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I Have to Ask Why

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I love asking questions about why people do the things they do. Not media-created 'celebrities,' but real folks. You and me. And sometimes I write about the things I'm thinking.

Latest Posts

Put your own road rage in reverse
I used to be a bit of a hothead when I drove, impatient at the carelessness or selfishness of other drivers. If someone cut me off or changed lanes without signaling, I would usually respond aloud with an insult of some sort.

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Posted by TexasOma on Aug 26, 2009 7:04 PM
A Community of Believers - So Why Don't I Feel Welcome?

Some years ago I visited churches in connection with my job. One day I stopped by a church to leave some information. The secretary glanced at me as I approached her door, but when I saw that she was on the phone, I stepped away to give her privacy. I waited. And waited, while she chatted away on what was clearly a happy personal call.

After nearly 15 minutes a man working outside, seeing through the glass door that I was still waiting, came in and apologized profusely, and took the brochure from me. I was there on business, but I remember wondering, "What if I were looking for a new church?" The rude behavior of that secretary – the first point of contact for a stranger – dissuaded me from wanting to return for any reason.

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Posted by TexasOma on Jul 12, 2009 5:47 PM
Child Obesity worries me
An elementary school held a Physical Fitness Challenge day earlier this spring. Kids were assessed for their fitness, and were weighed and measured for height. Many of these kids – all of them under the age of 12 – weighed in at 150 pounds or more. What used to be the average weight of a 16- or 17-year-old boy is fast becoming standard for grade-school kids.

Until the time I graduated from high school, I could not have counted ten grossly overweight kids in all of my school years put together. Now I can count ten obese children in five minutes of walking through a mall.

It’s pretty much the norm that adults gain weight as they age. Probably most of us had parents or grandparents who were a bit overweight. But when we were children, it was almost unheard of to have friends who were obese. What has happened?

The U.S. didn’t even collect data on obesity until the 1980s. Back then, the prevalence of obesity (for all ages) was less than 14% nationally. By 2006, there were states that exceeded 30% obesity in their populations. These percentages are not people who are slightly overweight, these are people who are obese. And far too many of them are children.

In the past 20 years, the prevalence of obesity among children ages 6-11 more than doubled, to 17%. For adolescents between 12 and 19, the rate more than tripled. Type 2 diabetes mellitus was formerly an adult condition; now it is being diagnosed with alarming frequency in children. An estimated 6% of obese young people have at least one additional risk factor for heart disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. A generation ago, these types of medical concerns were barely conceivable in relation to children.

If we agree that obesity is usually the result of an improper balance between the calories we consume and the energy we expend (the calories we burn up), then we have to ask how it is that these thousands of children are burning up so many fewer calories than they are consuming. There’s no doubt that, for multiple reasons, many kids today get less exercise than kids of previous generations. Fortunately many school districts are revamping their curricula to once again require more physical activity. But if kids have P.E. at school a couple of times a week, but when at home sit for hours in front of the TV or computer, that little bit of exercise may be negated.

Studies point to the impact of food marketing on children, but the bottom line is that for most children, the food they consume is not food they buy for themselves. It’s food provided by their parents. Fast food. Junk food. Lazy food.

I don’t for a minute believe that parents set out deliberately to sabotage their children’s health. Every one of us has dealt with kids crying for a Happy Meal, or candy, or soft drinks, and sometimes we give in, in spite of knowing that we shouldn’t. But when we give in over and over again, when we throw in the towel and rationalize and make excuses, when we fill our refrigerators and our pantries with junk food because it’s too much trouble to take the time and make the effort to feed our families healthily, then we’re sliding rapidly down the slippery slope of irresponsible behavior.

And we’re killing our children in the process.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website contains links to thousands of publications that address the problem of childhood obesity. The U.S. Department of Health and the National Institute of Health have instituted programs aimed at enhancing children’s activity and good nutrition efforts in order to fight the problem. Dr. Matthew Miller writing in TimesBulletin.com says that if we don’t take drastic measures to curb childhood obesity, kids of this generation are at risk of having a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Shouldn’t we all be appalled by that prediction?

