Temper, Temper

We served 62 people at the food bank today. Being the week before Thanksgiving, and the last Friday of the month (we're closed next Friday) I wasn't surprised. I resisted closing the sign-in list until well after 3pm, but when I realized that the list went to 70, 45 of them had been checked in and 30 of them had been served by 3:30, I decided I had to go with the commitment made to the volunteers. They didn't even start leaving until 4:30. It was a long day; I didn't even take a lunch.


There seems to be a direct correlation between how much English a new client speaks and how many people come into the food bank to drop off donations, get something signed, interview to be a volunteer, and how many times the phone rings. If that person doesn't speak English or Spanish, add 5% (it occurs to me that none of the non-English speakers today spoke Spanish, either). On top of that, two little girls got in a fight - the littler one threw a plastic stool, which broke apart - and a baby was crying most of a solid hour and a half.


All the volunteers, including a brand-new one (who fortunately has worked at another food bank), were very pleasant to all of these clients today. It was hot and loud inside the trailer, and all of us kept our tempers. I'm especially interested to note that I kept my temper today, since circumstances pointed to other times when I've lost it: The food bank director was at the food bank less than an hour today; I didn't get a break; I didn't eat very well; the phone was off the hook for an hour so there were 12 messages to take and return; there were a lot of things going on all day that I had to manage.


This evening I was talking with Miz Jinkins about none of us losing our tempers today, and she said that she thought that "losing your temper" should mean that it went away, and "keeping your temper" means staying mad. I think the words "control of" are implied in the phrase to the extent that we leave them out altogether: "I'm keeping [control of] my temper" or "I'm losing [control of] my temper." Still, I like the visuals of "loosing" rather than "losing" - "I'm loosing my frustration." That is what it feels like to me - I loose my temper, it's out and bounces away.


Fortunately today I didn't lose or loose my temper. I think I may be mellowing out, because I know that a lot of the same conditions that have really tested me in the past don't get to me the same way that they used to. I do not consider myself a mellow person by any means. But I may be mellowing. How does that happen?

Why Milestone?

You may have noticed that I received an invitation to check out a blog about turning 40 in the comments to the post "Feelin' It."


I don't exactly get it. Turning 40 is a milestone, but of what? Why? Because people say it is? Why do they say it is? I'm not seeing any answers on that blog yet. What would "experiencing Turning 40 to the fullest" look like?


At 16 you can legally drive (though I know that recently a lot of conditions have been put on 16 and 17 year old drivers).
At 18 you can vote, and if you're male, you must register for the Selective Service.
At 21, you can legally drink (but a lot of people who will drink after turning 21 started when they were well under 21).
At 50, you get an invitation to join AARP as a full-fledged member.
At 65, you qualify for Social Security payments and Medicare health insurance, and you can withdraw money from your IRA without big penalties.


I'm not seeing 40 in there as a significant marker, unless you count getting mammograms - and only 51% of us have to do that, and a lot of women start getting them before they turn 40. So why is it such a milestone?

The Dragon Lady

I read in my college alumni magazine that one of my professors is retiring this year. I was intimidated by her from the beginning because she had questioned my ability, as a mere first-term sophomore, to keep up with a 300-level history course. She was stern in class and demanding on papers, which we had to write every week. I was majoring in English so I wrote pretty well but even so I received back papers bleeding corrections and suggestions all over them. I said"groovy" in a discussion once and she let me know that word was too casual for an academic setting.


I respected her, but she scared me, so I called her The Dragon Lady.


One afternoon, perhaps as class was starting (because I can't imagine the context otherwise), she walked from the window side of the room to the middle and announced, "On my fiftieth birthday, I turned to my husband and said, 'I thought growing up would be easier than this, and I thought I'd be done with it by now."


As I remember it we all looked at her, mouths agape. Not only was everyone intimidated by her, but we were all under 22 years old. At the time I was thinking it was a funny thing to say to a bunch of people half or less of her age.


Now I know that it's the most valuable thing I learned all semester. I tell stories about my professors, but The Dragon Lady is the only one I quote word-for-word.

Definition of a Grown-Up

I was at the library yesterday in my role as a Homework Helper. This is a program for elementary school kids to get help with their homework, and most of the Helpers are high school students. Tuesday I helped a fourth grader with long division and a second grader with a paper about Shirley Chisholm (speaking of black presidential candidates). Yesterday I helped a different second grader with spelling and subtracting by tens.

Yesterday's student and I had the following conversations:

He: How old are you?
Me (after a little thought): 38. How old are you?
He: Eight. How old will you be when I'm 38?
Me: I'm thirty years older than you. I'll be 68. That's probably about your grandmother's age.
He: My grandmother's dead.

About half an hour later he asked, "What grade are you in?" I guess he'd forgotten our previous conversation in which it was determined that I'm almost as old as his father. I told him that I'm not in school, and have been out of school for a long time. He said, with some surprise, "You're a grown-up?"

I immediately thought about how I had wondered, in my 20s, when I was going to start feeling like a grown-up. Would it be once I bought a house? If I had a child? When my hair started turning grey? Except that a patch of grey came in all at once when I was 26, between the beginning of March and Easter that year, a house was far far off at $8.35 an hour, and I didn't want to have a child, and I still felt like I didn't know what was going on.

Now I know. When you finish school, you're a grown-up. Things are so much clearer when you're eight. They're sure not very clear now.