We go there because – get this – We like it there. I get limited vacation time, and I can’t imagine not going to the Vineyard every year. If I go to East Hungarislavistan, I can’t go to the Vineyard. And I’m pretty sure that East Hungarislavistan won’t have the beaches. (Although I understand that Croatia has some great ones.) And yeah, we save not only time but a heap of money on travel expenses. What would go to jet fuel goes to lobster instead.
norinew, that’s what I call the White Picket Fence Syndrome. Get married, buy a house, have children, and play bridge til you die. Anything else is not normal. And families can put enormous pressure on you to be just like them. I have a FOAF who was living a great bohemian life with her husband in a city apartment. Her family finally convinced her to buy a house in the country and have kids. Her attempt to be “normal” almost destroyed her. Her solution was to move to South Carolina and become a fundie. Apparently it’s working out for her, too.
The mindset that it somehow matters if someone gets in front of you in traffic, as shown in this thread. So a car is now in front of you- big hairy deal. If they’re slow, pass them. If you can’t pass them, it’s probably because traffic is slow, and you wouldn’t be moving any faster if that car was behind you.
Yeah- this I don’t get. Why is it so much better to drive 23 hours to get to Florida than to take an eight-hour plane trip to Europe? I remember that 23-hour drive to Florida as a kid. You do not know what misery really is until you’ve been on a long car trip and tend to get carsick. Even if you don’t throw up, being nauseous and unable to read for fear of getting worse for 23 hours is awful.
I have no idea why my folks didn’t and don’t just fly to Florida if they wanted to go to Florida. They still drive down there most winters.
I don’t get the mindset of people that feel threatened by the existence of other people living lifestyles different from theirs. People who are against gay marriage fall into this category for me- I think most of them feel threatened by people living openly gay lives, and I can’t understand why it should affect them at all.
It would be interesting to see how homophobes break down demographically. I would bet that the bulk would be in comfortable suburban whitebread lifestyles. The same people that think that cities are cesspools of crime and that being childless is an affliction.
People who aren’t into music. I’m not saying I don’t get people who don’t have the same musical taste that I do. I’m talking about people who just don’t care about music. They own only a couple dozen albums, and all of them are movie soundtracks and greatest hits compliations. What’s up with that? An extension of this is people who only listen to the “hit” tracks on an album, because apparently they think that only the tracks released as singles are the ones worth listening to.
I also don’t get the mindset of people who will walk into a store with the intention of making life a living hell for the people who work there. I have a part-time job in retail, and there’s this one guy who’s come in a couple times and is a total jerk, will admit to it, and will then continue being a jerk. Everything he says is laced with sarcasm and derision. What makes him think this is a good way to go through life?
People who litter. Oh, wait a minute, I do understand their mindset: They just don’t give a flying f**k that other people have to look at their trash laying on the side of the road, or on the beach, or wherever.
Adiction. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, food, tobacco… whatever. No matter how crappy someones life is, a few momments of satisfaction/bliss is not worth the damage you’re doing to yourself and loved ones.
I don’t understand local news shows covering the national news, both before and after the national news.
And I expecially don’t get man-on-the-street interviews of people who were just informed of the gist of a story and haven’t had time to consider an answer. Who wants to hear those opinions?
I’m going to expand on this and say that I don’t understand anyone with a nasty personality who is intentionally jerkish for no good reason. I work with one of them. He’s rude to customers, snaps at the staff, and generally behaves like an asshole. How the hell did he get this far in life without having this shit beaten out of him as a kid?
I remember working on farms (dangerous places at the best of times), and I can’t help thinking that if this guy worked on a corn detasseling shift it wouldn’t take too long before he got reeeeeeaal accident-prone.
I don’t get the mindset of people who think that more than a miniscule percentage of people who indulge in these activities intentionally set out to become addicts. Almost every drug out there has more infrequent dabblers than hardcore addicts among its user base. Every person who indulges takes a risk. Some win, some lose.
I also don’t get the “no matter how crappy someone’s life is” mindset. To a person who thinks about nothing but suicide from dawn to dusk, a few moments or hours of pleasure are worth more than you could ever imagine.
Jewelry mavens. I mean, sure, wear what you want, but does it have to be 24K gold, or a real diamond or whatever? Throwing money down the drain, if you ask me. You’re basically wearing the rent money, and no, it is not an investment. It takes decades for jewelry to appreciate in value, and meanwhile, one scratch can make it unsaleable. Cubic zirconia does not, in and of itself, look trashy. What looks trashy is wheedling jewelry out of your SO, or letting your bling wear you instead of the other way around.
Stupid of me, I know, but I like to watch those moronic daytime TV judge shows. It’s like watching a car wreck. Ugly, but I can’t turn away.
The latest one I like is People’s Court. Halfway through each case, they go to commercial, and when they come back, they get man-on-the-street perspectives. Some of them are pretty whacked. Most of them fall on the side of the plaintiff, such as “I definitely think the defendant is guilty, and he should pay up.” If I were ever in Times Square during the filming of that, and my opinion was asked, I think I’d say “Well geez, Harvey, I’m going to withhold my opinion until I hear the testimony from the defendant. Ya think that might be a good idea, there, Harvster?”
