Sharing Is Stupid

My boys once had a neighborhood friend we all grew to love.

Notice how I said that:  grew to love.  It took a couple of years.

When he was just a little guy, probably three years old, he would come toddling into our yard while my 1-year-old was playing with the big toy dump truck that one of his aunts had gotten him for his birthday.  He would swiftly grab it from my son, who was a pretty laid-back kid.  My son’s eyes would grow wide when he realized what was happening, and my son would snatch back the truck that he had been playing peacefully with for the last 30 minutes.  The neighbor kid would look up at me and say accusingly, “Jay won’t share!!!”

I would do what any good mother trying to teach her children valuable life lessons in a somewhat- functioning society would do: shrug my shoulders and suggest the neighbor boy play with a different toy or go home and play with his own.

It didn’t take long for the neighbor kid to realize that he wasn’t always going to get what he wanted at my house because I generally don’t play by the rules of polite society, which can sometimes be stupid—especially when they interrupt my time as a mother reading a book outside on a beautiful day while her kid plays happily with his dump truck.

Despite that, the neighbor boy continued to come to our house over the next several years, probably because of my killer tater tot casserole and the blueberry pancakes that he knew came from a bag in the frozen section of Walmart yet still insisted repeatedly over the years that “Mrs. L’s pancakes are the best you’ll ever eat!”

I ended up loving that little neighbor boy.  We all did, and now our kids are in high school and I really miss those dump truck days.

Side note:  I remember one time those same neighbors invited Jay to stay for dinner when he was about 5 or 6 years old. As he walked up the steps of their back deck, I could hear him asking, “Can we have fresh salmon for dinner?  I really like fresh salmon.”

What can I say? We’re uppity.

I was sitting on my own back deck at the time, reading a book and having a nighttime cup of coffee. I chuckled when I heard the dad reply, “Um…no.  We’re having frozen pizza.”

Personally, I would have added, “Is that good enough for you, sire?” but I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself by calling it out.  I wasn’t going to mess up this hour of alone time while my kid was being fed by the neighbors, even if it was just frozen pizza made for peasants which I bet wasn’t even Di’Giorno.

(“Is this delivery?”  “No, it’s Di’Giorno.”)

The rules of sharing are dumb, anyway.  I remember I once used part of the one dollar that my parents gave me to spend at a school fall festival to buy a candy apple.  I guess that was my first mistake, but I was young and still learning the lessons of life, so who could blame me? 

Candy apples are deceptively gorgeous…all of that shiny caramel with candy stuck on the sides.  They look so good.

But then you hold one and try to bite into it, and it’s messy and sticky and the caramel gets stuck all in your teeth and all over your face and hands and clothes.  They’re almost impossible to eat, so you do that thing where you study it, placing your finger at the tippy top and turning it around and around to try to find the best angle. You go through about 7 attempts at sinking your teeth into it, but all that happens is they slide right off and clack together every single time, resulting in a brief but still pretty painful headache.

Then after you do all of that work and actually do succeed in taking a legitimate bite, you realize you’re eating an…apple.  And that most of the “candy” stuck to the sides is actually little bits of peanuts and not really candy at all.

Candy apples piss me off.

Anytime I see a kid about to get fooled by one, I want to rush over to him, knock it from his grasp, and say “You’ll thank me later, kid.” But I don’t because that would be weird. Plus I’d probably end up with caramel all over my hand.

Anyway, as a child I was at this fall fair and had just spent a portion of my precious little money to buy a beautiful candy apple of whose manipulations I wouldn’t learn about until a bit later in life.  And just as I was about to take a bite, a kid from my class walked up to me and said, “Oooh, can I have some?” and my mom, who hadn’t put down her beer long enough to pay a bit of attention to me all day but chose that moment to suddenly become all motherly, glanced over and said, “Share, Lisa.”

Share?  How the heck do you share a candy apple? And with a kid whose slobber isn’t even part of your family? That’s gross and stupid.

(I am aware that I have used the word “stupid” three time already in this story, and while I try to vary my word choice—I in fact agonize over not using the same word in close proximity—I have done a lot of soul searching and I just don’t think anything will work as well in these particular cases as the simple, direct adjective “stupid”.  Some things are just stupid. 

