Slick Santa

 

My family has a tradition that we don't necessarily do every year, only when the opportunity arises.  My family tends to buy Christmas presents near or right in front of each other without getting caught.  This tale is just one example, but it's a Yuletide memory worth telling.

It was many Decembers ago.  I believe I was a teen or a pre-teen.  My dad, my brother, and I went jewelry shopping for my mom.  We looked around, and I used to really love going to jewelry stores.  My dad asked me which ones I liked as usual, and I said I liked the semi-precious stone items, particularly a blue topaz ring.  Since I was a kid and obviously could not afford to give my mom anything in the store, my job was the try on pieces of jewelry and give my expert opinions.

Dad said that we were going to play jokes on Mom, since Mom always likes to snoop around.  Really, she doesn't always snoop around.  Sometimes she finds things by accident, ....just like I do on occasion.  Dad had decided on some earrings, and he said as a joke we would have each earring in a separate velvet box to make Mom think we got her two pieces of jewelry.  Technically, two earrings were two pieces of jewelry.

When we got home, Dad decided to keep playing jokes on Mom.  Dad told her to hide in the basement, saying we got her something large; no peeking and no snooping!  He told me to get out of the way, and told my brother to help him with the large box.  They mimed and heaved the imaginary box through the house and up the stairs.  They pretended it was very heavy and difficult to haul up the steps.  This was to make Mom think that she was getting something really big.

On Christmas day, I was happy, and opening presents with the family.  Mom was opening one of the little boxes that had an earring in it.  I stopped unwrapping my presents to see her surprise.  To my surprise, both earrings were in one box.  Dad handed me the other box and said it was for me.  I opened it, and it was the blue topaz ring.

 

You know you’re a criminal justice major when ...

 

While law students comb through tomes, criminal justice majors study crime, which focuses on the frontlines of the justice system.  As a major, it still impacts me well after graduation.  I used to look forward to tackling assignments and reports.  Even after I donned my cap and gown, I felt there was still more to research.  My thirst for knowledge is never satiated in this subject, since I feel the call to comprehend criminal behavior under every charge type.  There will always be a need to fight crime, so I know there is always employment for it.

Just for fun, I created this list awhile back about the various traits that make criminal justice majors stand out. 

You know you’re a criminal justice major when:

-You realize that you rather go to a trial than a rock concert.

-You would rather conduct a research project at a prison than go to Six Flags Great Adventure.

-You have a favorite lawyer.

-You have a least favorite lawyer.

-You have favorite/least favorite criminals under different charge types.

-You look at the FBI’s Most Wanted List for fun.

-You get books about murder under the Christmas tree.

-You know more about serial killers than you know about Desperate Housewives.

-You shun CSI shows because they are so phony.

-You laugh at the spy/crime movies when the CIA acts like the FBI, the FBI acts like the police, and the police act like they’re spies or something else outside their job description.

-You stay up past 2am researching legal documents regarding necrophilia cases.

-You daydream about cracking down on human trafficking rings.

-You workout to prepare for your next PT.

-You’ve been fingerprinted in 5+ places, because of jobs and volunteer work, not because you’re a criminal.

-You’ve waited in a holding cell to get fingerprinted, for a job.

-You’ve waited for a job interview in a prison lobby with Christmas music playing in the background.

-You’ve had a job interview where everyone interviewing you had a gun.

-You consider yourself lucky if you get one of those jobs.

-At work, you know all the names of the judges.

-At work, you’ve encountered weird charges including public urination, illegal lobster possession, and deadly missile projectile in traffic.

-Your resume includes heroin investigations.

-You would love to travel the world....... and visit prisons, and do research.

-You would rather interview incarcerated cannibals than have sex with (insert random hot celebrity).

-You hear a creepy pattern of song lyrics in popular music referring to love interests as “my little girl,” “come ‘ere child.” ....and you find it disturbing.

-You see a police car, and think man, I wish I had a car like that!

-You are a cop, and you say hi to that car.

-You know cops and/or federal agents.

-You want to pull over all the bad drivers on the road.

-You make people jump when you approach them.

-You’ve taken exams you can not brag about.

-You’ve eaten breakfast with the FBI.

-You’ve seen the inside of a courtroom, but you’re not involved in a dispute.

-You’ve seen the inside of a police station, and you’re not under arrest.

-You’ve seen a county jail barbershop.

-You know the existence of “mandatory yoga classes.”

-Police dogs don’t bark at you.

Change your Attitude

 

This originated as a Facebook Note.  A bunch of my friends liked this passage, and then I shared it on my first blog, Caroline’s Chronicles of Crime.  I’m sharing it again, because it is still a worthy read. 

Instead of changing your attitude, make the changes you truly want.  Why should you have to change?  Why can’t the other people change instead?  In some ways, it’s good to change in the sense of learning and growing, but everyone needs to grow, not just the one getting fertilized with all the BS.

Changing the world is easier said than done, but changing your attitude is lying to yourself.  The world around you is going to change anyway, for better or for worse.  Some people sip their tea, watching the world burn with the consequences of others’ actions, and other people still believe utopia is possible.

The following is my original passage.  The last few paragraphs were my spur of the moment thoughts on the matter.

