JJ Litke

the neural pathways less traveled

7 Tips For Sharing COVID—And The Holidays—With Your Family

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So you’ve been social distancing and wearing a mask. Great! And now you want to cash in your good karma points on visiting extended family, stuffing yourself insensible, then zoning out by the TV. And surely coronavirus will honor those karma points, right? It pays attention and thinks in its tiny little ‘rona brain, “Hey, that guy’s been good, I’ll give him a pass and not spray out of his mouth into his Grammy’s face when he hugs her. Nah, that’s not how I roll.”

You owe it to your Grammy to go. The best thing you can give her is the gift of you, even if it comes with a side of antibiotic cocktails, lung fluid, and blood clots. You don’t have to risk her life, you could just call her more often and listen to stories about her walking fart problems. But you’re so bored with staying home, and she’s had a good run. A gem of a guy like you deserves some fun!

So here we go, tips for the COVID holiday season.

  1. Wear a mask. Masks reduce the viral load you’re exposed to, which affects how ill you become. Of course, you won’t wear the mask while you’re eating. Even though your brother Jerry talks with his mouth full, so he’ll be spitting flecks of turkey gravy and mashed potatoes at everyone. And you won’t wear a mask while hugging Grammy. Her memory and eyesight are failing like Kanye’s presidential run, and she won’t recognize you with a mask. You know what, forget the mask. It’s not going to make much difference for the five to six minutes you’d actually have it properly covering that face penis you call a nose anyway. 
  2. Wash your hands. This one is important. Grammy is always after you to wash your hands, right? Even though she just wipes her hands on a kitchen towel after handling raw meat, but you know, do as she says, not as she does. Handwashing will make a difference in how many germs are spread around during that maskless, gravy-and-potato-spittled dinner. Especially after Uncle Chester has a few drinks and keeps grabbing your arm to make you sit and listen to stories about his basic training days and pranks involving toothbrushes and rectums. Or when Grandpa starts up with the latest conspiracy theory about 5G-induced STDs, and cousin June helps out by escalating it into a screaming match. Family gatherings are fun, huh?
  3. Use hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer should be at least 60% alcohol. If you run out, try sneaking some vodka from Uncle Chester’s glass that he’s pretending is water. Bonus game, refill it with water and see if he notices (spoiler: he won’t, he’s drunk on hand sanitizer).
  4. Social distancing. Yeah, you already broke that one just by showing up. Next.
  5. Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash. Have the kids do this as well. Make them stop wiping boogers on each other, or on Uncle Chester after he passes out on the couch. In fact, make sure you keep the kids away from Uncle Chester. His yell-sneezes that sound like an exorcism in progress can set off every car alarm in the driveway. Bound to be a few germs in there, too.
  6. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces. Give the kids some Clorox wipes and make up a new game: how many surfaces can you wipe down every hour? The winner gets a peppermint that Grammy dug out of her purse with just a little bit of lint stuck to it. Be sure to warn the kids not to get bleach in their eyes or up their noses. Or on the food. Or each other. Actually, this might be a bad idea. Just get some of Chester’s vodka and spritz it around every hour or so. Be sure to get Grandpa’s nether regions. He’s having a little trouble holding things in, if you know what I mean.
  7. Take vitamin D. And zinc. And some C for good measure. If you weren’t sick before, odds are good you just got the new version of the gift that keeps on giving. So hunker down and brace yourself, you’re in for a rough few weeks. Call your Grammy one last time. Happy holidays!

We suck at relationships

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I have a fascination with Confucianism. That shows in my writing, though you wouldn’t notice if you aren’t familiar with it yourself. And most people aren’t.

I should clarify that Confucianism is non-theistic. Just so you know, I’m not peddling religion here. It’s an ethical system, primarily concerned with correct behavior, and even more primarily with behavior toward other people. This where that relationships thing comes in. According to Confucianism, there are five basic relationships, which I will list without strict regard for political correctness:

  • Ruler to subject
  • Parent to child
  • Husband to wife
  • Elder sibling to younger sibling
  • Friend to friend

Within these relationships, the person in seniority has a moral obligation to behave with benevolence toward their juniors. That means looking out for their well being and generally taking care of them. The person in the junior position should treat their seniors with respect. As any given person could be in multiple of these relationships at the same time, they would adjust their behavior and expectations toward others depending on those relationships.

A great example of how this thought process works is two brothers with two apples, one large and one small. The elder brother offers the younger brother the large apple because he is still growing. But the younger brother offers the elder brother the larger apple because he is bigger. Aw!

That’s a lovely philosophy, isn’t it? Just a couple of problems, though. While Confucianism is fairly clear that one should know one’s place and stick to it (and that’s a pretty huge problem on its own), it’s a lot less clear about what to do when the other person in the relationship isn’t following the philosophy. But in general I think we can agree that a lot of us really suck at following these general guidelines, at least on a regular basis (certainly the Tea Party doesn’t ascribe to the concept of caring for others). It’s still a good goal, and a good way to think of how we should be acting toward others who depend on us.

Circling back to my writing (you knew I’d do that, didn’t you), all of those relationships are represented in my books. I actually didn’t consciously plan it that way, it just made sense because I deal with a lot of family issues and relationships. Just like in real life, my characters don’t always behave as they should. Yet even the most selfish of my fictional family still see their obligation to look out for their people. They would never deny food or shelter to those who depend on them. If I did write them that way, my story would be foolishly unbelievable.

