Five Good Things
/Before I get into this post, I want to briefly acknowledge the terrible attack that happened in Christchurch last Friday. My family and I are safe and well.
There was no post last week as it didn’t feel like the right time to create content to entertain - Friday’s events were appalling and my heart goes out to all those affected. I hope that as we recover and readjust we can all keep our friends and whanau close, and be kind to each other.
There is a Māori proverb which feels very appropriate:
He aha te mea nui i te ao?
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
It is people, it is people, it is people.
If anyone needs support, the National Mental Health Service can be contacted by txt or call any time on 1737.
I figure that at the moment we could probably all use something to smile about so here, in no particular order, are Five Small Nice Things.
An old dog learns a new trick
My family dog, Charlie, is a 13-year-old Bearded Collie. I was looking up online to see how his age is classified - I was thinking we should move him to ‘Geriatric’ dog food, but I wasn’t sure if he was technically Geriatric or just Senior - and I found that he has sailed past Geriatric and into ‘Exceeded Extended Lifespan’. So I figured he was probably well past any new tricks.
Charlie, although a very good boy, has never been a notoriously well-behaved boy. In particular, he has never liked coming in from the back yard and will cheerfully stand in the middle of the lawn, look you in the eye, and completely ignore your summons inside. In his younger days you had to go out and herd him in with a broom.
Then I introduced him to Duck Tenders.
About six months ago I started giving him a Duck Tender whenever he came inside promptly, and after a couple of weeks he trotted inside like a little lamb and then waited by the pantry until the tender eventuated.
However, this is not the new trick. The new trick is this:
I was at home and had left the back door open. Charlie took himself outside, faffed about for ten minutes, and then came back inside again. (It is important to note that this entire venture was of his own volition.)
AND THEN, having brought himself successfully inside, he stood by the pantry and barked until I came and gave him his tender.
HE’S READING BEFORE HIS WORKOUT, A TRUE RENAISSANCE MAN.
(ALSO THIS ISN’T POSED, MUM JUST CAME BACK FROM MAKING A CUP OF TEA AND FOUND HIM LIKE THIS. #NEWTRICKS)
A colleague has a slip of the tongue
My team at work regularly requires clients to sign contracts, which can be either emailed through, or signed off in person. If the client is based locally, we usually offer to send the contract through, or if they prefer we can come out and meet with them.
A colleague was on the phone, and was running through the usual spiel, and came to the part where one might say, “it can be easier to get your head around if you have a hard copy in front of you.”
But what my colleague actually said was, “It can be a bit easier if you have a hard-on!”
Which, while true for certain activities, was certainly not what she meant.
A government body shows surprising levity
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) is a New Zealand Government organisation that adjudicates on employment disputes - if you think you’ve been unfairly dismissed by your employer and deserve compensation, they are the people before whom you plead your case.
The ERA releases its decisions on its website, and when I worked as a journalist part of my role was to sift through these in the hopes of finding something newsworthy. The newsworthy ones were generally where an employee had done something uncategorically abominable, but the company hadn’t followed the correct process in swiftly ejecting them from the business, and as a result the abominable employee was entitled to vast amounts of compensation. Something something ‘that’s not news.’
Anyway, as you would expect, most of the decisions are exceptionally dry 10-page documents composed of a lot of “Mr X said that Manager Y had approached him in the break room and told him to “get out of here”, which Mr X took to mean he was dismissed. Manager Y says he meant for Mr X to go home for the day. It is the Authority’s view that Mr X’s interpretation of Manager Y’s comment was within the context of a fixed-term employment relationship and” - are you asleep yet? Yes? Me too.
BUT THE LOGO HAS SUCH PIZZAZZ
However every so often there would be a beautiful juxtaposition where something entirely unsuitable to the dry language of government had happened, yet had to be presented in this language, and thus every so often you got wonderful phrases like this:
‘Manager Y alleges that when he spoke with Ms X on April 3, she called him a c**t.
Ms X acknowledged that while she did call Manager Y a c***t, it was only because she believed he was one.’
