Thoughts Happen

Complaints still happening, Roo-style

Remember those purple bracelets? The ones put out by the Complaint Free World folks (curse their feeble grasp of grammar) and worn by my family in our quest to go 21 days without complaining? (See Complaints Happen and A Hyphen-Free World.)

Well I am still wearing my bracelet. As is my husband. Daughter, meanwhile, powered through in a mere eight weeks and received accolades at church as the only kid from her class who finished the program.

I go a few days at a time—my record is eight—and then succumb to ingrained habit and have to switch the grape jelly-colored band to the other wrist and start over.

At first I was very conscientious about watching my language and tendency to complain, but lately had been getting lackadaisical. Wearing it has definitely curbed my tendency towards full-blown rants, but with my diligence slipping I was starting to let some slide without really examining what was going on. As Roo protested one morning to Kanga when confronted that he'd been coughing and therefore needed to stay home, “It was a biscuit cough. Not one you tell about.”

They’re just “biscuit complaints,” I tell myself. Not ones you tell about. To really do this exercise right, I should let go of all complaints spoken out loud. I still complain plenty in my head—I’m not going for sainthood here. But sometimes it’s not so much what I say as what I add to it—the complaint accessories, so to speak. That’s where a bit of self-knowledge comes in handy. If I’m honest, I know when I’m really complaining and when I’m in biscuit territory.

A typical example happened on Daughter’s first day of Junior Lifeguard camp. I have a confession to make: I am chronically late. It’s a bad habit that I haven’t made effort enough to break. I really did not want to drop her off late for the first day of camp, but somehow I still left barely enough time to get to the beach.

As I pull into the parking lot my heart sinks as I see the minivans and beach beaters circling the rows like vultures. I feel myself wanting to start a major rant: “Oh great, where the hell are we supposed to park? Why was traffic so bad? I can’t believe I still left late! Argh!” But I stop short. Even though I’m not consciously thinking about the bracelet, my months of practicing must be doing some good, because I hold my tongue—for a while.

Then I just can’t help it. “We were here last week and there was plenty of parking!” I huff indignantly as we head out to take our chances on the surface streets. The words are pretty innocuous, but my whiny tone definitely marks this as a complaint. “This is not what I was expecting!” comes next, in a panicky voice more suitable for bad medical results than a parking dilemma. If I wasn’t so preoccupied with finding a spot I would find it pretty amusing watching my struggle to keep my self-talk out of the bracelet-switching zone.

Two blocks away I find a spot that is not perfect, but good enough. The nose of my Nissan is poking well past the curve of the corner curb, which is probably not 100% legal, but I rationalize that a ticket would be worth it at this point.

We power walk in our flip-flops to the beach and locate the hordes of black bathing-suited kids and red-suited lifeguards. I accost a buff, blonde, bushy-haired specimen in red shorts and dark glasses. “I’m sorry we’re late—parking was (I refrain from saying ‘a bitch,’ although it would be my penchant) — crazy.” (Aside: how genuine do we want to be in front of our kids regarding swearing?)

“No problem,” he says. “It happens a lot.” He directs her where to go and she trots over to her group. Crisis averted. We’re not actually as late as I had feared, and she hasn’t missed anything too important.

If I had left with plenty of time to spare and been late due to something unforeseen, I would have remained much calmer. But the nagging thought that I might have prevented the situation by leaving the house when I intended was what really bugged me. Accessorize a few harmless words with a dash of perfectionism and what have you got? A complaint.

So I switched wrists. And started over. I’m getting good at that.

A Hyphen-Free World

Argh! I just can’t stand it anymore! I’ve been doing this purple-bracelet “stop complaining” exercise for almost three weeks now (and am on my record 5th day of not complaining) but I can’t hold it in any longer because every time I look at the half inch of rubber encircling my wrist I want to gouge a little hyphen between “Complaint” and “Free.” It’s “A Complaint-Free World,” people, not “A Complaint Free World”! Oh the irony of complaining about the "complaint free" bracelet. But really!

The general populace seems to have hyphen-phobia. I don’t know why, but it bothers me. My inner copyeditor cringes when I see “a fat free food.” Ack! If I get paid to be picky about grammar does it still count as complaining? We’ll get back to that.