This is a problem that we have created. This is a problem we must eliminate. Our children’s lives may depend on it.

Posted by TexasOma on Jun 26, 2009 1:10 PM
Rounding the corners
When I was a teenager I mowed my grandfather’s lawn as a way to earn money. It was a big yard, and it took an hour to cut the grass. Granddaddy taught me how to save myself time and effort on such a job. He called his technique “rounding the corners.”

Instead of mowing in a rectangular shape, with corners of 90 degrees, he would cut a row diagonally across each corner. That way he did not have to stop and turn the mower when he got to the end of each row; he just slowed down a bit and followed the angle around. The lawn looks great afterward, and you haven’t worked as hard as if you made those right-angle turns.

We recently had our air conditioner compressor repaired again. The builder-installed unit has been a recurring problem since we built the house. Every repairman has told us that the unit was poor quality. Same goes for the stove, the light fixtures, the plumbing. … In ways that were not immediately obvious, our builder cut corners, saving himself money, and leaving us with long-term headaches.

Cutting corners. Is that so different from my grandfather’s rounding of corners? I asked some friends and family members. A few folks defined it as saving precious time. One friend, who loves finding bargains at thrift stores, says you might call it cutting corners when you buy used instead of new in order to save money. But most respondents considered the term as a negative, with descriptions including “leaving something out of the equation,” “getting the job done quickly by doing it cheaply but not necessarily thoroughly,” “not doing something to the best of my ability,’ and “the lazy way to do something.”

My daughter, a former police officer, pointed out that if you drive across a corner parking lot at a traffic light or stop sign, it is considered “cutting a corner to disregard a traffic control device” and is a ticketable offense. “How can that be a good thing?” she asked. I agree. I’ve always felt that cutting corners meant giving less than my all to the task, omitting something that should be there.

A student copies someone else’s work and passes it off as his own. A company replaces customer service personnel with an automated telephone system that adds layers of complexity to the attempt to obtain assistance. An auto repairman installs a used part and charges for a new one. Aren’t these all forms of cutting corners? In each case, someone is shortchanged.

The student takes credit for another’s effort and doesn’t learn what he ought to. The customer is frustrated at the difficulty in reaching a live person to handle his problem. The car owner may be put at risk by driving a vehicle containing an unsafe part. All because someone decided to cut corners.

If I cut corners in what I do, I might save myself some time and effort, but I might cause extra work or problems for someone else. On the other hand, if I round the corners in my work, I find a way to do the same good job more efficiently. The phrases may sound similar, but their meanings are very different. So I try never to cut corners.

But I’ll round them when it’s OK. I’m the one mowing in circles.

Posted by TexasOma on Jun 26, 2009 1:09 PM
Genealogy for fun and intrigue
Look up ‘genealogy’ in the dictionary and you’ll read something along the lines of “an account of the descent of a person, family or group from an ancestor” or “the study of family pedigrees.” Sounds a little ho-hum, doesn’t it?

But Google the phrase ‘genealogy research’ and you’ll get more than 1,600,000 hits. That’s an awful lot of listings; maybe genealogy isn’t so ho-hum after all.

My high school Civics teacher, who taught a genealogy class at night at El CentroCollege, gave the class an extra credit assignment to draw up our family trees. I discovered that I knew little about my father’s family. That wasn’t unusual, since my parents divorced when I was very young and my dad lived in another city, but what surprised me was that neither he nor his father could tell me much about their ancestors. I started researching to see what I could discover.

I began at the Dallas Public Library’s genealogical division downtown. It was a tremendous resource, and I spent countless hours scrolling through microfilmed census records. Until it happens to you, you might not understand the thrill of seeing the name of an ancestor written in the spidery handwriting of a census taker. Even when you can’t find a name you’re looking for, it’s still interesting to look at those old records. Once I found an address where numerous women shared the same residence, and the occupation of each was shown as “Bawd.”

Genealogy can increase your vocabulary.

Before the advent of the Internet, unless one could afford to travel, research was often limited to the local library, court, cemetery or church records, correspondence, and stories from relatives for information.

