A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

When a friend calls you, upset about something, there are two conversational gambits you can take:

• The Empathy Conversation -- "God, that sucks, I'm so sorry. I'd be freaking too."
  
• The Practical Conversation -- "Ok, calm down. Now here's what you should do ..."

I'm here to tell you, for the love of all that is holy, start with The Empathy Conversation. Because most of the time, I know what I need to do, I just need someone to tell me that being thrown for a loop by, say, having to fire someone or losing my job or getting in a car crash is perfectly normal. If you jump right into detailed solutions for my problems, it makes me feel like I'm an idiot for being upset, which makes me resent you for making me feel like an idiot, which makes me feel guilty for resenting you when you're just trying to help, which makes me resent you even more for making me feel guilty and stupid, which eventually spirals into a situation where I'm polishing off a bottle of rum and a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry's all by myself late at night. It's a bad scene, people.

If you open with The Empathy Conversation and your friend shrieks "Yeah, but what the hell am I supposed to do?", it's easy enough to switch to The Practical Conversation -- no harm, no foul. But if you jump straight to The Practical Conversation, you can't go back to The Empathy Conversation without sounding patronizing -- it comes off as "Now, now, a normal person would be able to deal with this, but I now realize you're a freak and therefore will pat your head and tell you everything will be all right." And that leads to the scenario above, except this time, it's all your fault when I wake up hung over and bloated.

So: Empathy, then Practical. General reassurance, then specific solutions. I swear to god, it's not that difficult.

HERE ENDS THE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

I'm going to be covering the big radiology conference that's here in Chicago in December, and I just got a survey from the organizing group addressed to "Dr. Jersild." I don't know if there are any medical doctors in the family -- there are a bunch of Ph.D.'s and lawyers and such, but I don't think they tend to go by "Doctor" -- so I have no idea if there's an actual Dr. Jersild somewhere whose ears are burning. But as I'm the least educated member of my family, it made me laugh. The other thing that made me laugh was that it was a survey on what hotel I'd be staying at. You'd think they'd chuck the Chicago people out of that particular mailing.

I also got a message from my friend Jeremy from high school -- apparently folks are already planning the 15-year reunion, and they wondered if he wanted to help plan. He said he would, if they'd give him complete creative control. This is his list:

• The entire affair should be bilingual, in Arabic and Dutch (if you don't like it, go back to Haarlem, why don't ya!). That includes all invitations and directions.
  
  
• We will give out a party favor which will be those big foam pointy hands. You know, like the ones you get at football games. The big pointy hands will be bright orange have the words "Tower Hill rules!" printed on them (in Dutch and Arabic, of course). Tower Hill is the big rival school, and also where my brother-in-law teaches.
  
  
• Everyone who attends has to place their pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants, or any electronic device they are carrying into a big barrel when they arrive. When the guest is ready leave, we will fill the barrel up with water and each guest will have to bob for their pager, phone, etc. Whatever device you bob, that's the one you go home with. I actually like this idea.
  
  
• The location for the reunion will have a big blank wall and some spray paint. Each member of the class of '88 can spray paint whatever they want on the wall. Won't it be really cool to see what our classmates can come up with? There was a rather horrific incident involving racist graffiti, which led to four guys in our class getting expelled. Which he addresses next....
  
  
• At the end of every hour we will vote on who should be expelled from the class. That person will be removed from the class list for all time and will never be invited to any alumni events again. The last one standing gets $1 million. (Beth and Julie, you can be responsible for paying the money. See? Even with total creative control, I can delegate) By the way, I volunteer to be expelled, if it means I'm off the mailing list. And did the expelled guys not get invited to the 10-year reunion?
  
  
• The evening's activity will be to try to figure out what letter day it is (i.e. whether it is "a" day, 'b" day, "c" day, "d" day, "e" day, or "m" day) using the last letter day from our graduation year and calculating forward 15 years. We had a very weird schedule. One of my recurring anxiety dreams is that I have to go back to high school, and I can never figure out when my classes are, so I end up not going to any of them until the day of the final exams.
  Oh, and why "m" day? I went to a Quaker school, so that stood for Meeting for Worship day. Every Wednesday. Come to think of it, that was the only day that made sense.
  
  
• We will hold the reunion in Sarah Jersild's house in Chicago, Illinois. Hah. Very funny. I didn't attend to 10-year reunion. Jeremy tried to get a Sarah Impersonator to go.

Despite this list, apparently they still want him to help out.

Oh, and I'm afraid I'm going to be in.... Madagascar that weekend. Doing a lemur survey. Yeah.

At the moment, my internal soundtrack seems to be set on "Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads...." I have no idea why.

I swear to god, Bug is trying to learn to type. It's very annoying.

Ah, the excitement of midterm elections. I actually consider myself a politically aware sort of person, and even I couldn't be bothered to figure out who all those people running unopposed were. So yes, the continued decline and fall of local, state and national political culture is at least partially my fault. Sorry.

The thing that's getting me really excited about this election is that, as of today, I will no longer be getting those damn pre-recorded phone calls from politicians I never particularly liked in the first place. It's a horrible, horrible trend, people -- and, if any politicians are reading, it pisses me off enough to make me vote against you. I picked a couple of Libertarians this year just because they're the only ones who didn't make a spam call.

My polling place is at a nearby school, and I was suprised to find classes were actually in session. When I was growing up, schools were closed on election day (granted, that was in a different state). One of the poll workers told me that using schools for polling places is actually sort of new in Chicago and Illinois -- they used to use people's basements and the backs of stores or wherever else the precinct captain wanted. Ah, Chicago politics. I can imagine how thrilling it must have been to vote against a Daley in "Daley's Meat Market" with all the butcher knives and meat hooks hanging about. No pressure there.

We do use those damn butterfly ballots here, and yes, they are confusing. There was a bit of a logjam at the polling place because people were confused and ddidn't know what to do. Of course, they also needed instructions in English, Spanish and Polish and/or Ukranian. I love this neighborhood.

Overheard at the polling place: "No, honey, you don't get a city job just for voting."

I mean, really. Everyone knows that to get the city job, you need to vote for the right person.

Oooh! Oooh! Miguel has me on his blog list! That's so cool!

Francis posted something a while ago about personal sountracks -- you know, the music in your head that seems to accompany your actions. He and most of his commentors seemed to have one song or peice of music that would stick with them for days. I'm apparently more musically ADD, as it switches all the time.

At the moment, however, my personal soundtrack is stuck on "Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" from Schoolhouse Rock. I have no idea why.