While visiting my hometown yesterday with my boys, we went to a local park. The park is relatively new, and the playground structures are well chosen and well assembled. It’s a nice park.

At first, the only other visitors at the playground was a dad and his daughter. The dad had no wedding ring, it was a Sunday afternoon, and the way he and his daughter were playing suggested it was probably their visitation time (custody arrangement).

After they left, another dad arrived with two daughters and their friend. This dad, you probably had to see to “appreciate,” but let me try to describe him: He had bright, white, new sneakers; very tight blue jeans with his keys attached to a beltloop (no belt), so they jingled everytime he ran; a tight white tanktop showing his moderate beer gut and his multiple tattoos; dark black hair and mustache over a cigerette hanging from his mouth. His daugthers squealed in delight when he pushed them high on the swings. He’d rush forward, pushing them up over his head, and continuing his run under them and away. The girls reached a height of about eight feet and then dropped back down in a big jolt and swing. They loved it, and they were old enough to hold on tight through the ride. (Their friend, however, did not like it, so the dad let her swing by her own power.)

Then a big red pickup truck arrived with half a dozen kids in the back bed, clinging to the sides like a redneck school bus. One of the kids in the back of the truck was in a wheelchair, and when everyone dismounted, they all helped get him down together. All the kids were barefoot or in flip-flops. That group went in the park museum for a while. When they came back out after about half and hour, they all climbed back on the truck. Four of them sat down on the tailgate. The truck backed out of the dirt parking lot, turned, and headed out to the main road with the kids hanging on and laughing amid a cloud of dust.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

You can’t trust anything you see reported in the news. You especially can’t trust a headline.

Boyfriends Do More Housework Than Husbands

My wife found that headline at her online news source. She showed it to me for a chuckle, and she mentioned that she needed a boyfriend to come clean her house. I know she was just kidding me, so no one think I took it seriously. But I read the article.

The article was reporting on a survey conducted by a team of at least two people (George Mason University and North Carolina State University were mentioned). The survey gave data on who does the most housework among husbands/wives and live-in boyfriends/girlfriends. Turns out, the data was obtained by having the boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, and wives report on themselves. Alright, that right there is enough of a flaw—that’s like doing an IQ survey by having individuals report their own IQ. (Yeah, I’m 220 IQ, myself.)

But even better, the survey was of just a few thousand couples (8,119 males and 9,517 females—note the different numbers) in 28 nations. Twenty-eight nations. Would that number include nations where it is the culture that only women do housework? That would kind of skew the data, would it not.

* * *

Back in my college days, when I was working as a salesman in an electronics department, a reporter came in and wanted to look at the [then very] new personal electronic phone books. I had only a very little knowledge of how they generally worked, but between the two of us looking through some of the user manuals, we figured out a couple of them.

After spending about an hour looking over the features and plugging in some fake numbers, the reporter had enough info to write his article for the local newspaper. He wanted to know my name for the article. I declined to give my name because I didn’t want to be mentioned in the paper. He tried to talk me into it, but I really just wasn’t interested in having my name in this article—I’m strange like that; sue me.

Well, the next day, when I came to work after school, I found out that all day long, people had been coming to the electronics department asking to talk to the “expert” about the new personal electronic phone books mentioned in the newspaper. Seven people had come in after reading that article. One of the salesmen had gone and picked up the day’s paper and sure enough, the reporter mentioned the store (the only one by that name in that town) and the “expert.”

Journalists — don’t trust ’em.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Imprecise language use drives me nuts. To give an example:

In a particular computer game, a certain thing happens 5% of the time. This 5% is a hardcoded game mechanic. That’s the way the program is written, and it can be tested by watching 100 situations and you see it happen 5 times — 5%.

But in a conversation I was reading, a person said, “It happens all the time to me.” I’m not even going to point out that “all the time” means “all the time” — 100%. I’m not so pedantic to expect absolute precision in conversation. But come on, 5% is hardly “all the time.” For someone who doesn’t know the 5% fact, the “all the time” comment is very misleading, and can lead to future misunderstanding.

“Accidents at that intersection are very common.” — There’ve been three in the past five years.

“That’s a problem all over the city.” — There’ve been six reports in a population of 100,000.

“We’ve been waiting a very long time.” — It’s been 5 minutes.

“It’s a total wreck!” — It’ll cost $2,000 to fix the $35,000 car.

And expanding on that last item, car mechanics are exceptionally frustrating to me:

“Your breaks are busted.” — The breaks are showing wear and will need replacing within the next six months for safety.

“Your tires are bald.” — The front two tires have noticeable wear on the outside (only) edge.

Errr. I understand the concept of hyperbole for effect, and I don’t have a problem when both the speaker/writer and the listener/reader know hyperbole is in use. It’s the lazy and sloppy use of imprecise language the irks me. Language is for communication, but when used sloppily (accidentally or intentionally) it just miscommunicates.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

We visited the classroom and met the teachers of my soon-to-be-3 year old’s preschool class. He’ll be starting next week. The teachers went over the daily routine for the kids, and explained all the stuff we need to know, from the drop-off and pick-up procedures to how they’ll handle taking the kids to the restroom.

An interesting thing we learned is that one of the kids in the class has peanut allergies. Of all the kids I’ve known since having kids of my own, this is the first time I’ve encountered this well-known condition. For this child (which one we don’t know), the allergy is apparently severe. Severe enough to affect what all the other children can bring to class with them. Snacks and lunches, for all the children in this class (12 total), must not contain any peanuts or peanut products.

This is kind of a weird situation. I feel for the parents of the child—I know dealing with that kind of allergy has got to be tough, not to mention the fear they live with. But their situation is now affecting 11 other families. Eleven other children cannot bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (a staple of kids everywhere) and many other foods with peanuts in the ingredients. This is really not a simple thing. Check the ingredients on many of the snack and lunch foods in your home. We have to check the labels on everything we buy for and send with our child to school. So do the other 10 families.

Fortunately, the class is only twice a week, so we can work around this situation. But the concept of a single child with a problem affecting so many other families to this extent is a little . . . noteworthy.

The other parents at the meeting were obviously, and vocally, stunned by the rule.
“Peanut butter is the only thing I know my kid will eat.”
“Peanuts are in everything.”
“What will happen if someone forgets one time?”
No one was rude or inconsiderate—the class-wide rule just surprised everyone.

Imagine if a couple times a week, no one in your office could wear cotton, for the sake of a coworker’s severe allergies to the fiber.

It’s an awkward position to be put in. No respectable parent wants to harm a child by action or inaction or mistake, but it’s also pretty invasive for one child’s condition to control the perfectly normal choices and actions of 11 other families.

[Edit: See my September 5 2007 post for a post script to this item.]

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com