Disappointment: Learning 9

Once again, apologies for neglecting this poor little blog. Also, fair warning that this post may come off slightly rant-y, and is not meant to stir up pro-choice/pro-life debates, although at least one person on my facebook wall has already taken it as such. Ok, so here we go.

I don't know how many of you saw this picture circulating the interwebs, but it got a lot of attention. I had seen the picture in passing, but didn't know anything about it, other than gleaning the fact that it obviously came from a pro-choice rally of some sort.

Well, last night I learned more about the girl who was holding the sign. Turns out she is a 14 year old girl in Texas. It also turns out that a whole bunch of strangers online started calling her a whore, just because she was holding this sign. There were other comments too, such as the ones saying her parents should be arrested for child abuse or that her dad probably has all her friends come over to play abortion clinic. Truly awful stuff. And this nastiness from strangers wasn't limited to anonymous internet people - A grown man shouted in their faces at the protest that she and her friend were ugly, should shave their heads and become lesbians, and that no man would ever want them. An adult man shouting nasty insults in the face of a 14 year old girl. And all that nastiness is why she wrote this response.

I find her response to be incredibly classy. Even more incredible considering it's coming from a 14 year old girl, and she's questioning why grown ups are the ones calling her nasty names. I think that's a great question. I think her response highlights so much of what is wrong and missing from our dialogue, or lack thereof. How adults are unable to disagree appropriately, a skill we try so so hard to teach our students. But how will that skill really sink in when the role models they have all over internet and media and in real life sink immediately to nasty vicious name calling instead of discussion?

So I posted her response on facebook with the message that regardless of what you thought of her sign, we should all be able to agree that no one should be calling her a whore and that her response to such insults was incredible. I truly believed that. And then this morning I find a comment from a family member, who I like very much despite differences in opinion on various topics, who replied that while the term 'whore' was incorrect, she was really a nazi indoctrinated baby killer.

It left me speechless and angry, and I dashed off a couple of carefully worded comments in response, but my blood was still racing and he had not replied again, hence my blog post here. I have to wonder if he even read the article? Does he even hear what his words sound like in his own head? I have no idea how to even communicate with such a person. Feeling pretty disappointed.

Wood: learning 8

Ok, I'm behind on this challenge. So Phyl picked up a second job working in a warehouse a couple weeks ago so that we could put all the excess money toward student loans (yay paying loans off early!). His job is basically to sort and grade many different sheets of plywood. Today I learned something about that from a factoid he just posted on Facebook during his break. Apparently birch and maple are very similar and hard to tell apart. One difference you can look for is that birch is fuzzy to the touch.

And now you know!

The Dentist: Learning 7

Today I went back to my dentist for the third time in the last 5 months to have the same filling put back in my tooth. Now, this makes it seem like I have a lazy dentist, so let me back up and say I LOVE my dentist office. I've never been super afraid of dentist offices, and having 4 years of braces in high school/college has left me resigned to letting dentists and orthodontists do whatever they want to my teeth, but I am always rather tense, especially when they bring out the little drill. Everyone at my dentist office (Southern Indiana Smiles, if you're wondering) is always so friendly, they learned my name right away, and do everything they can to make me feel comfortable. And both times I've had to go back to replace the filling after it's fallen out they've done it free of charge and gotten me in for the appointment super quick.

So today I learned a couple new things about what can make a filling come out of your mouth. I always thought it was just eating too much sticky stuff. Now that didn't make sense with this filling for a couple of reasons. Number one, I haven't eaten very much sticky stuff and don't even chew gum. Number two, the filling is on the outside of my tooth on the gumline, not on top where I chew. The dentist wasn't positive what makes this specific filling so tricky (I got 3 other fillings at the same time which have all stayed in just fine). Her hypothesis was that something about my saliva was reacting with the bonding material in a bad way, so they took extra steps to keep my saliva away from the filling this time. I had no idea saliva was that powerful! I knew it was the first step in your digestive process, so obviously it has some dissolving properties, and I knew it was bad for chapped lips, because if you lick your lips when they're chapped they get worse, but I didn't know it could make my filling come loose. Hopefully it's nice and dry this time. The other possibility was that I might grind my teeth without realizing it, because apparently teeth grinding also weakens the gumline, which is where this tricky filling is located. My mom is a teeth grinder, but I have never noticed it myself, and they took a little impression and said it wasn't likely I grind my teeth from what they saw.

So that is what I learned at the dentist office today. Hopefully I will not need to go back until my semi-annual cleaning next month!