Context Matters...

It's been really hot here the past few days. I'd say unseasonably hot, or unusually hot, but it's not really all that unusual anymore. We get a few stretches like this every year now. The fact that it took until August to reach 100 is nice instead of unexpected. But it's been hot.

Sunday was high 90s, enough that I had to bail on a soccer match because I get ill in the heat now. Thank you, menopause, who knew estrogen protected you from heat sickness? Yesterday was 100, today will be 100. Overnight lows have been mid to high 60s so no real relief. Hot.

So yesterday morning I was outside watering our grass and flowers to try and make sure we didn't lose anything in the heat. We had a busted sprinkler head so hand watering for that area. (Thank you, Brent, for getting it repaired so quickly!) After I finished up I was standing in our side yard wrapping up the hose. Now our neighbors put in a row of bushes when they first moved in to sort of mark their yard off from ours. We try to not take it personally...

Kidding. We totally take it personally.

But they form a nice little barrier screen from being able to see right into each other's front and side yards. So while I'm out there wrapping up the hose I hear Jerry talking to his grandson.

"Oh look there's the moon."

"In LA we see the moon in the morning and at night all the time." says the very nonplussed and oh so cosmopolitan five year old.

Jerry then starts talking about different times of day the moon rises and sets and the cycles. Grandson lets him know that his dad has told him all of that too. Which I am thinking how sweet it is that Jerry shared it with his son and now he is sharing it with his own son and.... Five year old speaks again...

"Why do you smell your own pee?"

And, friends, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. I mean talk about Totally Random But...

And then I thought thank goodness I know that Jerry and Margaret have a dog and that Jerry and grandson must be out taking Cooper for his morning walk.

Then Jerry starts explaining how dogs can smell a lot of things in their own pee and other dog's pee and that Cooper was probably just checking to make sure the message he wanted to leave was the right one. Grandson is skeptical but listening.

Context matters. I mean it really does. If I hadn't known about the dog, or heard the rest of the conversation (after a healthy pause on Jerry's part as he gathered his ideas) I would have really wondered about my neighbors. Why do you smell your own pee? That's a pretty solid question. Not one I would ever hope to have reason to ask, but if it has to be asked I guess it has to be asked.

I love out of context conversations. The little snippets you hear out in public that probably do not mean at all what it sounds like they mean. It makes the trip to the grocery store a lot more interesting when you get a juicy bit of a one liner like "Well he shouldn't have put the shoes there if he didn't want that to happen." Which shoes? Where did he put them? What happened? I mean the choices are endless. Is this a tragedy or a comedy? Is this a sexy story or a warning for the future? Or both?

And of course there are the one sided phone conversations. I've been know to fill in the other side in low volume talking to entertain the person I'm with. Or myself. Mostly myself. Though Brent will give me a good natured grin, or eye roll as warranted.

But because I cannot hear the other person I can change the context of what the person we can hear is saying. Or at least I assume I'm changing it. Who knows maybe the person they are talking to is also trying to figure out where to hide the body.

Now I could wind this blog around and comment on how knowing who JK Rowling is, or Neil Gaiman is how is changes the context around their art. How when you read it, or watch the adaptation of it now, knowing more about the person who wrote it you are left with a different interpretation of the piece.

Or I could talk about how knowing what you know it's hard to see Ghislaine Maxwell getting moved to a nicer prison and getting granted work release is anything other than a payoff for her silence, or lies, take your pick.

Or I could talk about our entire governmental system in the United States and the moves that are being made and how that all serves to destroy our democracy and replace it with a Christian Nationalist wet dream of a system.

Or I could just ask, do you think they smell their own pee?

It's totally out of context. But it amuses me to think of any of them being asked that in a press conference so I'm going with it. What message do they think they are sending to others with what they are pissing putting out. And are they pleased with it? I think they are. But I also think we need things that make us feel a little better about the world. Maybe give ourselves a moment of comic relief in the middle of the shitstorm we are living. Something that gives us the strength to keep fighting against it all without wearing ourselves out. Laughter does that for me.

So next time you see Stephen Miller giving an interview where he's scream speaking about how terrible the world is and how the only way to save it is to be the absolute worst version of a human you can be, imagine the newscaster getting a very serious, concern face going and saying...

Why do you smell your own pee?

OH! Maybe that's why JK is so weird about trans women in bathrooms. She needs as much privacy as she can create because even she must know on some level that what she's doing is really weird and off putting for most everyone else.

Context matters. But out of context can be its own game too.