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Yay for Me and the Hell with You! - Episode 4

This weekend has been pretty amazing! Spending time with the hubs, who is only here on the weekends, is always wonderful. I hope he realizes just how much I truly love and cherish him and spending time with him. We didn't do a whole lot for most of the weekend, just shopping and watching some Schitt's Creek. However, we did attend, along with another couple, Brian and Nathan, a wine and whiskey event locally here in town. It was quite impressive, with lots of vendors giving samples of various wines and spirits - whiskeys, scotches, gin, tequila - and some good food to go along with it, plus a live band who was awesome! We hung out with some friends and coworkers and sampled quite a bit. Steve and I both tend to prefer the sweeter wines, but we both enjoyed some of the chardonnays and the sauvignon blancs. Some of the spirits were good too, although some we didn't really enjoy, but we were both glad to have had the opportunity to try them. I had planned to try many more than what I did, but hey, you can only drink so much, am I right? I had quite the buzz when we headed out from the event. I was disappointed that I didn't try the 21 Seeds tequila, but I'm sure someday I'll give it a try. I do work at a wine and spirits store, after all! The 21 Seeds tequila (not sponsored) comes in a couple of different flavors and varieties. The one I wanted to try is jalapeno cucumber. I'm not too sure about that, but hey, that's why I wanted to try it, just to see what it's like. But anyway, I'm glad Steve had a good time, he wasn't sure about going, but I think he enjoyed himself once we were there, and he did leave today (Sunday) with a smile on his face.

Before getting into the episode, I'd like to talk for a moment about my chickens. How many people listening have a backyard flock of chickens? Rarely do all of my girls lay an egg every day, but today I found one from each of them. However, it appears one of the Golden Comet hens needs some ink in her printer! One of the eggs was almost white rather than the traditional brown that the Comets lay. The eggs do tend to vary in intensity of brownness, but compared to the single Silver-Laced Wyandotte hen I have, who tends to lay eggs I'd describe as a rosy cream color, they usually tend to be well-browned. However, the almost white egg today looks almost like a white-washed brown, if that makes sense. Kind of like a very light brown off-white, in that at first glance it appears white, but if you look at it more closely, you can see it's not actually white. Which makes me wonder about something. I give eggs to the family across the street from me, and the wife/mom of the family can't eat white eggs. So is this anomalous egg still considered brown, even though it would almost glow in the dark? It's not the first time this has happened, and I have given her egg cartons that contain one of these mystery eggs in the past, and she's never mentioned not being able to eat it, so...I would ascertain that the egg is, in fact, considered brown even though it looks white. One day I'd like to expand my flock so I can get some hens that lay blue and green eggs. Oh, and one day I'd really like to get some marans, especially the French Black Copper Marans, that lay the darkest brown eggs of any chicken. I love looking at pictures online of egg baskets with a wide range of colors and shades in them!

Ok, so enough about chickens. In this week's episode, I plan to discuss a concept known to the hubs and myself as "Yay for me and the hell with you". It's a phenonemon that we've noticed from various people we encounter and was coined, at least for us, by a friend named Jerry to describe a person's sense of entitlement when it comes to doing something that is great for them with no concern about what it does for or to someone else. So first let's examine this concept and where it comes from. It's no surprise that it comes from a very selfish ideation. I'm going to use myself as an example in this, simply because it'll be far easier saying "me, myself, and I" rather than "the person, that person, those people". And also because I know for a fact I suffer from the "Yay for me and the hell with you" syndrome as well. I believe we all do to a degree, but it's how often it comes out, and the context in which it comes out, that is the true tell of when it's a common and fundamental flaw rather than just a sometime flaw.

The first example I'll use of "Yay for me and the hell with you" is in traffic. Let's say I'm at an intersection and wanting to get onto Highway 49. Traffic is streaming passed me, but I'm impatient, so when I see a small gap, I charge out into that gap in front of oncoming traffic. Now, common sense says that I should speed up so as not to inconvenience the people that are now behind me, but quite often my "Yay for me and the hell with you" attitude will make me SLOW DOWN instead. What fucks do I give that the people behind me have to slam on their brakes and that I may almost cause an accident? I'm out in traffic now, going at the pace I want, so who cares what the other people around me want, or even have to do to avoid an accident? That's on them, I'm far more important and my convenience is all that matters. Do I care that the person behind me may be a mother of 2 with one of her children in the car with her and that she's silently screaming because I put her life and the life of her child in danger? Of course not! Yay for me and the hell with her! I'm cruising along now, and she's cruising along behind me, and we're going to get to our destination, eventually, so what does it matter? Right?

