CodeNameSarahToo many secret identities for just one person.

Let’s examine what went on in my exciting life last week.

Let’s see.  I changed my Twitter background last week, and I watched that damned “Scarface” school play video so many times that I’ve said “mother fudger” accidentally when I meant to say, um, something else. (Word to the wise: It’s not a real school play.  So you can stop the shock and horror pantomime about how someone should “think of the children” already.)

What else?  I ran into an old writing acquaintance randomly on the street.  And I had tea with Tanzy, too.  Man, I’m making it sound like I did something last week — well, something besides watching “The Stand” for 8 hours on Sunday, which I also did.  Shamefully.  (Also, I know I’m supposed to fear Randall Flagg, what with the evil and the mullet and all, but…I still end up a little bit afraid of Gary Sinise every time I see that mini-series.  And he didn’t even wear copious amounts of eye liner, like in “Mission to Mars.”  Gary Sinise + Too Much Eye Liner = Sarah’s Special Nightmare.  It’s true.)

I guess the only other thing I did last week was this: I came to this understanding that the way I experience my world has narrowed to this tiny pinpoint perspective of daily life, where trying a new recipe seems newsworthy and just leaving the house for anything other than work is a Pretty Big Deal.  How much of this is a function of my depression and how much of this is just a case of early onset “middle-agedness” I couldn’t say.  But it’s a limiting way to live.

I guess I have something to work on this week.

I share one of my offices with another employee (an employee of another company, oddly enough — don’t ask), but she’s out of town this week. She did, however, leave behind a jar of store brand peanut butter poised proudly on a dais-like postal scale. It looks so regal there, this humble jar of low-cost protein, standing tall against all financial odds as if to say: “LO! I have come to rescue you from high-cost low-calorie nourishment!”

Except, you know, it can’t rescue me. When I eat peanut butter, I get cold sores.

There’s no one right answer to any question, not even dwindling grocery budgets.

Another example: Just recently I restrained myself from getting into an argument online. I’m part of a quasi-environmental discussion group (that meets online and off), and one of the members posted an article with a childfree stance. I mentioned that I had read a piece recently that industrial countries with lower than replacement rate birth rates have succeeded in making children an unacceptable burden, and how I thought that we were heading the same way. I used my own life (citing mainly financial reasons) to illustrate my point — though I was honest about not wanting children in the first place. Another member (who never posts) immediately responded with a vehement pro-breeding post, going through my hypothetical list point by point to rebut them.

Except, you know, her rebuttal was from fantasy land — at least as far as my life goes.

Luckily the original poster replied in a reasonable way, and I was glad that I hadn’t posted the scathing missive I had written.

I mean, I know intellectually that she and I will never, ever see eye to eye. I even understand that several of her points were valid for people in other circumstances. It was simply the fact that she was trapped in her one-size-fits-all thinking that my personal example had to be refuted by her entire world view, which was correct and perfect for everyone else. I never said, “Dude, you should never, under any circumstances, breed. For it is wrong and stuff.” I said, “Hey, it seems like children are a financial burden that most lower and middle class people can’t easily afford, including me.”

I couldn’t figure out why she had pissed me off so badly, except that she was so glib, but I realized later (while reading a different online argument that I wasn’t even involved in) that we weren’t even point/counterpoint, we were simply living two different approaches completely. I’m pretty sure that she is mostly a “feeler” — someone who feels a certain way about things and ignores anything outside of her particular gut instinct. And I know that I am a “thinker.” Never those twain shall meet.

It’s just a live and let live situation — or a breed or don’t breed, if you will.

There is no one right way to live. Not when it comes to children, not when it comes to peanut butter. The sooner we all figure that out, the better off we’ll all be.

Bonus:
The main reason I did not send my reply was a particular phrase that was vile and mean, even for me. But I would like to share it, because it’s something I have thought many times when dealing with Ishmaelites who declare that the solution to overpopulation is simply to stop producing food. In the unsent e-mail it went a little like this:
“Are you (or your imaginary yet-to-be-conceived children) volunteering to be the people who starve to death when we stop producing food? Nah, it’ll be those other people, somewhere else. Right? Probably brown people. Foreigners for sure. Or just dirty poor people. Not you. Right?”

Told you it was mean. Maybe I’m not a feeler or a thinker. Maybe I’m just a fucker.