I came armed with my Oprah magazine. I was prepared to settle down with an article on forgiveness (one I think I should read twelve or eighteen times). However, this salon is a well-oiled machine and while one person is working on your feet, there’s another working on your hands. So I had nothing free with which to turn pages.
It's a nice salon, though and they do have a big flat screen complete with closed captions. "OK," I thought "that will do." However, what was on TV? Jerry freaking Springer.
Someone – please – seriously – someone tell me what the hell is entertaining about watching people’s lives fall apart. No, I’m serious on this one. What is the attraction here? So this particular episode was on cheaters. Jerry, in typical form, brings the cheating wives or girlfriends or husbands or boyfriends up on stage to confront both the victim of the cheat and the cohort of the cheat. This makes for excellent TV I guess, because (of course) somebody starts throwing punches and expletives while someone else is weeping and the audience is going crazy with delight. I’m not kidding - these people were clapping, smiling and laughing. “Oo-ooo-Wee – id’ent dis high-larious?”
No it’s not.
One particular family almost had me in tears because (you can predict this if you know me) they had the kids on stage. Here they get to watch their mommy and daddy scream at each other about how daddy only ever took mommy to a cheesy Mexican restaurant and mommy doesn’t even like Mexican food and that’s what made her cheat with Mike over there because he took her to a concert and brought her flowers. Daddy accused Mommy of being a “fat ugly whore bitch” ever since they got married. Fortunately the camera did not pan to the children’s’ faces… but at this point I couldn’t watch anymore and turned my attention to the two women who had just walked in to the salon.
Probably not my wisest decision.
I listened while these two middle aged, not particularly attractive nor fit women proceeded to complain about the water temperature, their callous removal process, the fact that they’d just applied sunscreen so for God’s sake skip the arm massage, and finally that the color (that they chose, mind you) was God awful and what was the manicurist thinking? All of these complaints were delivered with a sharp, accusatory manner. As they were berated, the poor ladies who were just trying to do their job, kind of shrank back and became timid and confused. I felt so badly for them, but Woman 1 and 2 didn’t notice in the least.
Woman 1 even continued with her demeaning ways by taking it a step further in suggesting that the manicurist massaging her legs should “just keep working your way up.” Fortunately, while Woman 1 and 2 cackled away at the joke, it was lost to the limited English of the manicurist.
The conversation the two shared with each other was not much better. At first I thought they were talking about their children. It opened with a glorious boast on how beautiful he looked today with the wind in his hair. A mention of how his grandfather and father before him had that kind of pride and that probably that’s where he’d learned to pose as he does. The conversation went on in flowery and loving description but eventually it became obvious that this was about a pet. When the topic finally did turn to their children (I was hoping they wouldn’t have had any) it was, of course, seething with contempt. The two spewed bitter dissertations on candy wrappers that hadn't made the trash can, poor grades and bad attitudes and the fact that "he'd never amount to anything but 'fat' anyway." They dreaded aloud an upcoming trip to Six Flags and giggled together about taking the dogs to Disneyland and “leaving the boys at home where they belong.”
Oh, I don’t know the back story and maybe there’s some way I could find compassion enough not to judge this little excerpt I saw of their lives. Perhaps they have perfectly valid reasons for feeling more love towards a canine than their own child, but I cannot fathom a scenario that could make that possible.
Single Dad Laughing has a great post today about extremists and he touches on his feelings about dogs. If you have a little time, I encourage you to read it. There’s so much there that I agree with, but the dog thing really resonated. I’ll save my rant on that for another day, but let’s just suffice it to say that those who do not have children are forgiven. Completely. However I show no mercy in my judgment on those who prefer their dogs over their children nor do I reserve judgment on Mr. Springer himself. Maybe someday, due to our generation’s current state, there will be support groups like “Adult Children of Reality TV Parents” and “MPPTD” (My Parents Preferred the Dog).
One can only hope.
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