Excusive Behavior

Today I'd like to discuss a term I have coined, called "excusive behavior". No, that's not a typo, it reads "excusive" not "exclusive".

What's excusive behavior you ask? Well, here's my definition:

"Excusive behavior is that behavior which, in normal circumstances would be considered odd or out-of-the norm, but is excused or dismissed based solely on the personality of the person engaging in such behavior."

Before I lose you and you hit the back button let me give you an example.

My friend was driving along a local country road when she saw something out of the ordinary. There was a small black car parked in a farmer's "pull in" at the edge of a cornfield. A "pull-in" is a short gravel covered spot where the farmer parks his truck while accessing his field. He also uses it as an entrance to pull his tractor onto the field. It's not normally a parking spot for a sporty black car.

In the next moment she saw a woman crawling around on the ground at the edge of the field, commando fashion. Her first thought was, "How odd is that?? What is that crazy woman doing?" In the next moment she saw a camera and put two-and -two together and realized that it was ME crawing around the field taking photos.



Her response? "Oh, it's just Suzanne. No big deal."

Do you see? What is it that would cause a person to excuse my behavior based solely on my personality? If this was a isolated case it would be different but this happens all the time.

My son was dating a girl for a couple months before he brought her around to our house. I can certainly understand. Sometimes you want a relationship to get on firm ground before you subject the person to the full monty of what goes around here. Remember, we're multi-generational, multi-cultural and simply multi-dysfunctional.

I wasn't home to greet them when they arrived and the Farmer's Son brought her into our home office to look something up on the computer. It took a minute for him to notice that she was staring wide-eyed at my inspiration/blog organization wall. Many of us employ that method, such as my friend over at Liberty Post. Take a look at her organizational wall. (Scroll down to the third picture) Cool huh?

Now look at my wall. This is what the new girlfriend was staring at:



My son could tell instantly that she was thinking of the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", where Russell Crowe's mentally ill character has plastered papers all over the walls of his room.

"Oh no," he said, "it's OK, it's just my mom."

Yeah right, it's just your mom's somewhat bizarre way of jotting down story ideas so that when they fly out of her brain two minutes later she can remind herself later. The problem is that half the time even I can't figure out what they mean. Here's a few examples. Some are very strange. You should feel free to steal them for yourself.

- 87-yr, old Greek chicken (For real! I think I might have already written about this, but I can't remember.)

- Inspiration grows like mold (Seriously, what??)

- Doghouse flowers.

- The Green Twinkie

Oh, here's a really good one.......

- Simone de Beauvoir can kiss my _______


While I'm name dropping how about......

- Maya Angelou and the Chicken Breast

or

- Margaret Mead and Me (or is it Margaret Mead and I.....Margaret Mead and myself? Sheesh, where's a Grammar Nazi when you need one?)

I challenge you to take any one of the story ideas and write a blog post around it. I dare you.

Don't worry because it won't deter me from writing a story around it also. That is, only IF I can remember what the story was supposed to be about!

Let me know if you do. I'll do a round-up and link to the posts so that we can ALL have a good laugh. It's on me.