Social Working It Out

Once in a while, usually after at least one bottle of red wine, you get in one of those ‘let’s reflect on our lives before we get incoherent’ conversations. And someone asks ‘do you have any regrets?’ And you are supposed to say something like: Oh no no no, no regrets, life is a river on which we float while learning lessons and I don’t regret anything and blah blah something.’ Which is mostly how I feel. It’s of course true that each decision we make, big and small, leads to the next. A butterfly and the hurricane, a drop in the pond. I get it.

But some things, while I like where they led me, are a little less awesome. So if I’m honest, I can say that in some respects I regret getting my MSW. Being such a fan of learning, it does pain me to say that any form of education wasn’t worthwhile, but when I’m paying my student loans each month those pangs of the r-word really do hit hard. Maybe in a few years that piece of paper will come in handy, but so far it has mostly shown me what I don’t want to do instead of helping me narrow in on what I do want to do. And for that lesson, I think I overpaid. With interest.

The thing is, as much as I want to be able to list those two years as my regret, I can’t. Instead I consider my monthly loan payments as the fee I’m paying for two of the best friends I ever could have found. And for that privilege, I’m getting a bargain. A steal of a deal.

At the beginning of our MSW program we had some kind of orientation thing. I’m not really sure, I blocked it out. Point is, all the students were gathered in one place which was the perfect opportunity for me to scope out the new friend prospects. And let me just tell you, the pickings were slim. I’m not saying that I can for sure tell whether someone would be a good friend for me just from looking at them, that would be totally superficial and horrible! Discriminatory even! I wouldn’t dream of such a thing! Etc.

Let me just say this: Men with ponytails who are older than my dad generally don’t fit the bill. Anyone taking NOTES at a welcome orientation, not going to work. People who are dropping F-bombs or shedding tears as they tell me their life story 3 seconds after we met…no thanks.

So when I saw Bernadette and Raquel in that crowd I was like BINGO bitches, like it or not you are about to be my friends for at least 4 semesters. Longer if you’re lucky. They looked about as interested in this welcome wagon bullcrud as I was. They weren’t wearing pants up to their armpits or down past their bum crack. I think I saw Bernadette roll her eyes when someone mentioned ‘efficacy’ or ‘research methods’. Raquel had that look that says ‘when is the lunch and is that shit free?’ and a love affair began.

The next two years were roller coaster years in terms of life changes and soul-searching, but as Bernadette, Raquel and I became closer grad school became at least tolerable. We ruled that program like vaguely ethnic triplets with a love of cheap drinks and heavy sarcasm. Sometimes an awesome foursome was made when our girl Lua would join us and help us take things up a notch, most importantly by dubbing us ‘The Switchblade Sistas.’ It’s highly possible or even probable that people (or one certain professor in particular) found us really annoying, but we found ourselves awesome so it all worked out.

The thing about an intense, time-limited, insular situation like grad school (or a hockey season) is that it creates friendships based on shared experiences to help with survival. Which is great. But those friendships don’t always translate into ‘real’ life beyond the specific situation which brought you together. When we left grad school, we went separate ways. Raquel left the state. I left the country. Bernadette became a mother. Life kept happening, we kept changing, time went forward as it tends to do.

Six years after graduating, despite the best efforts of life circumstances to make us too busy to keep up, we are still friends. And in many ways, closer than ever. While grad school brought us together, it isn’t even really something we talk about now, and Raquel is the only one practicing social work (and kicking-ass, I might add).

Without these girls I’d probably need a therapist, adding another bill to the pile. Without these girls Vesper would need to find her own half-Chinese, half-Mexican feminist badass mothers to be role models. Those are NOT easy to find. Without these two I’d be sad more than I am and happy less often.

Regrets in life? I have none.

Skinny Dipping

Over the weekend, my sister had some friends visit. Of the five total guests, four were men. Untrained, unmarried men. Men who are recently out of college and still co-habitate with only other men. And besides the beer consumption levels and the crass practical jokes that often involve the first man to pass out and a permanent marker, there was the one twenty-something single-guy habit that all women who prefer their bum to remain dry dread: The Always Open Toilet Seat.

There are plenty of rather entertaining anecdotes that I or any number of my friends could share about the training of a new spouse. We women have our faults, but men tend to be the less tidy gender who prefer to decorate with athletic jerseys and use promotional Burger King cups as glassware. They’re charming, they’re adorable, they can reach things on high shelves. But I’ve never yet met one that comes completely ready for household use.

But I digress. The thing about the toilet seat is that when this is first explained to a man, he seems confused. True enough, the seat itself is on a hinge. And putting it down ourselves isn’t incredibly difficult. When I walk into the bathroom with a clear mind in the broad light of day, I am fully capable of putting the seat down on my own. But when I shuffle in crustily through a sleep-induced fog, avoiding the lights so as to not burn my sleepy retinas, I don’t notice the seat up. And I’m not sure if it’s the sensation of falling that jerks me violently out of my sleep-walk or the resulting COLD, wet bum…oh wait, it’s both falling AND ending up with clammy ass that I hate.

Bless his little heart, Dave is a toilet seat champ. Growing up in a household of women didn’t hurt, but fearing the wrath of a woman woken by a violent ass-first fall into the toilet bowl completed the training. My dad, with even more years of similar fear-based training, is like a robot who was created for the sole purpose of closing toilet seats after use. I’ve been spoiled into complacency, but one too many damp cheeked situations over the weekend has led me to speak out, hoping any untrained men who read my blog take notice and save themselves from this particular lesson from the marriage syllabus.

Source.