beyond the pale

I hate to admit it, but this lyric got me thinking:

I want to be inside your heaven
Take me to the place you cry from

I listened to both American Idol finalists groan that ditty through my drippy, coughy stupor the other night. It was not a healing experience. But through that snuffly haze, a couple things struck me about that song:

First,

A sudden, but — I’m quite sure — abiding hate.

And, second, those lyrics about wanting to go to someone’s cry place? Pleeeease.

Now, looky here. Some poor guy in the throes of musical self-loathing and a flagging “adult contemporary music” career might sing that crap and droves of girls might still listen and swoon, “Oh, that is soooo sweet! He rilly cares about my feelings!” And he may really care about your feelings, sweetie, but that doesn’t mean he really wants to see you cry. He wants a little somethin’ else. But we girls are suckers for the notion, at least, that he loves us soooo much that he longs to share even our ghastly “cry place” with us.

Get real, chippies. Men love us in spite of our cry place.

But back to that song. Now Bo, the runner-up, the one who could have possibly sold it, doesn’t have to record those soul-sucking words.

But Carrie does.

And girls just shouldn’t sing that.

Ever.

Ev-aaahhh…..

I mean, what red-blooded, meat-eatin’, heterosexual guy wants to be swept away by a love song where the girl wails and implores him to “take me to the place you cry from”?!

Not that I’m opposed to men crying. It’s really not that.

I’m just sayin’.

I mean, men, doesn’t that make you feel rather …. icky? No matter if the singer is as fresh and lovely as the dawn, as Carrie is, don’t you feel …. a tad wussified if she sings that to you?

Do you want to take us to your cry place?

Because lemme tell you this: She’s a liar. She’s lying on behalf of all women, which I really don’t appreciate. So let’s come clean and talk a bit about the cultural crying game.

The truth — as I see it, of course:

We don’t want to see your cry place any more than you want to see ours.

And if the place a guy cries from is real close by and visited often? Well, he’s better off schlepping himself down to some dank neighborhood pub where he can sob into his Guinness alone, for all the lavish sympathy he’s likely to get from a woman. Most men, though, don’t have a “place” close by, a fact for which every woman on the planet should drop to her knees in eternal thanks.

I once dated a fellow in college who was a real crier. He used more tissue than I, routinely sniveling through my precious supply of Kleenex. He never offered to replace them either, which was equally bothersome, forcing me, in my private, elegant crying jags, to sog my pillow or my sleeves. I did not date the sniveller for long. There were other reasons for the breakup, but I can’t say that wasn’t a part of it, however small.

It’s exceedingly unfair, I know. It’s not that we don’t care when men cry, but I do think it causes us anxiety. Perhaps its very nakedness and messiness ties into our primal notions of the feminine and the masculine, of who “can” cry and who “can’t,” of who should and who shouldn’t. In my life, the number of times I’ve seen my father cry can be counted on one hand. Actually, one finger. He either just didn’t do it or didn’t show it. I’ve never thought to ask him about it, which I suppose is telling, too. The same restraint could not be said of my mother, though, who was more, ah, forthcoming.

But that’s the way we expect it to be, right? That’s even the way we prefer it. Right? Perhaps it’s sexist, this crying game, but it seems quite deeply entrenched in our psyches. Maybe that’s why my reaction to those lyrics was so fierce, so negative. It’s just buried there, expectations and all.

Most men’s “cry place” seems quite far away, actually, visited only on occasion. They seem somehow less manipulative with their tears, saving them for that which is truly deep, monumental, or transforming. And because women don’t witness this that often, because men generally do “spare us,” I think the emotional muscles women need in order to respond rightly are a bit weak and flabby. No matter that we may seem calm and compassionate on the surface. Inside, we just may be freaking out, shaken, wondering how to make the world right again.

But our cry place? Ohhh, it’s much, much closer. We’ve all been there. Probably far too many times. The place is a mess, what with the scattered wads of sodden tissue and the empty, dripping containers of Haagen Dasz strewn about. Which we didn’t even share, I might add. Frankly, some of these places need serious renovation to repair the perpetual leakage.

And, men, we don’t just “take” you there, which sounds nearly inviting; we lie in wait to kidnap and drag you away from all you hold dear, which in that moment is pretty much anything and everything else. At least I do, ha! But, you lucky men, with all that overexposure to the horrid cry place, all that working out, your cry management muscles are more taut and supple and ready for the teary challenge, real or contrived, trauma or TV commercial.

I admire you, men.

Such stalwart forbearance in the face of our sometimes quixotic natures.

A (*gasp*) difference between men and women?

Or a societal expectation?

Both?

So I ask what I asked earlier — because I do want to know:

Do you want to take us to your cry place?

You’d better tell me.

I just might blub if you don’t.

… everyone but Carrie, the new American Idol, she of the sweetly vacant eyes, who must now hope for a hit with a truly wretched song that goes like this:

I want to be inside your heaven
Take me to the place you cry from

Uh, yer looking at it.

Bo. Baby. Trust me. You didn’t lose.

Will post when I’ve bounced back!

Hey, ever worry about your ability to tell the difference between computer geeks and serial killers?

Well, fret no more!

(That is, if you score well on this helpful test.)

I scored 8/10. So don’t even try to kill me. At least 80% of the time.

Does this mean that 20% of the time, I will wrongly accuse computer geeks of murdering me?

