To Remember By Konnie Enos

Growing up Memorial Day was always a long weekend were we had picnics and put flowers on all the graves of our loved ones. I never thought much about it and as I grew up I learned many cultures have customs which include a yearly remembrance of loved ones who have passed on, which is what I understood Memorial Day to be.

It isn’t.

It isn’t about remembering veterans, now dead, who once served in the armed forces.

Sorry Dad.

Originally Memorial Day, which was at first called Decoration Day, was a day to remember those who had died in war. Eventually it was declared as a national holiday then Congress made it the last Monday in May.

Over time people have used Memorial Day to remember all their dead, which I have no problem with. As I said, many cultures have customs to remember their deceased, but don’t confuse remembering those who died in war with honoring all who served who are now dead.

During this month of May we had another holiday which very few people even mentioned. If you want to honor those who are now serving our country, remember Armed Forces Day. Officially it’s celebrated on the third Saturday in May each year.

To remember those like my husband, father, great uncle, brother-in-law, father-in-law and so many more who have served in the military at some time in their lives, thank them for their service and decorate their graves on Veteran’s Day, which is celebrated on November 11^th of each year.

http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history

http://www.military.com/military-appreciation-month/history-of-armed-forces-day.html

http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp

I’m proud of the men and women in my family who have served. Let’s all remember their days.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Bullies And the Zero Tolerance Policy by B.L. Hamilton

I know Konnie already commented on this last week, but I’d like to say, “I told you so!”

Okay, back when they first started this policy I didn’t have any way to make the powers that be listen to me, so they never heard my words, but I said them. I said it often because I know one major thing about bullies from sad experience. They’re favorite method of intimidation is to goad and harass their victim to the point that the victim lashes out, physically.

And given this knowledge, I knew, the zero tolerance policy would backfire, big time, because it would be punishing the victim and still avoiding or ignoring the real problem, which is of course the bullying. (Something they have been doing for a long time.)

I would go on to say I’ve been saying, “If you’d have listened to me, this wouldn’t be happening,” when the outcry over kids committing suicide over bullying started. Let’s face it, folks, if they can’t lash out at their abusers, how else are they going to get out of that untenable situation? And who could these poor victims have turned to for help?

After all, Adults have been ignoring schoolyard bullying for probably a whole lot longer than my school days, let alone this disastrous “Zero Tolerance” rule, but with said rule in place, the kids couldn’t do what the authorities wouldn’t do, and punish the abuser.

(By the way, for all those who take exception to me using the word abuser instead of bully, please look up the meaning of the two words. They are the same thing. And having been on the receiving end of a bully’s treatment, and having compared that to what officials say a spouse abuser does, I’m bound to say they are the same thing. )

Now back to the schools, even when I was a kid in school the teachers and other adults in authority ignored bullying. Why my sister and I got behind one year in school because we ditched so often we missed too much school, and we did it partly because the teachers did nothing about the fifth and sixth graders pushing around the first and second graders on the playground. Those kids literally would shove us out of the swings or off the other playground equipment and the teachers did nothing. If we complained, they told us to stop being such babies.

And that doesn’t even address the fact that through most of my junior high and high school career I was the victim of repeated propositions from the boys. Though the worst part of all of that is those boys were never taught the difference between a proposition and actually asking a girl out! And I’m afraid that situation is worse today. (I’ve actually addressed this topic in more than one of my stories.)

Back in my day, it was bad enough when guys wolf whistled or cat called when I walked down the hall, but I’m told now-a-days boys actually try to cop a feel in the hall! And no one does anything about it, but when the girl lashes out at her tormentors, she gets suspended! Outrageous!

All of this has to stop! We need to lay down the law, starting with name-calling; it’s unacceptable. We shouldn’t be allowing it, ever. If I had children, I wouldn’t allow name-calling in my house. I know how bad it is, and I know that is where bullying starts. I would also ban just touching someone without their permission, ergo, poking is not acceptable behavior. I’d teach everyone to respect everyone else’s personal space as well. And I’d discipline violators, so they actually learn it is not acceptable behavior.

And that is what I have to say about this deplorable situation.

Zero-Tolerance Bullies by Konnie Enos

The headline read, “Zero-tolerance policies ineffective”, as if it was something new.

We’ve all seen far too many stories of kids, bullied for years, finally “snapping” and either taking their own life or trying for a mass shooting. This zero tolerance system punishes them for their actions, but is ineffective in stopping those who picked on them.

Why? Because zero-tolerance doesn’t stop bullying. It encourages it.