Really and truly “not get”? Not as in “Oy, what a fucked-up way of viewing the world, sucks to be you” but as in HUH?, where the foreign mindset might as well contain random static for all the sense you can make of it? Where you can’t come close to predicting what ^T$@W^# might spit out of the same mind during the next iteration?
Yeah, that happens to me, but I can’t easily describe the mindset(s) that I don’t get. Most of the time it’s over something trivial (although there’s always this horrified part of me that says “Yeah, but next time??”). And I don’t tend to even notice it much when it’s just one individual, but it’s shocking as hell when I’m the only one *not[/ i]of the incomprehensible mindset.
I’ll see if I can shake some examples loose from memory, hold on…
OK, sitting with a team of other Boy Scouts way back when, senior-level guys planning some kind of campsite and we’d decided to do an initial campsite inspection and the guys in our planning group were tossing around “what-to-do” suggestions w/regards to the inspection. One guy says “confiscate any books they brought with them”. My eyes cross momentarily but I figure the lack of any response to him means everyone else at the table thinks this guy has had a minor transischemic accident or an LSD flashback and are politely ignoring him. Then it comes time to make a final list and “confiscate any books they brought with them” goes on the list with no comment until I say “WTF?>??” Apparently they all thought books were in some fashion inappropriate on a camping trip. I never did “get” it. It didn’t seem to bother them that I didn’t. It stayed on the list.
That kind of thing. It’s not the content itself, it’s the way folks seem to adopt content that I would never in my wildest dreams expect anyone to harbor as valid or reasonable (or as an “of-course” default value, where it’s not that it strikes me as weird that anyone would think or do that so much as it strikes me as weird that they assume that absolutely everyone would think or do that, without question). Like someone being kind enough to go out to get coffee for everyone at the table at a conference and coming back with a huge pitcher of it… already presweetened with sugar and with a pint of milk poured into it, wft???
I know from experience that I strike other people the same way rather often, though. It’s kind of a running joke with some of my closer friends, that I “make sudden unexpected lefthand turns without signaling first” in my mental processes.
Well, it’s not the rent (or in our case, mortgage) money - it’s money we can afford to spend, or we wouldn’t (just speaking for myself, by the way). And it makes me happy to look at when I wear it. I’d say for that purpose, it’s just as much - if not more - value for the dollars as the numerous “man toys” (power tools, sports car, etc.) that my spouse has spent (much more) money on and that usually sit in the garage collecting dust on their covers. I don’t consider it an “investment,” any more than he does the car. We still can afford to not have debt, to give money to charity, and to save & invest for our future.
I do concede your point about “does it have to be real,” though - at least for the stones (I only wear min. 14K yellow gold, due to nickel allergy, and because I dislike “white” metals). As long as the imitations are not poor and obviously fake, I don’t have a problem with them. But I don’t view the real stones as the complete waste of money that you seem to.
I don’t know exactly how much jewelry sets you off, but I have 4 rings, 4 earrings, 2 bracelets and a watch on right now. I’m not hurting anyone, I don’t think I look trashy (what looks trashy to me is multiple rings on each finger, 4 or more necklaces and bracelets on at at time, more than 2 piercings on each ear, and especially gold teeth and the fake nails with the diamond or CZ set into them, especially when the person in question is wearing a sweat suit or polyester stretch pants).
This one is easy to frame, I’d think particularly for you.
Imagine if your career goal (and I know this is a stretch for you) is wife and mother instead of captain of industry. If your career goal is wife and mother, one of the prereq’s is getting married. Its an even bigger prereq than college for a captain of industry.
Just you look at “husband and dad” and think “no thanks,” some some people look at the long hours of thankless Powerpointing for pointy haired bosses in your career choice and think “you couldn’t pay me enough.”
I suppose there may be a more basic disconnect - i.e. you might not “get” wanting to spend your life with someone even through the bad times and you might not “get” why anyone wants children. I can get not getting those things. But once you do get those things, to imagine needing to get married doesn’t seem a stretch.
BTW, my “not get” is anyone who chooses to live life on the financial edge. I get living life there, shit happens. But I don’t get people who rack up a ton of credit card debt on crap. I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights (but I supposed I have the Franklin Mint Scarlett O’Hara doll!).
Rilch, I’m something of a jewelry addict, and I admit to buying a lot of junky stuff, just for the hell of it, but SOME THINGS, you do want to put money towards. Earrings, for example-the cheap ones can make your piercings infected. Certain types of metals that tarnish, or whatever.
But just everyday bracelets and necklaces and such? Eh, if it’s costume, it’s costume.
Which brings me to another mindset: diamonds. Why does it have to be DIAMONDS, for engagment rings? I know, DeBeers and all their ads, but still, in my opinion, they’re better as accent stones. Kind of boring on their own. I like color-give me a sapphire or an opal any day. Plus, why should some poor kid in Africa lose an arm just to give me a shiny rock? Holly Golightly said it best, “Diamonds before you’re forty look tacky.”
