Mind Your G's and Q's

My second summer job as a teenager (my first being counter girl at Zaccagnini's Pastries), was clerk/typist for the mayor of my home town. He must have liked me, because he would have been crazy to hire me for my typing ability.

On my first day, he handed me a Dictaphone and told me to type a status report on the fire department. (For those of you who don't know what a Dictaphone is, consider being plugged into your iPod and having to type what you hear.) I had never used one, so whenever he paused on the tape, I threw in some punctuation. That's when he told me I was "comma happy." (I do love a good comma, but not as much as I love parentheses.)

Whenever someone in our town won an award or achieved something special, the mayor sent out a letter of recognition. The last sentence in all the letters was boilerplate. It read, "Congratulations, you are the pride of your community." Nice, right? With one tiny typo, I converted one such letter to, "Congratulations, you are the price of your community." Good thing the mayor never signed anything he himself hadn't proofread.

Recently, an avid reader of this blog wrote to tell me how she had misread my list of topics, and was very eager to read the posts that had to do with "guilting." I don't know if she was disappointed, but I know she must have been surprised when they turned out to be about "quilting."

But she sure got me to thinking. Just like love, guilting is a verb. Well, it's really not a verb, but should be. Here's my attempt at a definition. Guilting: the use of statements and behaviors to manipulate someone into thinking they have wronged you, and thus getting them to do what you want. Behaviors include crying, sulking, pouting (women, usually) anger and silent treatment (men mostly). May include crossed arms and foot-stamping, slamming doors and statements like, "You don't really love me," or "I thought you were my friend."

If you've never been, well, guilty of guilting someone, raise your hand. Those of you with your hand up may leave the room. Hmmm, I don't see any hands. So here's a mature and direct strategy to replace guilting.

1. Identify the need or desire you have.
2. Acknowledge it as a need or desire, not a god-given right.
3. Ask your partner/friend if they can indulge you in this need.
4. Find out what you can do for them in return.

Thanks, MG, for getting my wheels turning on this one. Shows you just how important my readers are.

And if I had continued to glaze donuts, where would we all be now?

Copyright starfishdoc 2007