Well, just don’t murder me, geeks.

So there.

Plus, I do own a gun.

So there.

Oh, and ruining my self-important buzz here, My “Beloved” insists on weighing in:

M”B”: Tell them I scored 9/10.

Me: Tell them yourself. God opposes the proud, you know.

M”B”: But I was 10% better than you. I can spot ’em 90% of the time.

Me: How nice for you. (eyes squinching) Guess who your missing 10% is?

…. The Pronoun Challenge!!

Some of you must be chomping at the bit to use the nifty, new gender-neutral pronouns I listed below. And if not, well, frankly, I’m chomping at the bit to see you use them!

Oh, in a post, of course. Oh, and in context now, not as a raging non sequitur. (Oh, and they only apply to people, just to clarify. At least I zink so. So I couldn’t have said “zie” for “they” in that sentence that I just wrote with “they.” Zie what I mean?)

So I’d love to see some of you muddle the verbal mud, glop the grammatical goo, and use these babies in a post.

Consider this yer call to the challenge.

Think of the possibilities. Each blogger, doing zir part, could help revolutionize the language ’til ain’t nobody knows what anybody’s sayin’ to zim no more.

Now zat’s noble, peeps.

(Oh, by the way, if you take the challenge, let me know so I can read your post!)

Well, we got into a bit of a grammar discussion here after I posted that li’l English quiz awhile back. Some of you may remember the quiz wanted us to tell what was wrong with this sentence:

“Every person is entitled to their own opinion.”

Technically, what’s wrong with this sentence is the use of the plural pronoun “their” when the word “person” is singular. The traditional solutions to this problem have been either:

“Every person is entitled to his opinion.” (Using the masculine pronoun to cover everybody, but that’s not PC anymore.)

OR

“Every person is entitled to his or her own opinion.” (Using both pronouns so as not to offend the womens, but, admittedly, making a cumbersome construction.)

So because I’m oh-so-up on these things — and because I want to make all da peoples happy, I’m offering up those third-person singular gender-neutral pronouns favored by some. Let’s have a gander at them, shall we?

(And this is a genuine list. I did not make them up. These forms are being seriously considered for entree into our repressive, sexist language):

Subject – Zie – (They)

Object – Zim – (Them)

Possessive Pronoun – Zir/Zirs – (Their/Theirs)

Reflexive – Zimself – (Themselves)

So using these handy-dandy new thingies in that problematic sentence from our quiz, it would now read:

“Every person is entitled to zir own opinion.”

(I’m just curious. Would that rhyme with “her” or “here”?)

Or take a sentence like this:

“Ask the first clerk you find if he (or she) can tell you the price.”

(Remember, it’s incorrect to use “they” here, although many people would.)

And it now becomes:

“Ask the first clerk you find if zie can tell you the price.”

See? It’s just lovely. It’s all-inclusive. Compassionate, even. Forever sounding like wee silly asses is a small price to pay for sparing the feelings of the terribly sensitive among us, don’t you think? And now that I’ve shared, I feel gratified knowing that every reader of this blog can use these zimself.

And don’t panic. That buzzing sound in your head goes away eventually.

I just read a post on a well-respected Christian blog that maintained that, as Christian bloggers with a public forum, we are “teachers” and, as such, are under the judgment mentioned in James 3:1:

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Hm. So we’re “teachers” simply by being Christian bloggers? “Teachers” if we discuss issues of faith? I’m not sure that leap can be made. Granted, some Christian blogs out in the ‘sphere are trying to teach, have that as a stated purpose, but not this blog.

I’m just a blogger. I write here, but I don’t call myself a writer. I share thoughts, beliefs, and experiences here, but I don’t call myself a teacher. In this forum anyway. I choose to share, not instruct. If we’re not putting ourselves out there as “teachers,” not assuming that role for ourselves, is it necessarily thrust upon us by this scripture? I don’t think so. Rather, I think the burden upon us as Christians here, in the open forum of the blogosphere, is to be mindful of our words — admittedly, a weakness of mine.

A public forum, by definition, is a place for lively discussion and interaction. In a messy, noisy mingling of people and ideas, where does one draw the line between the “teacher” and the “student”? Hard to tell who’s who when we’re all a bit of each, isn’t it?

And I just come to this bustling, casual marketplace of the mind to do a little barterin’.

Here’s how it went:

Carrie belted. Bo rocked. Vonzell blubbed. And Blonde Harry Potter was also there.

Then, in the untelevised portion of the show, I sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Moist, muffled sobs rose from the darkness of the house. Lighters sparked in unison. And Ol’ Simon, in an unprecedented move, jumped to his feet, ripping his tighty-tighty T shirt and exposing a chest white like the whitest, brightest spotlight.

Blinded, anxious, I waited for the comments.

Randy said: Yo-yo-yo, T. You worked it out, duuude. I was totally wi’choo. You in da dawg pound, now.

Paula said: Wowww …. you know …. it was amazing because I felt like I was on that boat …. with all the waves and the Gitche Gumee and everything …. and …. gadda baboo do da (sniff) …. Have you ever heard the word “marvenomenal”? Well, you’re marvenomenal. You truly are …. you are a gift ….(sniff)

Simon said: Fabulous performance. Horrible image.

Guess he didn’t like my sailor outfit. Hmph.