Funny how real life can be more twisted and absurd than fiction.

The holidays approach, plan accordingly

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Ah, the winter holidays! Halloween gives us a nice prelude to the looming specter that is Thanksgiving and [December holiday of your choice]. And what makes these festive times so very unnerving?

Family. Those people you’ve avoided all year until now.

Okay, maybe it’s not really that bad. Somewhere in the world, there are happy families who all love and cherish one another and are always genuinely happy to be together. And the rest of us hate those guys. For most people, it’s not really one extreme or the other, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You want to see your family, but you’re really nervous about putting on a good front and appearing successful next to your overachieving cousin (that smug bastard). Or you know you’re going to be forced to deal with that jerk uncle who just can’t shut up about his political views. Maybe it’s that you just don’t get to see them often enough and you’re not sure how to get in enough time, which likely means you’re going to spread yourself thin and be exhausted by the end. Whatever your particular flavor of drama, the holidays bring us all the gift of stress.

One of the best ways to mitigate some of that stress is to manage your expectations. Don’t engage in magical thinking about how you’re going to finally get every detail right, or tell off Jerk Uncle this time, or finally earn Smug Bastard Cousin’s respect. It ain’t gonna happen. Accept it. Embrace it. It’s okay. Seriously, it is. You don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to be right (and that’s a topic that deserves an entire post on its own–hell, an entire blog). If you routinely feel disappointed at the end of the holidays, start managing those too-high expectations now.

Family isn’t so bad. Except when they are. But they’re every bit as human, and amazing, and flawed as you. If you can find a way to accept that, you’ll all be a lot happier. Especially after the holidays are over.

Family “support”

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My daughter earned her bachelor’s  degree a couple of years ago. She works in a research position at a hospital, but she has decided that’s not enough. So she’s started taking post-bacc classes with the intent to go to medical school.

This is a text message exchange we had a few weeks ago:

Her: Enrolled in cellular biology!

Me: Yay, I guess!

Her: I’m gonna be a doctor BE ENCOURAGING

Three things here. One, she recognized my snarky sarcasm (to someone who doesn’t know me, my comment might not sound as bad as it actually was). Two, she called me out for my complete lack of support. And three, my daughter has ambitions of becoming A DOCTOR. Which is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.

That last bit is significant. When she talks about medical school, it’s scary to me. It’s big, and challenging, and that makes it frightening. I don’t want her to fail. So what do I do? I discourage her. I pointed out the cost, and the time involved, and the required level of commitment. As if she was going to say, oh, gee, Mom, medical school is expensive? I didn’t think of that because it’s such a well-kept secret! Good thing you clued me in!

As I point it out now, it sounds completely obvious and freaking stupid. But we do this to our families and friends all the time. We’re afraid for them, so we try to hold them back to something safer. Don’t start your own business, it might lose money. Don’t move to a new place, you might not like it. Don’t reach too high, you might fall. And that’s it right there. We don’t want them to fall or to fail, so we attempt to steer them to something safe and easy. We sabotage the people we love most in an effort to protect them. It’s sort of horrible when you realize you’re doing it, or that someone else is doing it to you.

So what to do about it: Well, when you’re the one guilty of it, you can try to realize that your fear is the problem, not their ambition. Maybe they won’t fail. Maybe they will, but they’ll learn something else and still make some gain from it. If you believe your concern is based on genuine issues of not being prepared for the step they want to take, help them find the resources they need. (In the example above, if I thought she seriously didn’t know the cost, I could have tried looking at scholarship-related info and sent that to her.)

If someone is doing this to you, recognize their reaction as fear rather than true lack of faith. (And if it’s true lack of faith, that’s a different problem, and you probably need to quit trying to get support from this person.) Gather the resources you need to achieve your goal, and keep moving toward it.

And when all that falls apart and your family sucks at supporting you anyway, try to realize that this is just how families are.

My favorite insult

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“I once read an Isaac Asimov novel where two parallel universes created energy by trading a tungsten particle back and forth between them, and then polygons started having sex. And that still made more sense than your book!”

It took a moment to get my brain back in gear and respond. “Wow. That was AWESOME! Hold on, I have to write that down.”

I know my daughter well enough that I wasn’t at all surprised when she didn’t appreciate the synopsis of my book. But the breathtaking majesty of the insult she hurled at me was stunning. She clearly put some planning into it. My first reaction was mixed shock and pride that she’d read The Gods Themselves. Followed by a misplaced sense of flattery at being compared to Asimov, even in this extremely negative context.

I’m sure she’s trying to help by thickening up my skin a little. This is how we show our love and support.

Ah, family. The killers of dreams.

That’s a lot of bull

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Literally.

brangus bull
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Brangus bull. He resides on my father-in-law’s ranch, southeast of Austin. Brangus cattle are a cross between Brahman and Angus, gaining superior characteristics of both: they’re hardy, heat-tolerant, and tasty.

My father-in-law loves me because I drive a pickup, and I can talk cattle. I might have lost a few points mixing up some of the Angus and Brangus. But I did properly identify the Herefords. As long as we avoid politics and just stick to talking about the ranch, everything is great. Knowing your safe topics and staying there makes getting along a lot easier.