close encounters of the fishy kind

so today my 3 cuddle monkeys and i took a trip to the aquarium. as we "oohed" and "ahhed" the vast sampling of aquatic life at the abq aquarium, the wheels were spinning in my mind. i looked around me trying to find the perfect victim for my first day of social experimentation. unfortunately for us, most of the "people" there today were actually fish...the human-types were scarce.

then i had a brilliant idea. why not find the head of the aquarium (what do you call the head of an aquarium? the curator? the fish keeper? the chief fish monger? ? ? king triton? ) and ask them about their favorite display, and favorite sea food dish....but finding the grand aquarium overlord (or whatever) proved difficult and tiring for the kids. when we finally did find her, thanks to the noble efforts of a kind security guard, she informed us that her p.r. folks wouldn't let her be interviewed. (royal keepers of sea creatures have p.r. reps? seriously?) when i thanked her and let her know that i would simply interview the security guard instead, she said she had a feeling her p.r. folk wouldn't approve of that either. (?!!!?!?) so i thanked her for her time, and drug my feet, and 3 cranky children towards the exit.

when we were just about there, my youngest had a mini-meltdown, complete with screaming and floor kicking. so i decided we could sit down by the shark display for a rest, and hoped that my youngest would see the sharks and reflect upon his own mortality.

as we sat, i noticed a long haired, sweet faced, middle aged woman sitting to the right of us. she and her cherubic son were admiring the sharks as well. she noticed my failed attempts at soothing my son, and we struck up a conversation about our kids. her son had also turned 2 last november. she seemed well at ease, and happy to be enjoying his company. she marveled that i have 3 children, and wondered how i do it, saying something to the effect that she didn't think she would want to. in the back of my mind though, i judged from her calm demeanor, that she might have a much better time of it than i do most days.

i decided to make it official, and i asked her if i could ask her a few questions for my blog. it was my first time asking someone about this and i may have come across as a bit of a psycho...

"welliwaswonderingifimight.....beabletoaskyouafewquestionsforablogthatiamwritting? hellomyname'sconnie,bytheway.what'syours? **breath**

"leslie" **raised eyebrow**

i explained to leslie the premise of my blog/social experiment, and she readily agreed about society being too caught up in technology. she told me of a relative who actually broke up with her boyfriend via text. "wow" i exclaimed, and we both shook our heads in disapproval.

i asked leslie if i could record our conversation, and she agreed a tad hesitantly. (it occurred to me at that moment that though i do not look particularly freakish, or menacing, it is probably a good idea to always have my kids with me when i do my interviews so i will never seem like a threat to anyone.)

to begin with i asked her how long she had lived in albuquerque. she sat up a bit and explained that she had lived here all her life, 37 years, though her husband is a philladelphia transplant. i have noticed that most new mexico natives have very strong feelings for their land, and so i asked her what she loves about albuquerque. her face softened noticeably around her eyes, and she smiled a bit as she explained how she loves the slower pace of life here. she compared albuquerque to other cities she had been and said that the pace, and the fact that there are a mild four seasons here make it a beautiful place to be. she commented with a chuckle that there are not many natural disasters to worry about here, and after a slight pause summed it all up by saying simply " you know, it's home to me."

i asked her how she spends her days, and she told me that she is a stay-at-home-mom now, which was a tough transition after being a business woman for many years. in my mind i could picture her behind a desk, or speaking in a board room full of underlings, and i understood why she had so much poise, and such good articulation.
she shared that she never thought she would have any children, and had always thought she would be "just a business woman" for the rest of her life. ( after our conversation i dwelt on that phrase a bit. many women who are stay-at-home-moms
refer to themselves as 'just a mom" and feel pressure from society to aspire to something else. yet she said that she thought she would always be "just a business woman"...as if she has achieved something higher now. i have always thought of being a mother as sort of the epitome of womanhood, and i have often wondered if other women secretly did too, maybe this is a bit of evidence to support that, no? maybe not.)

when i asked her whether there was anything she didn't anticipate about motherhood, she exclaimed with a smile "everything! i didn't anticipate any part of it. i was so into the pregnancy and the labor, that i didn't give a second thought as to what i was going to do once he was here."

i nodded in empathy. (does anyone really ever anticipate the fantastic, beautiful, frustrating ups and downs of motherhood?)
she explained how everything has been a challenge from the day he was born. her mother had passed away in 1995, and most of her female peers are still in the workforce. she feels that she has not had the valuable resources to draw upon that many mothers have. in spite of all the problems, though, she expressed gratitude for her son and for the unconditional love that he shows her.

