Kimberly Emerson

ATTENTION, EVERYONE!

I’m sorry for print-shouting, but I need to make sure you read this.  It’s important.  Not just for you, but for all of America.  Make that all of Earth.  I have found an exercise that will make our world a better place.  It is low-impact, so it can be done by all ages (although babies are a hard sell).  Here’s what you do:

1.  Start with jaw dropped, the lips parted as though you were about to speak.

2.  Gently raise the lower jaw, until the lips meet with no gaps.

This exercise is called Shutting Your Mouth (SYM), and it has been used with great success around the world.  Use as a preventative measure.  Repeat as needed, whenever you are struck with the urge to judge and/or tell someone else what to do with his or her life, when he or she has not asked you.  Benefits include lower stress levels, fewer arguments, and an increased feeling of peace.  This exercise can and should be performed under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.   SYM can be done while driving or operating heavy machinery, and may increase sexual performance.  (It will certainly increase sexual opportunity.)

SYM. Erma can do it.

Jane can do it.

Even my cat can do it.  (The eyes still radiate judgment, but hey, she’s a cat.)

I will refrain from giving the standard diatribe on how we’ve become a people without manners.  Manners, as defined by my etiquette guru Julia Sugarbaker of Designing Women, “are meant to put your guests at ease, not to make you feel superior. If your guests are uncomfortable or uptight, you have bad manners.”  Society can’t lose something it never possessed.  By Julia’s definition, no more than three people throughout the history of the earth have ever actually had manners.  I think they’re all dead now.

SYM stops far short of etiquette.  That lovely French word implies making a situation better.  SYM helps only in not making it worse.  But it’s a place to start.

I recently listened to the audiobook Bossypants, by Tina Fey.  Loved it.  Good material made even funnier by Ms. Fey herself doing the reading.

Don’t ever feel inadequate when you look at magazines.  Just remember that every person you see on a cover has a bra and underwear hanging out a gaping hole in the back.  Everyone.  Heidi Klum, the Olsen twins, David Beckham…everyone.

Only a writer as skilled as Ms. Fey can weave in a discussion of the pros and cons of breastfeeding and still have this childless reader engaged.  She pointed out that when she had her daughter, everyone she met felt the right – sometimes the obligation – to weigh in on the topic.  Breastfeeding didn’t work for her and her child.  Sounds like a personal decision to me, but according to the book, what she fed her offspring turned into a public debate.  “You’re not nursing?  She’s only 15 months.  You should try again.”  I read this section (entitled “There’s a Drunk Midget in Your House”) and found myself thinking, Oh, please.  Have opinions on feeding infants.  Go ahead, have as many as you want.  Write them down on signs and post them on your lawn.  You’re entitled.  But when you run into someone at work that has a child, begin the practice of SYM.  You and your co-worker will both breathe easier for it, I promise.  If you have problems, if that opinion wants to leap out of your mouth because you are sure you know better than they do, remind yourself that the odds are good this person encountered a doctor or at least a “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book before the baby made its appearance outside the womb.  If that doesn’t work, take a deep breath and say to yourself, “It’s none of my business.”  Repeat as necessary until the feeling passes.

I understand the impulse, really.  I’ve found myself wanting to correct people’s child-raising techniques, and as I mentioned, I don’t even have children.  (I did babysit a lot during the 1980s, but for some reason, no one else thinks this counts.)  On topics where I actually know what I’m talking about, like…um…telling the difference between second cousins and cousins once removed, I long to share my wealth of knowledge.  The trouble is, not everyone agrees with my correctness.  One friend explained that in her Filipino family, everyone in her generation gets called “cousin” and everyone older is “aunt or uncle,” regardless of the actual blood connection.  (“We don’t remove people in my family, Kimberly.  It’s rude.”)  They work by a different system, and to them, it’s as correct as mine is to me.

The topic of how and what to feed her child would have been no one’s business but Ms. Fey’s and her daughter’s, whatever the reasons for it were.  As it happened, though, the choice  to go with formula wasn’t really a choice at all.  Her body couldn’t produce enough, and her daughter was underweight. Nobody else needed to judge Ms. Fey, because she was already on the job, feeling inadequate that her body couldn’t seem to get the hang of something that came perfectly naturally to every other woman around her.

I feel her pain on this.  Many of my friends have some kind of gift for attracting the opposite sex.  They bat their eyelashes at three different guys and in sixty seconds, they have three different phone numbers offered to them.  If I bat my eyelashes at three men, it never fails that two of them will quickly look away, seeking the nearest fire exit, and the third will ask if there is something wrong with my eye.  (Approximately one in nine times, the concerned gentleman will agree to go out for coffee.  Every other time he is or knows of a good optometrist, which when you think about it means the encounter isn’t a total loss.)

These are the feelings that other people don’t know about when they walk up to me and say, “Why haven’t you gotten married?  I guess you decided to focus on your career.”  Why, no!  Do other people NOT stay single through their forties?  Do you mean to say that most men are more attracted to younger women?  If only I had known!  If only someone had subtly worked that message into every ad I’ve ever seen on TV or in a magazine throughout my entire life!  I might have made different choices, if I’d just had the information!

Here’s the thing, folks.  That judgment you so desperately want to impart upon someone else?  Chances are good, nay excellent, that they’ve already heard it.  They do not live in a vacuum.  (If they are actually living in a Hoover upright, they have much bigger problems.)  They also in all probability have made their decisions based on data of which you are not aware.  If they are genuinely confused about the topic, they will ask for your opinion.  If they don’t, SYM it.

Of course, if they do ask, feel free to tell them the truth.  I mean it.  Even if they ask, “Do these jeans make me look fat?”  Anyone over the edge of twelve should have learned never to ask that question.

Kimberly rarely gets asked to accompany people to department stores.

Tags: advertising, Bossypants, breastfeeding, dating, diplomacy, Erma Bombeck, exercise, Jane Austen, jeans, singlehood, Tina Fey