When did depression become a crime? At what point did the world lose patience with any and all people who made the mistake of admitting they weren’t happy at the moment?

I have been battling depression periodically through much of my life. The first time I had a major bout, I was only about 11 years old. It was written off as adolescence, and I was allowed to muddle through it until I got over it. The second time, I was a junior in high school. As an honors student who was very involved in multiple extracurricular activities, I was assumed to be under too much stress. My parents and friends encouraged me to drop a couple of my more difficult classes and lighten my activity schedule. I did, and I got over it. The third time, I was in college, struggling to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life and heartbroken over a guy. This bout was more serious, and I was put into therapy and given antidepressants. Neither was terribly helpful; I got much better when I got out of town and went to work at Disney World for the summer, though.

Now I’m 35, and I’ve been battling another round of depression for almost two years. In the fifteen years that have passed since my last episode, though, a remarkable shift has taken place. No one has considered that maybe my lifestyle or activities could problems. No one has made any helpful suggestions. No one has really given my situation any thought whatsoever because they no longer feel the need to be burdened by such unpleasantness. I tell people I’m depressed, and everyone comes back with one word: DRUGS.

These days, you tell someone you’re depressed, and they immediately reply, “Have you tried Prozac/Zoloft/Lexapro/insert prescription here? I’ve been on it for ages! It’s great!”

My doctor put me on Lexapro. My husband says it makes me behave better. I admit it seems to improve my outward symptoms. But I still don’t sleep. I still wake up wondering how in the world I’m going to make it through the day. I still feel my heart start racing at the thought of all the things I have to do. I just don’t feel like I have to talk about it. And I guess that’s what most people around me prefer.

My friends and family are used to Little Miss Sunshine. Jennifer, the peppy, happy, smiling and efficient. It disturbs them to think I might be unhappy, and they’re very busy people. They don’t really have time to worry about it. Besides, I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not a teenager. My life is great, right? I shouldn’t be depressed.

True, life is pretty good. I have two beautiful, healthy, sweet, smart children. I’m glad I know that because not many people tell me. Lots of people tell me what I should be doing to make them better, though. I get tons of advice from teachers, doctors, dentists, friends who have lots of ideas for more things I should do to improve my kids. Unfortunately, I just don’t have any more time, energy or money to put them in more activities, read more stories, make more crafts, take more walks, play more games.

I have a very nice husband. He’s a terrific dad who makes a good living at a job he doesn’t like much so I can stay home with our children most of the time. He’s a discontented personality, though. Nothing is ever okay. He’s always tired, always ill, always annoyed with something. We never have enough money, enough stuff, enough time. Nothing we buy is ever quite what he wanted. Nothing I cook is ever quite what he wanted.

I have a nice house. It’s always a mess, though, despite my constant efforts to clean it.

I have a great job. I love what I do. But it’s a lot of work for not much money.

I have great friends and family. They are always willing to come to any party I throw, always send me funny e-mails, always invite me to dinner or a movie. I’m sure they would be willing to listen to my worries if they didn’t have so many of their own that I feel too guilty to burden them with mine.

So I take the pills my doctor prescribed so I can be more pleasant to be around. I’ve tried to go off them a few times, but people get frustrated with me almost immediately. Still, I can’t help but feel that I have a right to be depressed without being accused of a chemical imbalance or hormonal problem. I work too much and get nowhere. I get very little encouragement. In fact, most of the folks around me just toss more complications, more tasks, more “constructive criticism” at me, rather than take anything away. The first couple times I went through this, people encouraged me to let some things go. Nowadays, it’s much more a “take-a-pill-shut-up-and-work-harder” attitude.

I blame Tom Cruise. If the moron hadn’t bashed anti-depressants and made it a cause celebre for lunatics like himself, I wouldn’t get accused of being a Scientologist every time I say I don’t like Prozac.

Although this blog has been quiet for a while, I have been thinking about some things I’d like to discuss. One thing I’ve been deliberating on lately is the notion of politically correct speech. I’ve heard some of my right-wing friends and family criticizing the concept recently, and I was considering writing a blog entry on it, but it didn’t seem all that relevant right now.  How ironic that in the midst of my contemplation on political correctness, Ann Coulter would step up to give me something to which I could respond. I suppose I should thank her, but since good manners are lost on her, she would not appreciate the gesture.

Prior to Ms. Coulter’s nasty comments on March 2^nd, I had been thinking about why so many conservatives have a problem with politically correct speech. One thing I’ve noticed is that they just dislike the term. “Politically correct” suggests some kind of federal consequence for saying the “wrong thing.” The idea is unpleasant, like something out of Orwell’s 1984: Say the wrong word, and Big Brother will come for you!

