DISRESPECT?

Tammy and Hazel, 1988

My stepdaughter Hazel died, heroin overdose. She was found, hospitalized, and on life support for several days.

No one told her sisters on her father's side that she was in the hospital, that she was dying, that she had died.

A friend of mine told me, and I had to tell them. (Disrespectful)

This is the sister that they -- all of Rex's family -- turned the town of Bethel upside down trying to find her so she could say goodbye to her daddy. When she got there she was more interested in zipping up her boyfriend's pants than spending time with her dad. They also just vanished from the hospital without telling anyone. We spent some time looking there, too. (Disrespectful on their part, don't you think?)


After the original news was published, Hazel was listed as the beloved daughter of her mother and her mother's 99th husband. (That number is hyperbole, not fact.)

Hazel's real father, who died without her presence, was not mentioned in the original obituary.

As if he had never existed

As if he had never been part of her life. (Disrespectful.)



I took our girls to her funeral.

If Hazel's other half sister, who in my opinion suffered the greatest loss, or her mother even spoke to my daughters, it was only in passing. (Disrespectful)

Our girls mingled, and my older daughter was asked why she was there; who was she to Hazel. (Disrespectful)
(And who the heck does that at a funeral, unless it's by invitation only?)



We sat in the back row for the service.

My daughter took her phone from her daughter (age 6) who had started playing music instead of a card game on it. She was holding it in her hand. She didn't think the child's choice of music was respectful or appropriate.

Bedamned if some blonde woman (NOT a member of the immediate family) didn't chew my daughters out about how "disrespectful:"they were for having their phones out! (Disrespectful)

I wish to hell I had known what Blondie was saying! I would have told her a thing or two about DISRESPECT! (Not to mention common courtesy and a side serving of 'mind-your-own-business.)

My girls had lost a sister, too, and were treated as if they came in off the street to get warm.

If that isn't disrespectful, what is?

Close the (Bathroom) Door, Already

Public restrooms.
Need I say more?

But of all the problems with public restrooms, amid the litter and the empty rolls and soaps, the most annoying thing I encounter is the doors that won't close and stay closed.

How hard can it be to make a door that latches? Pioneers did it with no (well, minimal) tools. A stick of wood, a slot for the stick, and a mechanism to lift the stick. Pretty basic, don't you think?

I guess that that is too simple in this modern mechanized age. Why make a simple latch when a complicated series of switches, tumblers, knobs, and dials will make us (public entities) look so much more avant-garde?

Never mind if they don't work properly -- or at all. We don't want people spending times in the bathrooms anyway, using up our toilet paper and running out our water. We don't have to provide restrooms anyway. We just do it as a courtesy. (And to avoid clean-ups in Aisle 13.)

Well, when I have the choice, I will choose a place that has a bathroom where the stall doors can be closed securely instead of a place careless of privacy.

The maintenance of the public restroom speaks clearly of how the business thinks of their customers. Are they worthy of work and time, or aren't they?

And do we, as consumers, need to know anything more?