Change your Attitude

Whenever anyone is negative about work, school, or the doldrums of life, it’s not unusual to hear someone say, “Change your attitude.”  It’s supposed to be a positive statement, but in my honest opinion, it’s not natural.  It’s not good to just change your attitude about anything negative or painful.  Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor and their terrible memories.  O, just change your attitude and learn to like the Nazis….no.

While on the point of the Holocaust, I remember listening to an inspirational tape by Earl Nightingale, and he was a Holocaust survivor who believed in changing one’s attitude.  I give him kudos because he underwent indescribable cruelty.  He talked about his experiences being vivisected by the Nazi scientists.  The Nazis could do virtually anything, but he realized they could not control his choice of thoughts.  He could either feel like crap while scalpels were cutting into him, or he could change his attitude toward the situation.  I don’t know how anyone could be happy while undergoing vivisection, but I couldn’t call him phony for “changing his attitude.”

I thought about this for awhile because I always thought it was flaky and insensitive to tell people to just change their attitudes.  Then something clicked.  Vivisection is unspeakable enough that medical schools ban its practice on animals.  It’s traumatic for a human.  With trauma, come the mind’s defenses to get through it.  In psychology, they are called ego-defense mechanisms.  Changing your attitude is an ego defense mechanism, specifically Reaction Formation.  In order for Nightingale to get through the torture, he had to form an alternative reaction.

Besides extremes like torture, we are expected to change our attitudes when faced with problems.  For instance, if you hate math, staring at your homework and grumbling for a few hours will not get it done quicker.  If you pretend to like it, it gets done quicker.  It may be fake, but it works, and it’s better than feeling miserable.

Though in some cases, changing your attitude is not the best idea.  Let’s say you work at a department store and you don’t believe in the store’s overburdening policy to force-sell credit cards on every customer, driving more people into debt.  Bosses and stupid posters say “Change your Attitude.”  The reason for this is to keep you in your place.  Retailers have high employee turnovers, so management wants to retain its subordinates by keeping them “happy.”  If you choose to change your attitude, then, OoooHHhh my goooshhhh I LOVE SELLING CREDIT CARDS TO THESE DEBT-LOVING CUSTOMERS……This isn’t the only option.  You can get another job.  Then maybe your boss can change his/her attitude about the employee turnover rate.

You shouldn’t have to change your attitude all the time.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, and other times, it’s not healthy.  If you are in the military, should you have to change your attitude toward killing?  If you are a rape victim, should you just change your attitude toward rape?  There’s always that flaky person who says, “You have a choice.  You can either feel horrible or you can change your attitude and think happy thoughts.”  Try telling that to child porn victim!  Changing your attitude is not the best idea, despite it being advertised as such – it’s not the only idea.

Your initial feelings and thoughts are your truest reactions to any situation.  Changing your attitude masks those honest feelings with alternative, secondary emotions that we make ourselves feel.  It can be an emotional crutch, but you don’t always need a crutch.  It represses or denies our real feelings.  If someone changes their attitude too often, emotional compromise becomes habitual and at some point, the person may be confused on what their natural feelings really were.  They have emotionally lied to themselves so long that they don’t even know what their real attitude is anymore.

Tom Sawyer changed his attitude toward painting a fence to deceive the neighborhood kids to help him finish the chore/punishment.  The idea is that he changed his attitude as a means of deception.  Tricking yourself into liking math will get you through your homework so you can play your video games sooner.  Although changing your attitude may help to an extent, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Instead of creating attitudes to protect your true but vulnerable feelings, embrace your honest feelings.  Even though sadness may be horrible, it’s at least real.  Tears release toxins.  Anger is your mind’s alarm system, letting you know something is wrong.  Sweeping your problems under the carpet will build up over time.  Even though sadness and anger are painful, they are a part of your psyche.  Denying the fact that you hate certain things is ignoring part of your character.  Get to know yourself for how you really feel and think.  Self awareness is the first step of self-actualization.

Changing your attitude is not the best answer to life’s problems.  Learning to like a messy house will not keep the cockroaches away.  (Don’t learn to like the cockroaches, either).  Instead, look at the problem from different angles.  Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.  By viewpoint, I mean an intangible standing point to view a scenario.  From there you can draw more than one judgment and develop many attitudes naturally.  Keep your first view, because all views equally exist, just like your attitudes whether you repress them or not.  Instead of thinking like someone else, you can think like many different people.  It’s multi-dimensional thinking.  Looking at situations from multiple angles enables analytical abilities.  Take into account the positive, negative, and neutral standpoints.  If you only think positively, then you are ruling out the negative, which is biased – not positive.

Here are my key points.

1. Changing attitude is Reaction Formation, an ego defense mechanism.
2. Like other ego-defense mechanisms, they can be good or bad.
3. Don’t change your attitude if you have other options.
4. Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.
1. Look at things from multiple stances.
5. Your first feelings are your most honest.
6. If you can, embrace your feelings, and know yourself.

If you are traumatized, don’t pretend you aren’t.  If you hate stuff, you don’t have to pretend you love those things – unless you need to tackle the chores or homework, then just fake it for awhile.  If you have a problem, do something about it.

I’m just throwing this in here.  I once read that some murderer was happy while being executed.  While the lethal injection was being administered, he said, “This is awesome!”  Did he change his attitude or was that his real attitude?

Curious to note, when Earl Nightingale said he changed his attitude towards vivisection, he did not mention what his new attitude was.

 

 

Originally posted: February 5, 2014