I guess some people have forgotten the genesis of the term. “Politically correct” originally applied to politicians who have to be worried about offending voters. Like many words and phrases in the English language, however, it evolved, adopted by the general public which co-opted it to mean “any expression that might be considered inappropriate or insensitive.” Perhaps we should simply change the term to something more suitable, say “human decency,” “cultural sensitivity,” “social awareness,” or even “Christian morality,” after all Jesus would never have called anyone nasty names.

No matter what you call it, though, rudeness and inappropriate language has historically been and should continue to be punished. When I was little, there was a kids’ show on the local TV station that ended with Cowboy Bob reminding us all, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” And the message was reinforced in elementary school. I got in trouble once for getting mad at my playmates and calling them “faggots,” and I remember being confused when the fifth-grade boys got in trouble for playing a game called “Smear the Queer.” They were allowed to continue playing the game, but they weren’t allowed to call it by that name anymore. Since I didn’t really understand the words “faggot” or “queer,” these situations seemed very strange to me. That was 1981, years before anyone ever spoke of political correctness, but we were still facing unpleasant consequences for calling people rude names.

Now, I grant that our government should not punish us for being rude. We cannot make words illegal. Freedom of speech is too important; however, the First Amendment of our Constitution does not exempt us from being polite; it simply means the government cannot make us be polite. Sadly, no one else wants the job either these days. Parents and society don’t police language much anymore. Cursing in public seems to be far more prevalent than it used to be. In fact, for all the whining and worrying about the dangers of politically correct speech, people seem to be saying whatever they want more than ever. With the advent of cable TV, satellite radio and the Internet, we have infinite outlets for our freedom of expression. Anyone can say anything and get an audience. And they are often rewarded for being rude or outrageous. (See also Rush Limbaugh, South Park, Jerry Springer, Anna Nicole Smith.) Pushing the envelope of acceptable language and behavior has become the great American pastime.

Still, as a society, we do get rankled now and then about something one of our celebrities says. Mel Gibson’s chauvinistic and anti-Semitic tirade got him a lot of bad press and lost him thousands of fans as did Michael Richards’ now-infamous “n-word” rant. Grey’s Anatomy star, Isaiah Washington, faced a similar firestorm for calling a gay co-star a “faggot.” (Sorry, gay friends.) Gibson, Richards and Washington all went to rehab because when a celebrity gets caught being stupid, hateful or criminal, the fashionable thing to do in Hollywood is to go into rehab to show remorse. (See also Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.)  It seems American society does still have a little common sense when it comes to name-calling. Freedom of speech or not, it’s still rude. Just like we learned as kids.

Enter Ann Coulter. As might be expected from a woman who makes her living with hateful language, Ms. Coulter takes issue with people being held accountable for rude speech. So on March 2^nd at the American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference, she used her prodigious linguistic powers to kill several birds with one stone. In one fell swoop, she managed to be insult liberals, Democrats, homosexuals, John Edwards, Hollywood celebrities, advocates of cultural sensitivity, and anyone with good manners. Pretty slick.

But I have a bit of advice for her and all those who denounce political correctness: Be careful of whose team you’re playing for. Do you really want to speak like a bigot? Like a chauvinist? Like a homophobic gangsta rapper? Like a 10-year-old playground bully? People who defend Ms. Coulter’s right to use the f-word, who support Mr. Richards’ use of the n-word, who bristle at the public reaction to Gibson’s anti-Jewish speech need to beware of the company they are keeping.

Of course, Coulter is not going to change. Like so many people who take freedom of speech to its ridiculous extremes, she’s mean-spirited, greedy, and self-serving. She chose her words very carefully to take on the many groups she hates so much. She does not believe that Edwards is gay. (After all, he has more evidence of his heterosexuality than she has since he is married and a parent, and she is neither.) She wanted to shock people, garner more attention, sell more books. She claims to be smart, and one would assume she must be since she has a law degree and several published books to her credit. With such language skills, one would think she could come up with something more clever than resorting to name-calling that I can hear from any bad-mannered little punk on the street.

Still, I wish we could disarm hate-mongers like Coulter and Limbaugh, Gibson and Richards by ignoring their words. Words do, after all, get their power from those who hear them, not those who speak them. There is nothing intrinsically evil about the sounds “fa,” “g” and “ot.” We use the sounds in lots of decent words like “fashion,” “goblin,” and “hut.” But when we string the sounds together and add a lot of personal baggage and cultural experience, we end up making the resulting word into a potent expression.

