Bless Your (Judging) Heart

               In my current position, I sit on many interview panels for both my facility and peer facilities throughout our region.  Judging others has become my life’s work.  If those readers with whom I attended school can kindly refrain from smirking and just say, “bless his heart” and move on with your day, it would be much appreciated.

                Everyone has skills.  Some skills are awesome, some are not; some used for good, some for evil, but we all have them.  Most times, people use skills learned at work only at work and those learned outside of work only outside of work.  I think we are selling ourselves short by not finding new, creative uses of our skills.  For example, I use Lean processes at home to make my shopping trips as efficient as possible. In preparation for the grocery store, I list the needed items in the order I will come across them in the store, saving myself steps and time.  I am Lean like Toyota, people. 

As much as I try to be a good executive and always make the best hiring decisions, I know there are those who don’t seem equipped to make good choices.  I say this only as I see people making bad choices and I feel as if they simply don’t know the best way.  With this information, I thought I would share some of my expertise and the interesting genesis of this different way of thinking. 

                As you know I began working with the Miss America system when I was in college at MUW.  I began as Assistant Student Director and have since served as a Local Director, State Judge and State Trainer.  When I was still in Mississippi, I attended Miss America Judge’s Training with a multitude of fantastic people with gravity-defying hairdos and exceptional outfits.  To clarify, Miss America is not, I repeat NOT, Miss USA which Donald Trump used to own.  I feel the need to distance this blog and my reputation from anything as gaudy and gold-plated as The Donald. 

                Miss America Judge’s Training teaches you not to compare the contestants to each other.  Instead you compare each contestant to the ideal contestant, whatever it may be for you; speaking ability, critical thinking skills, musical talent, ability to levitate, etc.  This way each contestant is judged according to how well they measure up to the ideal.  This is important.

                For example, if you wanted someone on your trivia team who would help compel you to the winner’s circle, you would choose someone with significant knowledge of useless information, wouldn't you?  However, if you were to compare The Dad to my sister, she would know more than he about trivia, so you’d pick her.  The Dad’s answer to any and all trivia questions are “Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood or Leave me alone!”    My sister would seem to be the best of that particular group, right? 

Let’s look at the facts:  my sister thinks Chevy Chase and Bill Murray look so much alike she can’t remember which one is which, just that she likes neither.  She calls Jack Black, “That ugly, greasy, not funny guy.  What’s his name?  Adam something?”  When describing most movies she says “You know that guy?  The one with the face?  No, not him, the other one.  The one with the hair I don’t like.  You know the one who looks like the other one in that movie that I thought I liked but remembered I didn’t?”  She will not help you win trivia.  By the way, she was talking about Hugh Grant.

You should always pick the best; not just the best of the bunch, because your bunch might be a big ol’ mess.  I’m just saying.   Judge not lest ye be judged are definitely words to live by, however, since you were judged in order to get your job, feel free to judge others from the perspective of selecting a candidate for a job.  I feel sure Jesus is okay with it, in this context.   

I use the Miss America training to help me pick the best candidate.  If I am looking for someone who is skilled at critical thinking, I will choose the person most similar to my ideal critical thinker.  If no one in a group of applicants comes close to the ideal, I simply choose no one and re-advertise for the position.  I would rather be alone than regretful. 

Of course, I realize there are situations where you don’t have the luxury of time, but it doesn’t mean you still can’t look at your options more critically to ensure you are getting the best people on your team.   No one is perfect, except Jesus, but He’s not applying to work at your business.  He should already be there, in your heart.  If He’s not in your heart, we can help you, heathen, but not in that judgy, interviewy, pageanty way.   Bless your heart.

It's about to get real up in here, y'all

                As many of you know, I have been blogging about my Dad living with me for almost two years.  I can’t believe it’s really been that long but it has.  Twenty one months to be exact.  Now, I didn’t really know what to expect when he arrived but I figured it would be blog-worthy, hence the blog; thank you Liz Shellman for planting that seed.

                Now, it has not been an easy transition as regular readers have learned but it also hasn’t been as bad as it could have been.  Granted my Dad is not the easiest person to live with and while I understand that he is still, after 13 years, grieving the loss of my mother, there are personality quirks that he possesses that I get and there are those that continue to confound me week in and week out.

                In full disclosure, I have admitted some of my own quirks like the all-consuming need to have a house that smells ‘pretty’ and feels ‘fancy’; two phrases to which my father likes to roll his eyes ever so sarcastically.  He reminds me of a dramatic teenager.  He reminds me of, well, me when I was in my mid-to-late teens.  My early teens were much more about being loved by all and sundry and I was more obsequious than anything.

                My 15 years in federal healthcare has given me insight into what many veterans of his generation think, feel and expect.  But it wasn’t until recently that I even considered that his life-long anger may have been undiagnosed PTSD.  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is something that you read about, hear about on TV with those returning from war in the now and even the subject of a couple of movies, mostly on Lifetime and usually starring Meredith Baxter-no-longer-Birney-now-a-lesbian. 

                It had never occurred to me that he might have a legitimate reason to be angry and distrustful.  I never really gave much thought to why he is almost agoraphobic and seems scared of the world in general.  I always assumed he was just a chip off the old block as his father was someone who, for the longest time, was my frame of reference for cruel and hateful.  And I never really stopped to even think of why he would be so unhappy; that he truly hated himself, as he admitted me to me one evening.  When I asked him why he hated himself, he seemed confused and asked me, “don’t everybody hate themselves?”  To which I answered, “No, they don’t.  I don’t.  And you shouldn’t”.  What I didn’t say was, I did until I turned 40 and finally decided that I was who I was and if people didn’t like me, I was far too old to care about that.  Jesus understands me and that is all I needed to know.  That Jesus understands my Dad was something that I really put no effort into broaching as a subject.

