My father was deaf in his left ear, probably due to military artillery when he served in the army. He liked to call it his “Buy My! Give Me! Get Me! Ear” because he slept on the right side of my mother. My mother said my father’s real hearing problem was that he was hard of listening. He listened when it was interesting to him; otherwise he ignored the chatter. Do you know people like that? They just don’t listen, or they listen selectively. Worse these days is distracted listening. You know what I mean: People who are multi-tasking or texting and scrolling
Read more →Do women apologize too much? According to several articles including one recently in The New York Times by Sloane Crosley (June 23, 2015), women say “I’m sorry” more than they need to and far more than men do. Excuse me for asking (whoops!), but why is that? One study reports that “men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” So men can be boorish where women are polite to the point of being overly apologetic. I agree that many of us apologize too often for reasons that don’t really matter. As in “I’m sorry to bother you.”
Read more →Recently I received three invitations to “pop-up” events. All were taking place within a few days after the invitation arrived in my inbox. I explained to the senders that my schedule was booked and I wish I’d been given more notice. Two replied: “But these are pop-up events.” I don’t understand why pop-up events are so popular. There are countless pop-up restaurants, stores, parties and beauty bars being promoted from cities to resorts. The problem is you never seem to have enough notice to plan to attend them. Many of us have pretty full schedules. Popping into a pop-up isn’t always feasible. I’m a
Read more →