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Blog Entry 76 of 182 Bad Mom
I call myself Bad Mom because at the time I came up with it, I was learning about the assumptions we put behind our words. I was following the pattern of not believing that my kids are okay, and speaking to them from that basis. I changed that, and it made a big difference. I am from Utah and my people are still living there. My husband was in the Air Force and we rattled around until we saw Colorado, and we stuck.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~Huh

Presumed Ill Intent
Contributed by: Lisa Arata   on 6/1/2008

A few years ago, my family and I rented a vacation cottage in Wales. Then we explored up and down the coast.

There was a seaside town we visited, and I can't remember the name. Falmouth or some such. The whole town consisted of two or three roads running along a steep oceanside. We ate pasties for the first time and learned that the liver kind aren't very yummy, even with steak sauce. And we learned that pasties, pronounced to rhyme with "tasty" is the same thing in Britain as it is in America--things strippers wear on their boobs. But the meat pies, pasties, are pronounced to rhyme with "costly."

Anyhow, my kids were smaller then. We shopped at a little five and dime store. I bought my boy a little plastic sword, packaged in a bubble on a cardboard backing. We took the sword out of the package and let him carry it and take swipes at the bushes. I carried the packaging with me, intending to throw it in a trash can.

The thing is, I couldn't see any trash cans.

We walked down a sidewalk lined with short segments of stone walls, apparently meant to keep the wind out of the little townhouses that stood along the sidewalk.

In one of the little stone recesses there was a decent-sized trash can, so I stashed the packaging in it, relieved to have found a trash can.

What I didn't notice very closely was that the little stone-walled recessed area was actually someone's little area around their doorway. I had carelessly stepped into someones's front entry yard and used the trash can of what turned out to be a little old lady's house. She saw me using her trash can and she stepped out of the house, shouting at me, "What do you think you're doing? You can't use my rubbish bin like that!"

She shook with anger at me. I was shocked and I felt bad. I said "sorry, would you like me to get it back out?" I really wanted to go grab the thing back and run away, but I didn't want to scare her. She said, in a more relaxed tone, "Yes, I'd like you to take it back out." So I took it. I could tell she was not really a mean person. I asked her if there was a public trash bin I could use, and she said no there wasn't.

I apologized again and we left. I took the cardboard and plastic to the car with me and we got rid of it somewhere.

That time has really stuck with me all these years later. Why? Because I just know that to her mind, I was this rude person who didn't mind stepping onto people's yards and using their trash cans. She assumed that I had acted uncaringly, out of ill will. I probably reinforced her bad impression of Americans. She probably had to pay her trash pickup bill by the bagful and I'd have caused her a problem by leaving it there.

How could I have explained that I hadn't been very aware of anything but the trash can and that I wasn't the kind of person who'd trespass and dump? How could I have told her that I come from a place where there are trash cans everywhere and...you just...use 'em? I hope I showed some decency in apologizing, but it just hurts me that a mistake I made could be taken like I MEANT to be rude and uncaring.

I didn't stash the trash and run away. When confronted I didn't tell her where to stick it, nor did I throw the cardboard and plastic in the air and let the wind blow it away. Nor did I flip her the bird and tell her to get over it.

I've nev


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Lisa Arata

Greeley , CO

Lisa Arata has posted 182 blog entries and 282 comments since joining on 4/18/2007. Lisa Arata 's average blog rating is 4.74.
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