holiday gifts to boot.


Love,

Meg