Zero-tolerance tells bullies the authorities will help them pick on and humiliate their victims since the victims of bullying will get punished more often than the bullies will. Newsflash! Bullies like it when they have that much control.

Zero-tolerance tells victims they have no recourse. In fact if they say anything they will get punished before the bully will. That’s what zero-tolerance tells kids.

That’s what I see happening far too often in the stories I see in the news. Innocent victims either never fight back and take their own lives or finally snap and fight back only to have the authorities FINALLY notice, but they come down on them harder than they do the bully.

In all cases the bully’s get their way. The victim is humiliated, isolated and feeling lower than dirt. So why should the bullies change if the authorities are helping them?

And the problems of zero-tolerance go way beyond not punishing the bullies.

We have real problem when authorities are so concerned with violence that they have to expel a kid from school because he nibbled his pop tart into the shape of a gun or drew a picture of one. They focus so much on the harmless that they don’t address the class full of third graders calling a classmate fat every chance they can. They don’t address that boy poking that girl every time he walks past her, or that girl insisting on playing with that other girl’s long ponytail. They punish that girl for finally slugging that boy to make him stop snapping her bra, attempting to undo it in class but shrug at the boy’s actions. They suspend a tiny first grader because he fought off five fifth graders who were picking on him. (Fortunately for the first grader he had a black belt.)

Zero-tolerance policies dictate in often minute detail what a girl can and can’t wear to school but often the more detail they give on the girls attire, the less they give on the boys, i.e.: t-shirt and jeans compared to shirts must cover the collar bone and pants/skirts must cover the knees and nothing can be skin tight.

I’ve read dress codes where the girls’ guidelines were a full page and the boys’ were one paragraph.

And what does such policies do?

They just make it easier to pick on people thereby furthering the environment that bullies thrive in. No wonder zero-tolerance policies don’t work.

You can’t stop bullies by being bullies.

Let’s put some sanity back into our society and start teaching people to respect one another.

I’ve been facing down bullies since I was a tiny first grader. The best solution I came up with was in second grade. I showed the class bully some respect and befriended him. Not only did I not have a problem with him after that, but it also protected the kids in our class who were the usual outcasts.

Some bullies refuse to be befriended. That’s when you have to stand up, look them in the eye and tell them you’re not scared of them. It’s time to tell supporters of zero-tolerance that we’re not running from them anymore.

So I’m borrowing this phrase today, “Stop the insanity”.

Bad Day by B.L. Hamilton

We’ve all heard the edict to write every day, but how many of us actually do it? There are plenty of distractions, even for someone like me, who lives alone.

In the last week alone, I have a trip to Yellowstone, which took all day, and well. . . Have you ever been so sick, all you can think about is how much your stomach hurts, and praying you don’t have to run to the bathroom anytime time soon?

Some days, it’s just not possible to write even one paragraph, and sometimes that lasts for more than a week.

Here’s to hoping everyone else is feeling better than I am.

Happy writing everyone.

Seat Dominance by Konnie Enos

“Hey! I was here first!”

“That’s my spot!”

“I had dibs!”

“Move it! I was there first!”

When you have kids, you’re bound to hear them fighting over something and it’s not uncommon for them to fight over where they want to sit, be it in front of the TV, in the car or at the dinner table.

I can’t think of a family meal where someone didn’t ‘dib’ a seat or tell someone to move out of a seat they’d only left long enough to get something that was missing from the table. I’ve had to mediate arguments and even had one kid sulk in his bedroom rather than eat because he couldn’t sit where he wanted to.

Going somewhere with more than one child can be equally as bothersome because only one of them can be ‘shotgun’ and there is only so many window seats, so someone isn’t going to be happy. (Well, if I only take two I’m generally okay, any more than that and I may have an issue.)

The funny part is when my husband finds someone in his place, he generally just moves to their place. When he wants to lie down in his bed and finds one of his kids sitting there, generally talking to me, he sleeps in that kid’s bed so when said kid wants to get in their bed they’re stuck with waking him up and making him move. So I hear more things along the line of, “That’s my spot.”

Since this sort of thing happened in my family when I was growing up, and in the places I lived while away at college, I’m sure it’s a dynamic common in most households where more than two people live.

Anyway, since my kids are getting older, things like this don’t happen as much as they used to. It’s almost like we have assigned seats around here, at the table, in the car, in the living room. For one thing, it’s a given where I’m going to be sitting, and the kids and my husband generally fall in around me in a predictable order, so hearing complaints about someone being in someone else’s spot doesn’t happen very often around here.