For many years the LDS (Latter Day Saints) church has shared its vast collection of genealogy records through inter-library loans and now on the Internet. These days literally millions of records are online and available with a keystroke. Unfortunately, there are lots of those resources that are full of errors and careless assumptions made by those who are less than diligent in their research, and it’s important to be cautious in what you take as true.

There are legitimate professionals who will research for a fee, but there are also some who, for a price, are miraculously always able to discover that you are related to British royalty, or the Kennedys, or President Barack Obama.

Let’s face it, most of us are descended from just plain folks. But those folks might have had interesting lives. I was astonished when I learned that my family lore held that a great-great-grandfather had killed a man over a poker game, and that another ancestor was a sharpshooter in the Civil War.

My favorite story was of my own great-grandfather John Tomlinson, whose wife died at age 35 (probably of exhaustion) after bearing him nine children. With five of those children being under the age of ten, that practical gentleman headed off to Tennessee to “court an old maid” he knew about.

On the way he stopped off in Arkansas to visit a cousin. Lou Ella Shofner, age 24, was in Arkansas visiting her sister, who introduced her to the rich widower. John embarked on a whirlwind courtship, married Lou Ella and brought her home to Texas.

And then he told her about the nine children.

I’ve tried to picture the moment of the great revelation, without much success. “Oh, Lou Ella, I KNEW there was something I forgot to tell you…”

But I got the story straight from her daughter’s mouth. Aunt Birdie told me “If Mama had known what she was getting into, she wouldn’t have done it.” In 1890, a woman couldn’t easily divorce her husband, so Lou Ella, only seven years older than her oldest stepdaughter, stayed with it and gave her husband seven more children, the youngest being my grandfather.

Who needs celebrity ancestors? There’s enough excitement and intrigue in some ordinary-folks' stories to rival any current reality TV show. But the only way you’ll ever know that is if you start looking into your own family history, asking questions and seeking out the stories. Your local genealogical society or Public Library will be glad to help you get started.

Posted by TexasOma on Jun 26, 2009 1:06 PM
First, take care of yourself

Recently while surfing the Internet, I learned about Ambush Makeover, wherein selected fans of the Today Show receive new hairdos, makeup and updated outfits. As I scrolled online through the photos of women who have received makeovers, I was delighted to see the transformations from "before" to "after." But one thing struck me: a lot of the "before" pictures were of women who looked tired. Really tired.

It was easy to guess why. A common denominator in the descriptions of many of the makeover subjects is that they are women who are so busy caring for the others in their lives that they neglect themselves.

Most mothers can relate to that. During the years that I was a stay-at-home mom, my focus was on my family’s physical, spiritual, and emotional care, often to the detriment of my own needs. In addition, I volunteered in schools, at church, and in the community. When you’re reaching out in so many directions, taking time for yourself is often the last thing on your mind. It is much easier to throw on any old clothes, apply minimal makeup and run a brush through your hair so that you can get busy doing things for others.

Similarly, though they probably spend more time on makeup and wardrobe, moms who work outside the home and then come home to care for their families and handle other obligations are often so exhausted that they don’t take the time to nurture themselves emotionally, much less worry about updating their appearance. Those of us who are caregivers for aging parents are often in the same boat.

We don’t want to let others down. There are so many people and endeavors that clamor for our time and talents. We usually don’t devote much time to thinking about how we look.

So how do we look? We look tired.

Remember that perfume commercial from the 1970s where the business-suited woman sang that she could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never ever let you forget you’re a man"? Wow! If the song had gone on, it might have described how she helped the kids with their homework, got them fed, bathed and into bed, organized their supplies for the next school day, did a couple of loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and paid some bills. By the time that woman did all that, I guarantee she had no energy left for herself.

Not to provoke argument, but I think there’s a good chance that women really are wired as caregivers, that it is in our very nature to want — perhaps even to need — to nurture and care for those around us. Humans need nurturing, so the desire to nurture is a good thing, a necessary behavior. But we women sometimes feel selfish if we stop to re-charge, to take care of ourselves. And that’s a bad thing. Because while we’re so busy taking care of others, we often find, to our dismay, that there’s no one taking care of us.

