Why, Oh Why, do I Listen to NPR?

I listen to NPR every morning on my way to work. I love the blend of stories and news as well as the incidental music and sound effects. Don't you enjoy listening to the sounds of the wind and walking that accompany many of their stories? Even the names of their reporters are eclectic, exotic, and musical: Lakshmi Singh, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Andrei Codrescu, Rene Montagne, Korva Coleman and Mara Liasson, just to name a few.

But every once-in-awhile, they report a story about something I never heard of or dreamt of, and I get all steamed up. That is what happened to me this morning. The story was about virginity tests of Egyptian women who were arrested for protesting in Cairo.

To paraphrase: Seven detained women were brought into a room populated by a doctor and several inappropriate and unnecessary male soldiers. They were stripped and penetrated by some unnamed object to see if their hymens bled. The reason it was reported is that these women came forward and the case was brought before the military court which--you guessed it--found no wrong doing. The ruling  basically said it never happened. To read more, please visit: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149547892/egyptian-activists-push-to-end-military-trials

Reality-check time: a test like this can be accurate. Normal physical activity,day to day living, and tampon use can break a hymen. Also, not all women are born with one. And besides being degrading, it's illegal in many countries and IS CONSIDERED A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION BY AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.
 
There aseems to be three main reasons the testing is done:

1.  Prevention of disease and pregnancy The logic is that if a girl has a hymen, she is not able to spread HIV or be pregnant. If you are a cynic--like me--you may see this as a way for some men to find little girls to have sex with or to sell into sex-slavery.
2.  Royal Affirmation One must be a virgin and be certified to dance before the king.
3. Immigration Until 1979, the United Kingdom still did these tests. The logic is virgins were more likely to tell the truth about why they wanted to live in the UK.

So what were these Egyptian guys looking for with the virginity test? I couldn't find the answer. Nor was I able to find out:

1. What would be done with the information? Do they receive stiffer sentencing if  there is no blood?
2. Do  the women received any documantation as to their virginal status? For example,if they were able to cause a woman to bleed, does she receive a certificate of authenticity?
3. How often can you test a girl? And will this give her a pass on any other virginity testing she may be subjected to in the future?
4.  What are the age parameters? If a girl of 12 doesn't pass, do they use the information to investigate for possible rape?

The NPR article only stated that it's a remnant of the past. Again, the cynic in me is sure it is done for some very sick and private reasons on the men's--ahem--part.

 Here are some other examples of the ways girls and women are abused:

• Rape
• Sex Trafficking
• Genital Mutilation
• Dowry Deaths
• Honor Killings
• Forced Sterilization
• Femicide (killing female babies)
• Early and forced Marriages
• Maltreatment of Widows

Please read the following for more information on violence against women:
http://www.humanrightsimpact.org/fileadmin/hria_resources/R4C/Mapping_VAW.pdf

In the USA, we don't think this happens because this all sounds extreme. However, our culture has become so inured and desensitized that we don't give it a second thought. But there are many ways a culture can abuse its girls and women.

Some timely and relevant examples that are a less exotic:

• The male dominated decision making concerning women and our "issues".
• Sexualization of little girls
• Violence against women in movies, television, games
• Verbal assaults 

So, NPR, thanks alot for bringing all this reality to me. I should have stuck with listening to my oldies station.

Happy, Smiley, Shiny Things

I wish certain words and phrases would just go away. These are banal, insulting, trite words like:
             
Baby Mama                                       24/7   

                                Have a good one                Sperm Donor

                                                             Bitch                                                  Whatever     Closure                                                                      Literally
                                                                                                         Baby Bump
                       Uber                                      Hypocrite
                                 

 Other words and phrases should be said more often. These are happy, smiley, shiny words like:

       Thank you                                             I love you
                         Marshmallow
                                                                       Sorry                You're welcome

Lemur                                                         Can I help you?    
                                              Serendipity                 conundrum

But some of my most favorite words are the ones I grew up with. These are cultural, made up, mispronounced words like:

Snudik   A piece of string. Used as a term of endearment and for talking about a piece of string.
Sentence: Excuse me, sir, but there is a snudik on your pants.

Bacowsa A word I thought was Sicilian for bathroom, but was really my grandfather's thickly accented English. He was saying "Back of the House", which meant the outhouse behind the house. That was what he would say to indicate the bathroom, so I guess it's not too far off.
Sentence: Excuse me, sir, but can you point me to the bacowsa?   
 
Prutt  This is an actual Swedish word. It means fart. Take THAT you disbelievers.
Sentence: Excuse me, sir, but did you just prutt?