Then a couple of weeks ago, that particular complaint was ringing throughout the house.

“Hey! I was sitting there!”

“That’s my spot!”

“Move it mister!”

And I had to laugh, watching my oldest son stand over the chair he wanted to sit in but couldn’t because it was occupied. That was at least the third, if not the fourth time in a matter of minutes that someone had voiced that complaint, always against one of the dogs.

The funny part was my son was just standing there looking rather perturbed at the chair and its occupant while from my viewpoint, I could see the back of the chair, but not who was in it.

Considering my youngest child is 15, and I’m the shortest member of the family, I figured it was a dog, yet again. Of our five dogs only one wouldn’t have been able to get into the chair because of her age and arthritis, and only two of those could sit high enough for me to see them from where I was, though even they could just curl up on the seat.

I asked my son which dog was in his way and he glared at the chair. “None! It’s Tiger!”

I laughed. His cat was in his way, and that meant all our non-caged animals were trying to take over.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Song Title Inspiration by BL Hamilton

Have you ever considered titles to songs and imagined the stories to go behind them?

I have. I not only think it’s fun, it sometimes spurs the muse. I say sometimes because there is one song title that I think would make for an interesting story. Maybe a YA romance, but I’ve yet to concoct a story to go behind it.

That song is “Frog Kissing.

And yes, I know that kind of dates me, but not really, since I learned this song because it was in my father’s collection.

But anyway, I think this song title would make for a cute book title. Just have to figure out a story to go with it.

I actually think there are a lot of song titles or songs that could and should inspire some full-fledged stories, more than the few that have done that.

“The Gambler,” “Coward of the County,” and “Convoy” I know were made into movies, but I’m not talking movies; I’m talking books, novels even. And I got to wondering if any other writers felt the same way.

Have any of you been inspired by a song? Have any of you used a song title as working title for your work in progress?

I can answer yes to both of those, since I have been. My one song title/working title is “On The Wings of Love,” which of course lends itself real well to a romance novel.

Now, can any of you name a song title that inspired a story of yours?

Happy writing everyone J!

Human Kindness by Konnie Enos

Years ago, when our only car died we did without, for a full year.

We lived in a small town. We could walk and there was one bus route which went right through the complex we lived in, and my husband was able to get rides to and from work from a co-worker. We managed.

This year, I wasn’t really thinking of the possibility of being without a car not even after my husband’s car gave up the ghost. Mine was fine. More or less.

Then mine went down.

And it would happen at the end of the month and money. Not to mention right before we were planning to drive up to our daughter’s college graduation.

And if you think being without a car in a big city should be easier than in a small town. Think again.

For my husband, a disabled vet, it wasn’t too difficult. He can still walk around, at least enough to catch the city bus and he gets a steep discount because he is disabled. Then again, most of his appointments were through the VA and the DAV, Disabled American Vets, runs a bus service just for the vets to get to their appointments. So for him, being without a car only meant it took longer to get there.

For me to get to the grocery store, which is more than a mile away, or my daughters to get to their doctors’ appointments, required finding someone to take us.

No problem. We’re regular church goers. Pull up a church roster and call a few stay at home or otherwise retired women and ask for some help.

At a guess I’d say over the last three weeks eight out of ten calls I made went to voicemail. I must have placed around ten to fifteen calls every other day or so, and out of all those only one person ever got back to me. She saw I’d called her several times earlier that day.

Needless to say, between all the appointments my daughters had over the last three weeks and just trying to keep milk in the house, it felt like trying to pull teeth to get rides. My fridge will only hold so much milk and it never lasts longer than three days. I was lucky if I could get a ride every four to six days. Plus each of my daughters ended up canceling an appointment because we couldn’t find them a ride. (For several reasons the bus system wouldn’t have worked for my girls the biggest one being they’d be out in the sun for far too long, which neither one can do for medical reasons.)

So I was really happy to get my car up and running again, though feeling basic human kindness was a thing of the past.

Then yesterday two of my daughters and I were at the store and we had to get dogfood. With five dogs, it’s a fifty pound bag. We were shifting things in my trunk to make room for it when a gentleman walked up, commenting on the size of the bag and dropped it in.

I’ll admit both my daughters are petite, but they’re used to moving those bags. We get them every month. But after all the trouble I had trying get the help I did need from people I know, it rather astounded me to have complete stranger be a gentleman.

All three of us thanked him, though he made light of it as he walked off.

This man passed it forward. Now it’s your turn.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.