Saying No

Just like you, I was raised to be kind and polite. However, one of the things I failed to recognize for a while is that there are times when firmness in dealing with others is being kind to yourself. But I did learn along the way.

          Everybody earns a living by selling something: talent, manual labor, cars, and myriad other things. And selling is an art which has been perfected over the years and has become very aggressive. Marketers call, usually at dinner time, to try and convince you to buy such and such a thing, or to tell you you’ve won a trip. As soon as they start reading their sales pitch, I simply say: Thank you, but I’m not interested, and hang up. Such calls have stopped. Must be my manner is noted and passed around to other marketers. Good. I’m proud of being in charge of myself and not being pushed by others.

           My car was recently included in a recall by the manufacturer to correct a problem. While I was at the dealership getting a part replaced, everything about my car was noted especially that it is a few years old. Since then, I have been getting calls from salesmen trying to convince me to buy a new one. Before they get too deep into their pitch, I simply say: No, thank you, and hang up since my car runs just fine and suits me. A sales person I know was telling me that hanging up in such a fashion is very impolite. I told her that I don’t believe it is. Why make the person lose time on me when he could be pitching a person more apt to be buying a car.

          And don’t talk to me about selling on the Internet. Unless you delete your on line history, everything you do while on line is recorded somewhere and that information is used to advertise directly to you when you connect later. You compared air travel costs to go from here to there? Suddenly you’re getting all sorts of ads for there, and so on. The worst offenders are the spammers who bombard you e-mail inbox. Many moons ago I thought it’d be wise to quickly unsubscribe from these e-mails then realized it was a means of verification that led to a slew of other spams. Now I simply delete right away which in effect is saying no and hanging up.

A Question of Time

My eleven-year-old grandson was recently expounding on the reasons why, he believes, school days and holidays should be switched. One, of course, was that there isn’t enough days off and too many days when he has to go to school. I can certainly see his point of view. When I was his age, the time spent in the classroom seemed to go on forever. There was no end to it.

However, time is an amazing thing. It goes from being painfully slow to racing at the speed of light – or so it seems -- in just a few decades. At first it loses its ability to stand still then begins to rush quite dramatically. When you’re busy with work and raising a family, there’s never enough time for all you want to do. And when you retire, whether it is a full retirement or you still work part time, you are amazed that there never seems to be enough time to do all the things you want to do, and you wonder how you ever found time to work.

But you realize you’re not the only one to see time as an ever changing commodity when you hear your children wonder where time has gone and bemoan the fact that they too are feeling the advance of time.

But seeing time fly by is not all bad. It reminds us that we’d better get busy doing the things we want to do and stop putting them off because as we all know, without warning, time could run out of steam.

 

 

Dog Days

Those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere are now right in the middle of the dog days of summer. Typically, the dog days are mid-July to September 2, the hottest time of the year. Some believe the term dog days originated with the Romans who were convinced it was a period of the year when dogs became mad and wine turned sour, a time when man was plagued with disease and discomfort.

Mankind is still plagued with the discomfort of heat and humidity during the dog days of summer, just ask those who work outside. However, not everyone concurs that it is a problem. Some people just love the summer heat, the higher the thermometer reading the better. Those people are easy to spot: during the dog days they vacation in Florida or they don a sweater when the temperature drops a few degrees; the latter is especially true of older individuals. Although I’m not as young as I used to be, this definitely is not for me.

Those of us who endure the dog days of summer more or less graciously have a tendency to forget that in a few short months, the temperature will dip to an indecent level. When reminded of that fact, we quickly realize that this is the time to make the most of summer especially this year because in addition to the sun, right now we get to experience the big moon in the sky at night which they say is 30% brighter than normal. Who doesn’t love a big moon!

But the dog days are brief indeed and we’ll get to welcome fall before we know it. I personally like experiencing different seasons, but it’s not something all countries get to see. I was recently reading a comment by an African woman who cannot understand how people can survive in snow and ice. We all get used to our own world, don’t we?

When I get older I may need to wear a sweater during the dog days as an older relative had on when I visited her recently, but in the meantime if I could spend the dog days in a swimsuit I would. Some people do, of course, but they have the shape for it. In my case it might well make people think that the dog days do indeed bring discomfort to mankind!