We all make mistakes. It's a part of being a human and imperfect. I spent many years, however, being told in various ways that I was a mistake, as was most everything I seemed to do. I was too stupid or too loud or too quiet or too unrelated to the family or too in the way. I suppose being told I was wrong for so many years and in so many ways shaped some aspects of my personality. For example, if I make a mistake, I will be the first to admit it and take responsibility for my actions. I didn't go through years of beatings or screaming and not learn something from it, after all. I also, though, developed an intense dislike of the superior attitudes some people have about what they believe or how they do things. Okay, you like the way you do things and it works for you. But that doesn't mean that nobody else is doing it right.
I see a lot of this on the internet lately. In the interest of being helpful and sharing useful tips with others, there are lots of people who are eager to tell us about how we are doing everything wrong. A word that is often used in these articles is hack. No longer a gagging sound, a hack is a brilliant and different way of doing something you've been doing successfully for years. You just didn't know that you're doing it all wrong.
I've been thinking about some of the things I've read that I'm doing all wrong, and occasionally there are gems, like threading your charging cord through a binder clip so it doesn't always slip down to the floor. Not only is this a convenience and a time saver, but for the occasionally clumsy it prevents bending over to pick up the cord and conking your forehead on the bedside table. In the interest of complete transparency, let me state that this has not happened to me. Nope, I'm the one who leaves the drawer open just a bit and hits it with her leg when getting up to use the toilet, resulting in a gloriously vibrant bruise that hangs around for six or eleven weeks.
Anyway, some of these I'm-so-smart posts really irk me. I've read two different versions of how I am incorrect in my methods of eating bananas. Yes, I apparently don't know the first or second thing about eating that delectable fruit. There's a wonderful thing about bananas. They have a peel which makes them quite portable and able to last without refrigeration. When you peel a banana, you have the option of only doing so part-way so that you have something to keep your fingers from getting smeared. Well, I read recently that I am doing it all wrong. I should be eating the whole banana, peel and all. Uh-huh. If I so much as eat one of those stringy things inside the peel, it feels like the lining of my whole mouth has been removed. Nope, no going to eat the peel. Next?
The other banana tip also has to do with the peel, more specifically with how one removes it to release tastiness inside. You see, I peel my bananas from the stem end down. This, I am told, is wrong, wrong, wrong. I should be peeling it from the bottom as it is much easier that way. Uh-huh. I tried it once. It was not easy. It resulted in a smashed banana end and required a sharp knife to actually get the peeling underway. I also read that I should be peeling from the bottom because that's the way monkeys peel them. Well, monkeys scratch their behinds and then sniff their fingers. Monkeys pick skin and other stuff off other monkeys and eat it. I do not feel the need to behave like a monkey. (And I really like monkeys!)
One of my favorites (I write this sarcastically) was a video that included a bit about how to take care of little kitchen mishaps that can occur when knives and fingers try to occupy the same space at the same time. Instead of cleaning the cut and putting on a bandage, it is apparently quicker and more convenient to do this:
1) find an onion
2) peel the onion and discard the peel
3) slice the onion
4) carefully remove some of the thin membrane in between the layers
5) wrap the delicate membrane around the cut
6) put away the onion
7) mop up all the blood in the kitchen (optional, as required)
I don't know, maybe I'm just lazy. I'm sticking with the bandage.
And if you're wondering (or even if you're not) what made me write about this, I read an article from some fancy doctor saying that I'm probably pooping wrong. No, it was not about squatting devices or frequency, something we got in an argument over with one of Trent's Nephrologists who said humans don't need to do it more than once a day. No, this wrong-pooping had to do with the paperwork done to finish the job. I thought the poop expert was going to say to rinse, not wipe, but I was wrong. Gag warning! He said you should wipe and find absolutely nothing on the paper. That was it for me. I laughed at myself after unthinkingly saying that I had had enough of this crap. And then I decided that maybe someone who is such an incredible smartypants as I am should quit reading about everything I'm doing wrong.
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