There are so many more, but I will leave you with this last one:
Schatzi Treasure. Used in our family as a term of endearment, and most often my Aunt Sophie.

Her Sentence: Eat, schatzi, eat.
                                



E

It Doesn't take Much to Embarass a Daughter

I honestly can think of only one time my mom embarrassed me in public. I was a sophomore  at college and my parents had come down to UD to bring me back home for the summer. Some friends of mine--who happened to be males--helped load my car. When they were done and we were ready to leave, my mom gave them hugs and kisses. My mom was never a spontaneous or demonstrative person and this was too much! She barely gave me hugs and kisses. What was she doing?

Well, I now have two girls of my own, both sophomores: one in high school and one in college. I am twelve years younger than my mom was when I was a sophomore at college and I now know what it was all about: my mom was getting herself some sugar from a few young men.

When you become a certain age, you can do things that you never would have thought of doing in public when you were younger AND GET AWAY WITH IT... unless your daughters are with you. Well, you still get away with it, but you have to listen to your daughters tell you that they are so embarrassed.

I don't go out of my way to do this. I take after my dad who could--and would--talk to anyone he came across. We just can't help it. If you make eye contact with us or say hi, we take this you being open to our friendly advances.  I also don't have a working filter: if it enters my head, it will come out my mouth. I can pretty much go up to anybody and start talking. And now that I am a married old woman, I flirt...alot. I am no longer tongue-tied around men no matter their age or level of hotness.*

I know I am oblivious, but I don't think too many people are that put off by me. In fact, I think people can sense that I mean no harm. I am here to make contact and do good. And sometimes--actually many, many times--people reciprocate. Especially old men shopping with their wives. Those guys are worst than me!

Although my girls say it has embarrassed them, it has also come in handy. Like when we needed help moving Leanne's mini-fridge into her dorm room. We were lucky enough to have a very fit/muscular young man come our way. I asked, he said yes, and we got the mini-fridge up two flights of stairs and to her room. I made sure to stay with him to open doors and keep him safe. Along the way, I learned his name, that he was taking some time off before starting grad school out of state, and that he used to play football. Too bad he already had a girlfriend because he was a very nice young man.

And yes, I have actually told a very nice young man that he was "a very nice young man". I may have done it more than just this once, but there is one Leanne remembers the most. It may have been a contributing factor to her not choosing to attend that particular college.

I do try to temper my actions and speech in public, but my girls don't believe me. I am just not as hyper-aware as they are. Leanne is old enough to not care as much, but I know it is not easy when I:

• Sing and dance in public
• Get distracted by bright and shiny things
• Talk loudly everywhere
• Think out loud in front of strangers
• Argue with myself in front of strangers
• Misbehave and get giggle fits in solemn places and situations
• Find sexual innuendo in almost everything
• Write a blog entry about showering with Christopher Meloni 
• Knock things over with my errant right hand**

Will they embarrass their kids? They'd better. When you get become a mom--or a dad--it's the one thing that gives you happiness. I think it's good to teach your children not to take themselves so seriously. I also think of it as training to prepare them for when I become really old and do some of the things my mom did in her latter years. Things like touching items at the art museum and gleefully exclaiming in a public restroom that she was finally able to poop.

Yes, I think my girls will be great parents to me when I become older.

*Well, there was that one time when I was working at Borders and I helped this guy that took my breathe away and I am pretty sure I just giggled.

**As I finished typing this line, I knocked over my lemonade with my errant right hand. Luckily I spilled it mostly on my pants.

I Dreamt I took a Shower with Christopher Meloni

Saturday night I dreamt that I took a shower with Christopher Meloni. So on Sunday,  I shaved my legs..and my armpits. I also grated the dead skin off of my heals, Vaselined my feet, and wore socks. All of this just in case he showed up in my Sunday night dreams. 

My PG-13 dream? There I am, in the shower, when I feel something warm and muscular and hairy on my back. I turn and see him; that manly man best known for Law and Order:SVU, and Oz--a show where he had appeared naked a few times, even in the shower! And that is when I wake up.

My dreams never get me to the good part. Usually, I experience a What the hell is this! moment of clarity and wake up.  Why did he invade my subconscious? I haven't thought of him or seen him on TV lately and here he is. Why now? And why do I have to be naked and under fluorescent lighting? Can't it be somewhere where it is dark? Maybe a moonlit beach with me in a white dress, and him dressed any damn way he pleases.

This dream I put into the "Parkway Drive" dream series because it takes place in my childhood home. Some of my dreams take place here, but mostly my dreams take place at school--any school--where I haven't been all semester and I can't find a bathroom, and I am in my pajamas.