I am hyper-sensitive to hyphens lately because one of my Twitter friends posted a question asking whether the phrase “gluten free” should be hyphenated. My instinct was that it is, but to get some additional information I searched for “hyphens” on the Grammar Girl site and also posted the question to the Grammar Group at LinkedIn. This led to some lively discussion, the consensus of which was that you hyphenate before a noun but not after it.

Why is this? Here’s my best explanation: hyphens group modifiers together for clarity. Say you have a red brick house. Is it a red house? Yes. Is it a brick house? Yes. Therefore, no hyphen is needed. However, what if you have a “gluten free recipe.” Is it a gluten recipe? No. Is it a free recipe? No. Therefore, a hyphen is needed to group the modifiers together so you know the recipe has no gluten. It’s a gluten-free recipe.

Why then do you not hyphenate after the noun, e.g. “the recipe is gluten free”? The temptation is to throw in extra hyphens just in case, e.g. “the recipe is gluten-free.” But it’s just as bad to over-hyphenate as to under-hyphenate, and it really isn’t necessary. Here’s why: when the modifier comes after the noun, it’s only modifying the one word immediately after it. So we ask ourselves, “What kind of ‘free’ is it?” and the answer is “gluten.” It’s gluten free.

So “The world is complaint free,” but it’s not "A Complaint Free World." And it’s not a complaint-free world anymore, either at least after this post. I’m going to switch my bracelet now and start back at Day 1. But it was totally worth it.

Complaints Happen

A couple weeks ago I spotted a new purple rubber bracelet adorning my 10-year-old daughter's wrist. When I looked at it closer I was surprised to read "A Complaint Free World.org" etched in it's grape jelly-like surface. "Where did that come from?" I asked. Turns out she'd gotten it at Sunday school a few days earlier. (It had taken me awhile to notice it among the circumference of wrist-wear she sports. And unlike myself as a child, who would have come home babbling about every little detail of what happened in class, she can be pretty reticent at times.)

"You're supposed to not complain when you are wearing the bracelet, and if you do complain you have to switch it to the other wrist and start over," she explained. 

"What do you mean, 'start over?'"

"You're supposed to try to make it 21 days without complaining, so if you complain you have to start over again from day one." 

That sounds hard, I thought. But what next came out of my mouth was, "Can I get one?" If a rubber bracelet could cure me of complaining it was certainly worth a try. She thought she could ask for one the following Sunday, and in the meantime gave me a training bracelet from among her collection, a peach-colored "Be Brilliant" number from the Girl Scouts cookie season a few years ago. 

So I started on my personal No Complaining campaign and this is how it went:

The first day or two I did not complain. Well, not much. Not really. Then on the third day I had to switch my bracelet five times. I noticed a pattern: 1) I often complain to myself. 2) The things I complain about are really lame. Here's a sampling:

• The person in front of me in the parking lot was really slow.
• They re-did the bulk bins at Henry's so the lids don't stay up by themselves. I found this very irritating.
• The checker at Vons forgot to credit one of my coupons. (I. love. coupons. Don't get me started.)
• My computer was slow. (C'mon facebook, I don't have all day)
• There was no jelly in the house. 

Really? Really. I'm embarrassed to say that, yes, I have the lamest complaints ever. I mean, I could have at least complained about the shrinking Arctic ice or the fact that California can't afford to provide music or P.E. teachers, but no—for lack of jelly I broke my streak (such as it was). That these are things I'm not just thinking about but actually voicing out loud makes it just absurd.  

I went to the web site of A Complaint Free World and read their rules, which say that complaints you only think don't count—hey, we're not looking for miracles here. It also said that the average person complains 15-30 times a day and will take 4-10 months to make the 21-day complaint-free goal. 

As far as why one would embark on a quest to quit complaining, there are a lot of "Secret"-style attraction theory converts who will try to explain why complaining will stunt your growth, shrivel your bank account and give your dog fleas, but I think it's a bit subtler than that. What I do know is that nobody likes being around a complainer. Including the complainer. 

So. Life is hard—suck it up. (This is just a slight paraphrasing of Buddhism's First Noble Truth. Very slight.) Or, as the Complaint Free World folks say, "Your thoughts create your world and your words indicate your thoughts," which is slightly more elegant. 

I have my own official purple bracelet now, and my husband is in on the plan too. I am also back to day one. I'll let you know how it goes.