Maybe that’s why I like makeover shows on TV. It’s OK to stop for a makeover, even if it’s just a psychological one. That may mean going to bed earlier at night in order to get more rest, asking a family member to take on extra responsibilities (even if the results are not quite up to our standards!), and learning to say no (and mean it!) to burdensome requests. It could mean regularly taking time to exercise, to read a book, to walk through the park, or hang out with a friend.


Or maybe even spending a little extra on a haircut without feeling guilty.

A lot of us seem to be afraid that the world will stop spinning if we don’t always do everything that everybody wants us to do. It won’t. Letting go of that burden might be a makeover in itself.

Posted by TexasOma on Jun 26, 2009 1:04 PM
The Ironing War
When I was about 14 my grandmother hired me to do her ironing. I was thrilled, for at that age there are few ways to earn money. The price was the same, no matter the garment, so I was happy when there were lots of Granddaddy’s handkerchiefs to press.

I really did enjoy ironing. There’s something very satisfying about taking something all wrinkly and making it smooth and crisp. Using a big glass bottle with a spray head on a cork stopper, I would sprinkle the clothes and then roll them up and set them aside. If there wasn’t time to finish them all, we’d sometimes put the rolled-up garments in the freezer until the next time. I can still remember the delightful shock of holding a stiff frozen shirt, straight from the freezer, to my cheek.

Grandmother’s iron was a monster. With a shiny chrome finish, it was huge and very heavy. Once when I complained about its weight, Grandmother described what a chore it was when she was my age, having to use a flat iron heated on the stove. She considered the electric iron a great invention, and told me to count my blessings.

When I moved into an apartment, I was excited to buy my very own iron. (yes, I realize how pitiful that sounds). I don’t remember what brand it was, but I know this for a certainty: that iron was the standard bearer for a battle that I’ve waged ever since. It’s a battle I’ve yet to win.

It’s me vs. the irons.

Irons. Plural. Many irons. My grandmother had the same iron for as long as I can remember. (Back then, there was no such thing as planned obsolescence). In my 37 years of marriage I’ve probably owned 15 irons. Cheap irons, expensive irons, stainless steel irons, Teflon and plastic irons, it doesn’t matter: they’re all out to get me, and I hate them all.

I’ve had bare-bones irons that were basically Steam-No Steam. I’ve had fancy irons with multiple buttons that allowed choices between Cotton/Wool/Silk/Poly/Steam/Burst of Steam/Power Spray/Wash and Wax Your Car. I’ve followed the manufacturer’s instructions precisely. Irons used to require distilled water. Tap water might be okay for us to drink, but it wasn’t good enough for the iron. So I bought distilled water (is that even bottled anymore?) and was careful never to overfill the reservoir.

The iron’s instructions would mandate “Pour out all water when you are done - DO NOT LEAVE WATER SITTING IN IRON!” Not certain that the Minor Appliance Police weren’t peeping in my window to evaluate my trustworthiness, I dutifully poured out the water after each ironing session. If it said never to wrap the cord around the iron, I never did. If it said to leave the iron standing up until cool, I stood it up. I bought iron rests to make the irons’ lives easier. I bought a wall mount receptacle so that the iron wouldn’t have to rest on the laundry room shelf.

And none of it mattered. Because no matter what I do, or which iron I buy, they always defeat me. They quit working, they quit steaming, they leave water spots on my rayon or silk clothes, they refuse to heat up.

Once my iron died on me halfway through my husband’s dress shirt. Nicely-pressed collar, front and back, wrinkled sleeves. I had to go out and buy a new iron. Then I bought a back-up iron, in case the first one quit to spite me. Now the newer one -less than a year old- has quit steaming. The mister button still works, so I can spray the clothes as I iron them, but the steam feature has disappeared. And it occasionally spits out something brown (always when I’m ironing a white dress shirt) even though I use the self-clean feature and empty the water as directed.

So it’s back to the no-tech days of my grandmother’s youth. Next time I’m at an antique mall, I’ll be searching for an old flatiron. No steam, no electric cord, just a hot stove top and a pot holder, and I’m good to go.
Posted by TexasOma on Jun 26, 2009 1:00 PM

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