In fact, lots of things are stupid.)

So I decided I’d rather not have that candy apple at all, but I didn’t want the brat from my class to have it, either, so I threw it into the dirt and rolled it around a few times with my toe so it couldn’t be salvaged. I thought maybe that would teach her to mind her own business, but all she did was go cry to her mom over my candy apple and then I got in trouble.

I even had to apologize to the candy apple maker, an old lady whose feelings were hurt when she saw one of her masterpieces lying in the dirt untouched.

I still say that’s what she gets for selling those awful things to children.

I’ll tell you one thing:  If that had been my kids and I had been the mom in that situation, it would have turned out a lot differently, and they wouldn’t have been cast as the villains, that’s for sure.  The end scene would have had them swinging their legs from the pier (even though we’re from the Midwest and there aren’t a lot of those at fall festivals), enjoying their candy apples. 

Well, as much as you can enjoy a candy apple.

***

Once I was at my little sister’s house and I opened her cupboard so I could grab a mug and pour myself a cup of coffee. “Oooh,” I breathed when my eyes landed on a really cute white one with pine trees all over it. “I love this mug.”

My sister had been frying eggs at the stove, but she dropped her spatula and shot me a look.  “Do NOT take it.”

“Why not?  You’re supposed to share.”

She turned back to the stove, but not before I heard her mutter, “You always take my stuff.”

“Like what?” I challenged.

“Like my really good lip gloss that I let you borrow the last time you were here!”

“You knew about that?”

I asked the question unironically. The tubing had been all squeezed out and cracked, so I figured she’d been getting ready to throw it away anyway.

But it was really nice and smooth and creamy so when I’d gone to put it back, I took it instead because I didn’t think people cared a lot about stuff like tubes of chapstick.  I usually end up with so many that I have to throw them away every year when I clean out my junk drawer.

Who knew?

I tell you what, my sister watched me like a hawk until I’d finished my cup of coffee, rinsed the mug, and placed it into her dish dryer.  It was kind of uncomfortable and it made it hard to enjoy my coffee. My lips got a little dry from anxiety, so I had to pull out my lip glass and wet them a little bit, which only made things more awkward since it was the lip glass I had stolen from her the last time I was there. Still, I held her glare as I swiped it across my lips and tossed it back into my purse.

The only thing I could think of was how oftentimes parents get lazy when they get to the later kids. My little sister is 6 years younger than I am and obviously Mom had been too tired to teach her 4^th (and 5^th) kid about the importance of sharing.

Anyway, it was something to ponder as I slipped her coffee mug into my purse before leaving that afternoon.  (I’m KIDDING.)

Maybe I should get to the point of the story.  The other day I was in Aldi’s Aisle of Shame (or AOS to those of us “in the know”) and I saw the cutest coffee mugs. (I have a thing for coffee mugs.)  Halloween themed, one was shaped like a little ghost and the other, a cauldron with the words “Witch’s Brew” across it.  I immediately grabbed both, planning to keep the ghost mug and give the cauldron mug to a co-worker I knew would love it.

However, as I stood there in the Aisle of Shame gazing at them, I knew in my heart that I was going to keep them both.  So I reached for another cauldron for my friend, but then I realized that would bring my total up all the way from $5 (I had originally planned to buy just one) to $15 for three.  And I just wasn’t ready for that type of high dollar spending.  So I put my friend’s mug back.

The story would have been fine had it ended it there.  What I mean is, I could have gone on living my life without looking like a selfish butthole because nobody would have been the wiser.  However, that’s never how things end for me.  I always end up looking like the selfish butthole because I can’t keep my mouth shut.

When I got to school the next day, I was talking to my 7^th grade homeroom kids about my Aisle of Shame mugs.  I had brought the ghost mug to use that day, and I was unzipping my lunch bag to take it out and show them.  One of the girls started making fun of me about how excited I get over silly stuff, but it was really funny to watch her insult turn into a squeal as the mug, being pulled out of my bag, was fully revealed: “Oh, my gosh, Mrs. L, I can’t believe you’re acting like this over a—oh my goooooosh that is soooo CUTE!!!”

