My Point is...

Despite the fact that my boyfriend is trying to scare me into not eating sushi, because it has too much mercury in it and will apparently kill me, I'm not falling for it. Sushi is delicious. I sweat toxins out several times a week in a very hot room, twisting my body into ridiculous contortions so that I CAN eat mercury-laden tuna if I want to. Sometimes I feel like the Earth itself is trying to just off us annoying humans who aren't stupid enough to kill ourselves slowly by ingesting Big Macs. Fine, it's our own pollution and neglect that put the mercury in the water, which then gets into the fish, but it's a little late for me to smack around the previous generations for that little gift, isn't it? I can't be digging up dead people to have lengthy and heated discussions about the results of their poor environmental habits. Somehow I don't think I would get the necessary response from a pile of bones to light my fire and adequately argue my point. Though in my family, it's possible they'd find a little bit of fight left in them somewhere.

We are stubborn, my family. We are all, individually, always right, without a doubt, which is just fine, until one of us contradicts the other. Then all sense of order in the universe is lost because HELLO...if you don't agree with me, then one of us must be wrong, and it surely isn't me, I can tell you that much. You'll have to be right about something else, with someone else, because I'm not backing down from my extremely correct position. Yes, we are all like that. Some of us are a bit more vocal in our always-rightness, but even my sister, who takes the passive aggressive approach of rolling her eyes and actually scoffing, as if it's not worth explaining to you all of the ways in which she is so much more right than you, does it in such a fashion that it is pointless to argue. Unless it's one of us, because all the eye rolling and psshhht sounds in the world won't deter us from our original point. We're right.

I remember as a kid, when we lived with my grandparents, when I first learned my fate as the next of kin to inherit this stubborn streak that couldn't be squashed. I got to see two generations of it, in both of my grandparents and of course, in my father. How two people ever married each other who wouldn't admit defeat about even the smallest thing, is a mystery to me. In the end, grandma always won, because she was awesome, plus she could pull the cancer card at any time. You don't argue with someone who's got the cancer. It's bad form. As a 5 year old, I could argue with my grandfather to the point that his face would get all red and splotchy, and his only next step was to threaten to take his belt to me for my smart-aleck mouth. I told him he would have to catch me first, and let me tell you, he tried. I was a nimble and quick little thing, though. I would pay money for a YouTube video of that scene. A chase around the dining room table, me running around, ducking under, and eventually out the back door. Good stuff.

This is a random stream of consciousness post. I hope you enjoyed it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Liz
this may make him (and you) feel better!
http://www.slate.com/id/2182823/nav/tap3/

Jeff said...

I remember back when there was baby twisting, sex talk, random commentary on gays and yoga, and even an occasional diatribe about bad neighbors and metal working with open flames and welders.

Now it seems that Bitty has been taken over by a lacklusterness that was only seen before at some other sites like:

Snacks the Amish allowed their kids to eat

Heroes of the Franco Prussian War

Hair Folicles and all their secrets

Puce - a color or a way of life

and my favorite...

Toes are people too.

So Ms. Lizzy, please get back on the horse and entertain some of us. I like the sharing, the infrequent view of your hot bod, some tittilating banter about NYC restaurants and lifestyle, and of course the ugly, ugly children with whom you share some DNA.

LOVE,

Jeff
**Oh, it wouldn't make me sad if you'd put up a link to my site or if you'd come comment over there once in a great while. I have pictures of Latte, bad football players, Peeps and lots more.

URL is Bowl of Cheese dot com.