for my final question i asked her if she would share something unique about herself. she chuckled and said "oh gosh that's the hard part. i'm trying to find myself now as a mother and a wife. i've always considered myself a good problem-solver, but motherhood is one i haven't been able to solve." she looked thoughtful for a moment and conceded that she may never be able to do that. then she said "the sooner i accept that, the better i'm going to be." (sage advice for all us mothers who guilt ourselves into feeling like we need to have impossibly perfect children)

i thanked her for her time, and asked her if i could get a photo of her for the blog. she thought not, so i asked her what her favorite exhibit at the aquarium is. she said the jelly fish, so i told her i would use a picture of them on my blog instead. she agreed to the idea and said likes them because they look like beautiful aliens. i walked away thinking about motherhood, and feeling thankful that the interview with the captain of the fishmongers didn't work out.

strangers on a bus

so "fur eels" (say it fast) (um, ok... faster) (there, you got it.) is my little blog about life, and the complexities of our human condition. before i go on, though, i must confess that it was always my dream to start a band and name us the "fur eels"... would have been the coolest indie rock band ever... never came to fruition, though...and oh wait! it's already been done..( www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWpAMy1gck ) ..(everytime i have an original idea, it's already been done)..so i'm using the name of a band, which is not my own dream-band, for the name of my new pet blog.

**ahem** back to the matter at hand...my point that i have been thinking about lately is that there are 6 billion people on this sphere, and of that 6 billion, how many people can we honestly say we know much about? we live in our hermetically sealed technology bubbles...sometimes lifting our eyes from our iphones long enough to catch a neighbor's eye.... but generally we are just so absorbed in our texting/gaming/chatting/tv watching/online shopping (guilty)/web surfing. we don't even notice as that quality, (which i shall here after refer to as the "human element") sneaks quietly away from us. how has technology so stealthily begun to replace human voice/touch/thought/kindness/feeling?

but, to be fair, technology isn't the only culprit, i suppose....too often we let our lives lead us along, rather than us leading our lives...we let ourselves get caught up in work, church, school, family, (all worthy pursuits of course) to the extent that we are drained of energy and desire to reach out to others around us. we work with someone for 10 years without knowing anything personal about their lives. we see the same tellers at the gas station every monday, but we don't think to ask their names. we live next door to a new family for months but never introduce ourselves, or welcome them to the neighborhood.

ok that was all kinda dry.....lets get this going here....

so here's my big deal:

everybody has a story. an african proverb says: we were given two ears and only one mouth for a reason; we need to listen twice as much as we speak. so why not go out and listen to peoples' stories, learn from them, laugh with them, cry with them share some real human emotion. some of the best conversations i have ever had in my life were with complete (often scary looking) strangers on a bus or train. i can still recall bits of advice from a suspiciously heroin addicted-looking chick on a bus from provo, utah to salt lake city 12 years ago. and from years before that, i remember the anger burning in a serbian man's eyes as he detailed for me the troubles he had suffered because of "foreigners such as yourself". (imagine a gnarled finger being jabbed in my face as that was said)

here's my plan:

i am going to try and find out something new about a person each day this year and blog about it right here. i will go out of my way to thank/compliment/communicate with people that cross my path each day. i will introduce myself to my neighbors. i will find out more about my family....i will listen and learn something interesting from the people around me, and i will share it here. as i recall past encounters with interesting people i have met i will share them here as well.

just to make it more interesting:

i will take suggestions from all of you on the type of people i should meet and talk to for the week, and suggestions for questions specifically for that person. for example: talk to the garbage man and find out what his favorite foods are. or talk to your neighbor and find out what her greatest accomplishment was. deal is though, that you all should try and do the same, and share here what you have learned. rule is that we have to do it face to face. the very very rare exception is a phone call only if it is impossible to reach the other person face to face. but too many phone calls would really defeat the purpose of getting in touch with the real human element.

i hope this may help us all grin at times, laugh out loud, scratch our heads, look inward, reach outward, and think deeply too. i think it is a very good day indeed when i do most of those things.

*disclaimer: i am not fond of capitialization (OVERRATED) (see what i mean?) and sometimes i don't have time for proper punctuation.....and typos will happen...but we can still be friends, right? oh and sometimes my thoughts may come out unclear...and garbled...deal with it! (please)