TJ Hirst

Social (synonyms: companionable, convivial, gregarious, sociable) The central meaning of these adjectives is inclined to, marked by, or passed in friendly companionship with others.

My husband is an introvert, and I am an extrovert. My children line up in different ways around us. My teenage daughter, who is more like her dad, and I have a new opportunity to interact in social settings with her beyond our family, and it causes me to ask myself about sociality and personality. A friend confessed that she and her husband are both introverts, which surprised me because she initiates conversations and keeps them going with friends and strangers alike. But she said they worked really hard at being extroverts.

Neither being an introvert nor an extrovert is preferable. But we all need to interact in the communities we circulate. Social skills are the way we do that successfully.

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My husband and I were reading in the evening. I would occasionally look up from my book and start an impromptu conversation with him over the day’s happenings. After one explanation of an exchange with someone that day, I wondered out loud over the meaning of the words in that conversation.

I looked over at him and realized he was just reading. Feeling a little silly just talking to myself, I stopped. He is probably uninterested, I thought. But still, I went searching for the reason why.

“Women talk about feelings,” I said. “Don’t men do that?”

“We do,” he said. “We just don’t give the play-by-play, blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute account.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Analyzing is a woman thing,” he said.

A few minutes elapsed. I looked up from my book, again, and on a different topic I randomly said, “Why does my body’s full sensor not register until an hour after I’ve overeaten?”

“I don’t know why,” he said.

Realizing I was setting myself up as an example of what he had just concluded, I said, “There I go analyzing something again. I didn’t mean you had to answer my question.”

“Why don’t you just say rwhy instead of why so I know you mean a rhetorical why?” he said.

In a fitting end to the school year, we sent our children off to the bus stop
only to have one daughter come running back and yelling,

“My flip flop fell down the drain. I was just walking and it fell.”

Flip

It just fell, right off her foot, through the storm drain grate and down eight feet.

Flop

After school, they fished it out.

I spotted a silly spectacle on the corner of an intersection here in Brainerd, MN. A piggy-bank pink ox with a Minnesota state quarter descending into its back stands in front of the Brainerd Savings and Loan Association.

More than 20 oxen in colors and patterns beyond the blue of Paul Bunyan’s companion ox, Babe, have appeared to adorn the lawns and fronts of businesses with public art throughout our area.

The Oxtrot, “An Oxpedition of Art in the Lakes Area,” is a cooperative partnership between our local arts organization, the Crossing Arts Alliance, the Brainerd Lakes Chamber and artist, Josh Porter, of Avalon Studios, who designed the original sculpture based on Babe statues in the Brainerd Lakes area.

This particular ox—the first ox I saw—surprised me with his stare at the stoplight. His clever design lightheartedly acknowledges the business it represents while echoing some of the historical and mythical heritage of Minnesota in this sesquicentennial year of statehood. He is known as “Babe’s Bank is Best,” and the finish artist for this statue is Josh Johnson.

My impression is that they look quite a bit like over-sized lawn ornaments with the same kitschy connotations. However, they do create a stir of creativity and fun for area residents and tourists. My children are already counting the ones they’ve seen and creating plans to see them all. Even without knowing about the “Find Babe” campaign or reading Babe’s blog, they said, “it will be a treasure hunt for us to see how many we can find.”

A guest repost from my sister-in-law, originally appearing on our family website

Do you think that Disney has ever realized that their slogan may not be all that appealing to kids?

We are going to Disneyland. My son came to me with a concerned looked on his face and said, “I’m not sure if I want to go to Disneyland.”

The night before, at around 3 a. m., he came to our room and said he had a bad dream. After some sympathy from Dad, he went back to bed. Then, he came back up and said he just couldn’t sleep. He did finally go to sleep. I remember thinking after he left that we should tell him to think about how fun Disney would be.

Well that was just the problem.

So when he said in the morning that he wasn’t sure he wanted to go, I responded with a huge question-mark look on my face, “Well, why don’t you want to go to Disneyland?”

“Because that’s where all our dreams come true!!”

And then the light bulb went on in my head. “Oh, that’s right, you had a bad dream last night?”

“Yea, and in Disneyland, all my dreams will come true!”

Come to find out the dream had been about a dragon that ate him. I wouldn’t want that dream to come true either!

We had a little chat about what “The Place where DREAMS come TRUE.” means. So maybe there are kids out there that don’t really want to go to Disneyland, after all. They might think they will not live through it, let alone, Happily Ever After!