It was a totally genuine reaction and she was a little bit embarrassed; she couldn’t believe she had let her defenses down, shrieking over a cute mug like a 47-year-old school teacher would (and had).  I didn’t let her forget it all day.

The teacher across the hall came out of her classroom, curious as to what all the excitement was about.  I held up the mug to show her. “That is really cute,” she said.

I paused. My co-worker cocked her head at me.  “Everything okay?”

I stood there for a moment, having an internal debate.  The intelligent part of me lost, so I plunged ahead. But at least I started with “I shouldn’t tell you this.” That gave her the chance to walk away.  Standing to listen to whatever came next was like her accepting partial responsibility for whatever that was.

She stayed and even gave a slight nod of her head, encouraging me to continue.  I suppose her curiosity got the best of her even though she had to know from previous experiences that she was probably going to end up angry.

“Well, I had one for you, too,” I started.  She knows me well enough that even after just those few words, she understood where the story was going, and she rolled her eyes and began to turn and walk away. I took that as my cue to go on, calling after her:  “I had it in my hand—but I put it back because that would’ve brought my total to $15 and that’s just ridiculous.”

She was halfway down the hall, pretending she needed a drink of water but I knew she was just too annoyed in that moment to look at my gloaty face drinking out of my new adorable coffee mug.  She threw her arm up in a backward wave—like, stop talking, I’m done with this—but I knew what gesture she was really making in her heart.  She just couldn’t do it because we were at work with a bunch of middle schoolers around.

I tried to salvage the situation.  “They had a bunch at Aldi when I left yesterday!  I’m sure they’ll still be there if you want to buy one after work today! Just, you know…hurry because they were going fast and you might end up with one of the crappier ones that just say Little Miss Hocus Pocus on them…”

“STOP TALKING” she yelled back.

Well, that hadn’t gone well.

It’s been a good two weeks since I bought the mugs and she still narrows her eyes and walks away from me every time I use one of them at work.

The last time I did something like that, it ended much better.  It was a long time ago when I worked for a couple of years as a preschool teacher before I realized that preschoolers that aren’t your own are awful and I hated it.  I loved the people I worked with, though, and one time, I spotted a necklace set that I thought would look great on one of them, so I bought it for her.

The next morning, however, when I went to put it in a gift bag, somehow I found it around my own neck instead.  And although I still thought it would look great on my friend…it looked much better on me and I simply had to have it.

When I got to school, my friend admired my new necklace set, so I told her all about it.

Instead of getting mad, she started laughing.  She laughed so hard that her shoulders shook.  “They do look good on you,” she said.  She reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder affectionately. “And honestly, I would expect nothing less from you.”

Isn’t it nice to have friends that just get you?

Pictured is the set of Aldi mugs responsible for ruining my friendship with my co-worker.  It’s sad thing, but maybe it can be salvaged in November when I start using my pumpkin mugs, which shouldn’t sting so bad.

 

Speaking of co-workers, I was chatting with the preschool team the other day because they complimented my ghost mug.  I was going on and on and on about how cute it was and how they could find them at Aldi but they’d better hurry before Aldi ran out because that happens a lot, and one of the preschool teachers goes, “STOP.”  I looked at her quizzically but kept gushing about the mug and how they should go to get theirs right after school.  She said “STOP” again, a bit more forcefully this time.

Listen, I’m used to people telling me to stop. I talk ALL THE TIME. So I just plowed right on through, talking about the $4.99 price point until she said it one more time and all of us turned to look at her funny.

There was a dead, awkward silence in which the rest of us cast sidelong glances toward each other, making that “crazy” sign with our index fingers circling our ears for about 10 seconds. We knew she could see us, but we didn’t care.  Crazy is crazy and sometimes you just have to call it out.

Finally she heaved a quiet sigh.  “I got all of you one of them,” she said, motioning around to her preschool co-workers. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Oof. 

I’m on a roll this week.  I wonder who else I can alienate at work.

Happy Halloween!!!!