In my Christopher Meloni dream, I am in the upstairs bathroom taking a shower. There was never a shower in this bathroom and usually when I have a shower scene in a dream, I am in the little recess that had shelves; I am also fully clothed. But now the shelves are gone and I am taking a shower naked as a 40-something jaybird. And the whole bathroom is being showered on and I am standing on my bed because now the shower is over my bed.

But in this adapted scene, I am in this bathroom taking a shower but the shower is now in the middle of the bathroom and I see that adjacent to this is a bathtub and I say to myself, When did Dad put in that bathtub? That must make it easier for the twins. That is when I notice Christopher Meloni and I wake up.

When next I went to bed, I thought the best way to get him back in my dream was to think of him--and only him--as I went to sleep. So Sunday I tried to make up stories with both of us in them. However, I couldn't find a logical way to get us together into a plausible situation. I couldn't work out any reason we would be together, even if he just happened to be  some really manly man I chanced apon that looked alot like Christopher Meloni. I must have fallen asleep while trying to work this out and was disappointed to awaken the next morning without him... in my dream that is.

On Monday I decided I didn't dream of him for two reasons: I had worried too much about my bedtime story and I should have looked at pictures of him to get a visual fix. So I googled "images of Christopher Meloni". The first seven pictures can be categorized like this:

1. Head shot' face only
2. HALF-NAKED upper body; lying on his stomach, showing a tattooed and muscular shoulder. On a bed
3. Head shot, wearing a suit
4. SHOWER SCENE
5. HALF-NAKED  Upper body; lying on his back. On a bed
6. Head shot, face only
7. HALF- NAKED Same as picture #2 except you see more of him, like the swell of his covered butt

Armed with the the appropriate visual stimuli, I went to bed and told myself this story:

One day, Christopher Meloni toiled and sweated alot. He sweated so much that he had to take off his shirt. He was working hard at manly things like cutting down trees and building a boat. When he got home he was very, very dirty because he had worked hard doing manly things. So he took a shower. In the shower he thought about this woman he has always thought was out there but had never met. He had always felt an empty spot in his heart, one that only this woman could possibly fill. She would be his soul mate, and her name was most likely Patty. But he would call her Patricia.

Too distraught to get fully dressed, he goes to bed half naked and stares off into space wondering about her. He thinks of her as he falls asleep and in the morning he remembers a dream he had about a woman in a shower...

I did not dream of him last night but I hope tonight I will.

Just a List of Books I Like, Part I; Tell me Yours

Today I give you Part I of my list of books I really, really like-- just like the title tells you. There is no particular reasoning to the ordering of this list. I look forward to comments.

1. Lamb by Christopher Moore   In this book, we learn about Jesus's missing years. What was he doing all those years? Well, according to Mr. Moore, he was travelling with his friend Bif in search of the three wise men who visited him at his birth. He hopes they will tell him what God has in mind for him since God won't give him a straight answer.
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte   Everyone is familiar with this Gothic tale but as my family knows from having to listen to my diatribes, most people do not appear to get what Ms. Bronte was trying to get across in this book. Jane is the anti-heroine, having nothing in common with any of those shrinking violets of her time. She is not very nice to my Mr. Rochester and even at the end she plays mean psychological games with him. Great book.
3. When will There be Good News ? by Kate Atkinson  The third of her books to feature Jackson Brodie. I just love how she brings together the three seemingly unrelated characters and their stories. She does this with great storytelling and characters.What's it about? Well, hard to say but it fits into mystery/literature.  Case Histories and One Good Turn  are excellent as well.
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan A young couple from England are on holiday in an unnamed city somewhere in Europe, most likely Italy. While lost, they meet up with Robert who eventually brings them to his bar and later offers them friendship. They wake up naked  in what they eventually find out is the home he shares with his wife, Caroline. Instead of thinking there is something really fishy going on, they get drawn into the sadistic nature of Robert and Caroline. Their passivity really pisses me off and that is why this is a favorite of mine.
5. Misery by Stephen King One of the few books I have liked by him and what makes it so scary is that it is so believable. Annie Wilkes saves her favorite author--Paul Sheldon-- after he crashes his car. Instead of bringing him to a hospital, she decides to nurse him at her home. He is the writer of a series of books featuring the heroine named Misery. She is unhappy that he has decided to kill her off and insists that he write a new book that brings her back to life. Through the process, she does all kinds of sadistic things to him while he comes back to life by finding his long lost joy for writing.