                I know that some have asked if I feel I make fun of my Dad in my blog and I initially was defensive, stating that I was simply reporting facts, not trying to make fun of him.  When in all honesty, there was an edge to the humor; a need to distance myself from him and who I thought he represented.  For so long I didn’t want to be from where I was from.  I didn’t want to be from a family that was lower-middle to middle-middle class, depending on the job situation.  I didn’t want to have so many relatives who had been to jail, who lived in trailers, which I did and still refer to as pre-fabricated housing because it sounds funny and I can then laugh at ‘those folks’, not realizing I was hurting people who are good people in difficult financial straits.  As if money is any indication of the quality of a person.

                I always wanted to be somebody other than who I was.  I never saw what was so great about me; what was so special.  I never put much thought into whether I was smart or funny or ambitious or loyal or any of those traits that I have come to appreciate.  I was only focused on what I didn’t have, which was money, looks and self-esteem.  Truth be told, I wasn’t aware of self-esteem enough to know I didn’t have any.  Like my father, I thought everyone hated themselves.    Awareness of this destructive mindset came much later upon inward reflection due to the honesty of friends from high school and college.  You know who you are and I love you very, very much.

                Growing up gay (and so far in the closet I was almost homophobic) in a Southern Baptist family in Texas and Mississippi wasn’t the easiest thing to do, to be sure.  But when I told my Dad at the ripe old age of 24, he said he already knew and he didn’t care.  It was not the reaction I expected and for some reason I never really appreciated how hard that must have been for him.  I already wasn’t the son that he expected as his oldest; his namesake (loyal readers already know how close I came to being Terryll Odis Thompson III).  As I’ve previously discussed, I was the plaid koala bear in my family and after a childhood of trying to fit in, I have spent most of my adult life trying to not fit in with the countrier of my relatives, to the point that my nieces and nephews are apparently under the impression that I spent my childhood at boarding school or some other elsewhere and want to show me how to ride a horse or drive a four-wheeler.  When I remind them that I actually knew how to do all of those things, they seem confused as if a member of the royal family had suddenly appeared next to them at the Dollar General, buying generic aspirin and Little Debbie snack cakes.

                June is Gay Pride month, for those of you who don’t know.  And I attended the parade and festival in San Francisco, with some friends.  My surprisingly supportive father asked why I had never attended Pride and I told him, half-jokingly, that in order to attend a Pride event, one would need to be proud.  And until very recently I was most certainly not proud.  I wanted to be gay even less than those members of my family who are still not supportive and those who until this very moment didn’t have confirmation.  I apologize for springing this on you, although to be fair, how surprised could you be?  You’ve met me before.

                From the ages of 12 through 40, I was your typical self-loathing Southern Baptist homosexual the likes of who publish painfully narcissistic, poorly realized coming of age memoirs with prodigious efficiency.  This disclosure also helps explain why I talk and dress ‘like that’.  I won’t go into any memoir-y reflections today (you’ll have to wait for the publication that you know is forthcoming).  Suffice it to say, I had spent so much time thinking about my issues I never really gave any thought to anyone else’s; especially my Dad’s.

                And I realized that as much as I expected him to hate me, he didn’t.  And I never gave him credit for that.  Unfairly, I gloss over the fact that my mother went to her grave devastated and convinced that I was wrong about my orientation.  So desperate for her “sweet, precious boy” to be normal, she tried to find me a girlfriend, in the form of her nurse, as she lay dying in the hospital.  It took me more than 10 years to find it within myself to feel as if I wasn’t a walking disappointment and to actually think I was worth something.   

                 And the whole time my Dad was steadfast in his support, constantly saying he loved me and didn’t care that I was gay.  And for some reason I didn’t care that he didn’t care.  He had his role, written in my teenaged mind, and I refused to allow him to re-write it.  I took all my hurt out on him.  How do you apologize for something like that?

                As much as I expected him to toe the line when he moved in, he didn’t.  He also didn’t try to get on my nerves and has been exceptionally accepting of the changes I have forced upon him.  He eats what I cook, he voluntarily washes dishes and recycles with the fervor of a dyed-in-the-(fair trade)-wool tree hugger.  He even acquiesces to my request for him to wear something other than his house shoes (slippers to my Yankee friends; scuffs to my friends in Lafayette County) to the Wal-Mart when, truth be told, who cares what he wears?  I should just be happy he’s still around.  And I am. 

                What I wouldn’t give for one more minute with my mother.  And I am keenly aware that I have a limited amount of minutes with him as he approaches his 72^nd birthday later this month.  Why can’t I just enjoy what he wants to do?  Why do I have to put so many parameters to our relationship?  I know we aren’t what the other necessarily wanted in a father/son, but we are what we have.  And I am grateful that I got his sense of humor and his generosity.  I am less thankful that I got his temper, short legs and lack of posterior.  On another note, why can’t I just say butt?

                For better or for worse, I am what I am and before someone bursts into song, I will say that although I have sometimes begrudgingly cared for him these last two years, I hope that it still counts as love.  We’ve discussed how God doesn’t have a last nerve and I hope my Dad doesn’t either; if he does, I haven’t found it yet.  Should I one day find his or he mine, we have coping mechanisms in place.  He has Zoloft and rib eye steaks.  I have great friends, thrift stores and the location of said Zoloft and rib eye steaks.  And I don’t really think I need to say anything else.