For a few other examples, let's say I have a dog that I keep chained up outside all the time. He howls and barks a lot because he wants to be with me and my family, but I pay him no mind and the neighbors get no sleep. Do I care? No, because I have the "Yay for me and the hell with you" attitude. This same attitude is what drives me to go through the 10 items or less line at the store with 23 items. It's what compels me to drive around with a huge speaker in my trunk that rattles the windows of cars in a 30 foot radius around me, but yay for me, right, because I'm happy and you're having to listen to a very fucked up version of the music I like. It's what causes me to go ahead and turn left through an intersection after the green arrow has already changed to red, because fuck it, I've been in that turning lane for 90 seconds and I'm not waiting a second longer, even though the oncoming traffic that I'm cutting in front of now has a green light. Yay for me and the hell with you!

So what, exactly, causes the "Yay for me and the hell with you" attitude? As I said earlier, all of us have this attitude to a certain degree. But many of us are able to override that impulse most of the time. We open the door for a stranger and let them go ahead of us. We merge into traffic and speed up so the traffic flow won't suffer because of our selfishness. We pick up the book the overloaded student dropped instead of shrugging and walking away. We take in the friend who just became homeless instead of letting him sleep in his car, or worse, in the park, instead of shaming him and muttering about how he should have taken better care of his finances, or his relationship, or whatever it was that lead to his not having a place to stay. We feed the stray cat that someone obviously dumped off in the neighborhood and either find it a home, take it to the shelter, or give it a home ourselves. We don't kick those who are down. We don't spit on the stranger asking for money. So what happened to the people who do live by the "Yay for me and the hell with you" rule? Is something missing in their brains that would have prevented them from being complete pricks? Do they just have a huge sense of entitlement, that only they matter and no one else does? And what happened for them to have this sense of entitlement? The world may never know what happened to cause it, but this entitled way of life is followed by so many. One merely has to look at the previous president to see a huge sense of entitlement. Pushing world leaders out of his way, demanding he remain president when voted out, insisting on having clergy removed from a church so he can pose with an upside-down Bible outside of it, inciting dozens of insurgents to attempt a coup de tat in his name...his very vocal and very public acts of entitlement, of one huge "Yay for me and the hell with you" attitude, has provided others of his volition the idea that it's ok to be selfish, it's ok to demand that they are special and deserve something unearned, something unwarranted, something they feel they should have.

This attitude is being seen in conservative attempts to limit who can vote, to try and keep certain demographic populations from entering the polls and doing their civic duty in choosing who should govern over them. This also is obvious in those that refused to use a mask during the height of the pandemic, claiming that their right not to wear a mask overruled the rights of society to remain healthy. Regardless of the merits of wearing a mask at that time, the refusal to be a decent human being and attempt to get through the pandemic with minimal illness and death is the hallmark of the "Yay for me and the hell with you" crowd. And I think that's pretty much what it comes down to - whether a person can be a decent human being or just a selfish jerk.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm a selfish jerk all the time! But I know that I am and I strive to be a better person rather than just continue being selfish. A few nights ago, as I was driving home from work, I narrowly avoided hitting a tire that was in the middle of the major highway going east and west through this town. It was just laying there in the middle of the highway in the dark, and I almost didn't see it at all because it blended into the dark so well. Where did it come from? No idea. I almost stopped to go remove the tire from the street, but then got to thinking about how dangerous that was since I could easily be hit by a car. So, I didn't stop. But every traffic light I came to, I considered turning around and going back. Even once I was off the highway and on the winding country road that leads to my home, I considered turning around and going back. Yet I didn't. I let my own selfishness continue driving me home, thinking "Someone else will stop and move that tire, or they'll call the police and get them to come move it." I envisioned accidents happening if I didn't go back to get that tire out of the road, but still my selfishness, my "Yay for me and the hell with you" attitude for this particular scenario, won out and I didn't go back to get it. The next day, it wasn't in the road, so someone obviously attended to it. Should I have gone back at any of the 3 dozen times I thought I should? In my mind, yes, I should have, but obviously the part of my mind that thought I shouldn't was stronger. Or maybe it was just weariness from working my shift and heading home at 9:15pm that prevented me from doing what I know to be the right thing. Either way, I'll still think about that tire and what I should have done differently. Now, would someone who lives the "Yay for me and the hell with you" lifestyle worry over this? I would like to say they probably wouldn't, but honestly, I don't know. Maybe they tend to be wracked by guilt and remorse for things they did or didn't do like I am.

Maybe we, as human beings, can start working together to rid ourselves of this negative attitude and try to lift each other up instead of trying to hold each other down. Do I foresee that in my lifetime? No, but I can still dream and still hope. And hope, when it comes down to it, is really all we have, right? I'll end this episode on that note, that note of hope, that hope that we can do better. We have to try, if only in dribs and drabs, in the hopes that it will catch on and every American, every earthling, will come to realize we need each other in this intricate web of life that spreads across the globe. Until next time, friends, be safe, and be positive! And visit www.twogoatsandadonkey.com to keep up with the blog, the podcast, and all the social media! Until next time! Goodbye!

George