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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Family seemed perfectly typical, but I felt envious of their lives

By David McElroy · January 8, 2020

They were just another random family having dinner together at a fast food restaurant. But I couldn’t stop listening to their interaction with each other — and feeling envious.

I don’t know these people. I’ll probably never see them again. They have no idea anybody was paying attention to them. But there were some things about them that made me want to be like them.

There were two little girls and a boy, along with their parents. Everybody got along and seemed completely relaxed with one another. The children were well-behaved for their age, but they weren’t perfect. The parents gently corrected when they got a bit out of line, but they were relaxed about it.

The parents seemed as though they liked each other. They were trying to figure something out about an online order that they were about to pick up, so they were collaborating in the midst of dealing with the kids. Nobody was snapping or being short. They were polite and helpful to each other.

It sounds completely unremarkable, but what I saw was completely different from what I typically see and hear.

They didn’t laugh at each other or make fun of one another. Everybody seemed gentle and loving.

“We came here tomorrow,” the little boy said at one point. He meant to say, “We came here yesterday,” but nobody made fun of him. The dad gently asked him whether it was really “tomorrow” when they came. It took him a couple of minutes, but the boy finally laughed and understood what he had said.

Nobody was stressed out about anything. Nobody was upset. Everybody seemed to feel relaxed and loving and normal.

One of the little girls had ordered a cheeseburger, but she decided she wanted to take the meat and cheese off and just eat the bun with ketchup. The mother explained why this was an expensive thing to do and why she didn’t need to do that in the future if that’s what she wanted to eat, but it was relaxed. Nobody was angry with her. They just explained and then moved on.

Almost all of the families I see are tense and unhappy in some way or other. The parents are frequently ignoring the children — at least until the kids get too loud and then they angrily threaten the kids. With most families I observe, most of them seem bored or tense or angry or disconnected. These people weren’t like any of that.

They weren’t special. The children weren’t performing amazing feats for their ages. They got a little too loud at times. They were completely normal children.

But none of this bothered the parents. They never let things get out of hand. They were constantly interacting gently and lovingly with the children and with each other. They seemed like a perfectly normal and emotionally healthy family — and that made them seem remarkable to me.

I’m sure there are times when they’re not a happy and healthy family. They surely have flare-ups. But those are normal. What I saw tonight was too relaxed and natural to have been an act. This seemed to be what they are.

I don’t want something that’s wildly unattainable. I don’t want the perfect wife or the perfect children. I just want a family where everybody is loving and kind to one another. A family where people like each other and treat each other with respect.

What I saw was unremarkable — but I couldn’t help wishing that I were part of a family just like this perfectly normal group of people.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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