After all, what better reason is there?
A funeral goes slightly, hilariously, awry
This is an old story so apologies if some of you have heard it, but a brilliant and hilarious (yet completely inappropriate) thing happened at my Grandad’s funeral some years ago, and it is worth passing on to those of you who haven’t heard it yet.
When my Grandad passed, the funeral director sat down with Nana and asked her a lot about Grandad’s life, to inform the service and the details of the ceremony. During the conversation it came up that Grandad was a keen gardener, and the funeral director asked Nana what his favourite flowers were.
Now, Grandad wasn’t a flower gardener; Nana did the flowering parts of the garden, and Grandad maintained a massive vegetable patch. So Nana said, “He was really more of a vegetable man,” and the conversation moved on, and Nana didn’t think any more of it.
Until we gathered on the day of the service and filed somberly into the church, only to come face-to-face with the massive wreath of vegetables sitting atop Grandad’s casket. (It is worth noting at this point that Grandad had a wicked sense of humour and would no doubt have found the whole thing hilarious.) There were broccoli and leeks and onions and parsnips and a MASSIVE cauliflower that had no business being there at all.
My cousin and I stifled giggles during the entire first five minutes of the funeral and when I went up to give the reading my biggest concern was that I’d accidentally make eye contact with an inappropriately placed carrot and lose control of myself.
REST IN PEAS.
A fairy godmother appears at the mall
I was at the mall the other day, buying a $15 hoodie, because it was a cold day and I am an idiot who doesn’t look out the window before they get dressed.
As I left the mall, a woman I’d never met fell into step next to me. She was probably around 80, with a ‘very upmarket but slightly dishevelled’ look going on, and had an incredibly posh voice and bright pink lipstick. Not unlike Patsy from Ab Fab in her dotage.
Unexpected Mall Companion: “I don’t want to go outside, darling, it’s so cold. At least you dressed for it.”
Me: “I didn’t, though, really. I’ve just gone and bought this hoodie.”
[UMC inspects the hoodie and displays great surprise that it was from the Warehouse and yet is not completely crap.]
UMC, as we walk together back to the main street: “When you get old, like me, you must always wear bright lipstick. You see these old women without it and they just look so… buggered.”
Me: “Yes… I wouldn’t want to look washed out.”
UMC: “And you must always keep your toenails polished.”
Me: “What if you don’t have very nice toes?” (I don’t have very nice toes.)
UMC gives a snort of derision. “You see some old women with these terrible pinched toes! It’s all those pointed shoes they crammed their feet into in their youth.”
Me: “Yes I always go for comfort and sorry, this is where I cross, I’ve got to go back to work-”
UMC, walking away from me, over her shoulder: “And some women wear those shoes for a man! I would never do anything for a man, darling.”
Fairy godmothers are everywhere, darling.
Bonus story: In Which Everyone Fibs
I had a meeting with a client (a very long while ago, in a previous job, lest my current employers think that this happened on their watch and promptly eject me from the organisation). In the meeting I said, professionally, “Ah yes I’ll send you an email about that” but then instead I promptly returned to the office and forgot entirely about the email. Side note: I am normally much more professional than this but I expect I was hungry or had a meeting and forgot to write a note to myself about the email.
I forgot about the email until two weeks later when I bumped into the client somewhere I wasn’t expecting to see them, and I suddenly remembered the email and said “Ah! Did you get a chance to look over that email?” Hoping, of course, that they would say “I have not, because it never came through,” at which point I planned to look incredibly confused and say “Oh No! I’ll resend it” and then of course I could quickly write the email and send it that afternoon.
However, the client did not say that. They looked very guilty and said “Yes, thank you! Some really good information, so sorry I haven’t had time to reply, it’s been a hectic week and -”
And now we are in a stalemate of fibs and can never email each other again.
—-
I hope if you haven’t been feeling particularly in the mood to smile over the last week, one of those things may have temporarily helped.
He aha te mea nui i te ao?
He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.ata, he tāngata.