When my son was two years old, he started quoting entire speeches from the movie Toy Story. One of his favorite lines was “My ship!” Unfortunately, he had trouble discerning the hard “P” from a hard “T,” so it came out “My shit!” People would gasp and look suspiciously at my husband and me, and we would have to explain it to them. We hesitated to correct our toddler, though. We didn’t want to embarrass him, or, worse, alert him to an inappropriate attention-getter. We just kept repeating it back to him properly, emphasizing the “P” sound at the end. I wish we could do the same with people like Ms. Coulter. Contrary to her behavior, however, she is not two years old.

If we could ignore people like her, if the hearers could pretend words don’t matter, she and the other name-callers would have no ammunition.  But no matter what the little ones say on the playground, words can hurt even more than sticks and stones. Those of us who were lucky enough to have good moms and dads, though, were taught that “If you can’t say anything nice…” I guess Ms. Coulter missed that lesson.

I cannot believe it’s been almost a month since I wrote a blog entry! It’s been quite a month too. The holidays plus a whole lot of illness equals one wiped-out mom. So now the holidays are over, and everyone is healthy for the moment, *knock on wood* so I’ve had a minute or two to think. And I’ve been thinking about storytelling.

For most of my life, I didn’t really have a grandfather. My dad’s dad passed away when I was just eight years old, and my mom’s father was an abusive alcoholic so we didn’t have much of a relationship with him. So when my husband’s grandpa Fred heartily welcomed me into his family, I was pleased. It was a new experience to me, and I liked listening to his stories. He was from a wealthy family in New England, and his stories painted pictures of a more refined, more conscientious way of living. He came from a world where you “dressed for dinner,” where women wore gloves and men wore hats, where etiquette was not a fifth-grade vocabulary word but an everyday behavior.

But my adopted grandfather was not a snob. For the last fifteen years of his life, he lived in West Baden Springs, Indiana, in a converted Amish pole barn that was probably not much bigger than my parents’ garage. He liked his place in the woods and told us of the intrigues at his country church as well as of the antics of the cats and wildlife that inhabited the woods around his home.

In between his wealthy youth and his modest retirement, Fred served in World War II, fathered two children, lost two wives to cancer, lived in homes all across the country, and tried his hand at several different careers. He met some fascinating people along the way, and I got to hear many stories about these folks as well.
Perhaps it’s because I didn’t really have a grandfather of my own. Perhaps it’s because I never lived with Fred or had to put up with his foibles and peccadilloes for very long. Or perhaps it’s because I hadn’t heard them for years and years, but I enjoyed Fred’s stories and often, I felt like the only person in the room who was actually listening. My mother-in-law and her brother would sometimes interrupt him with an impatient, “Yes, Dad, you’ve told us that before.” My husband would zone out or find a way to sneak out of the room. And it’s true that after a couple years, I started hearing the same stories over again, usually prefaced by Fred’s favorite intro: “Now, I have to tell you this…”

Fred passed away a couple days before Thanksgiving, but he was cremated and will be laid to rest in New Hampshire. So instead of the usual funeral, we’re having a memorial service this Saturday. In preparation for it, my husband’s putting together a slide show, and so we’ve been going through pictures. Some of the photographs are very old and damaged; some of them are of people my mother-in-law does not recognize. And I started thinking about all those stories Fred told over and over again.

I’ve seen it in old people before, this tendency to repeat the same stories, but I’ve always written it off as poor memory, senility, or a need for attention. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s God’s version of Knowledge Management. It’s a way for human beings to pass down what they’ve learned to the next generation. After all, before the invention of written language, oral storytelling was a vital tradition. It was our only way of passing information along to others. Sure, we have other means of preserving our collective knowledge nowadays - books, video, audio, the Internet - but maybe we’re hard-wired to tell our stories over and over again as we sense the end of our lives.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad I listened. I’m glad I can tell my son and daughter a little about the life of their great-grandfather. And I hope they’ll listen to their old mom’s stories. “Now, I have to tell you this!”

For over five years now, I have been a reluctant soldier in a constant war. I am an unlikely combatant. I’m not a doctor, dentist, or nutritionist. I’m not a vegetarian or health food fanatic. I’m just a mom who sees her children under daily attack by an array of surprising and diverse adversaries: Madison Avenue, my hair salon, the post office, the grocery store, even my parents and in-laws.

Many of my opponents have only the purest intentions: they want to see my kids smile. So they offer them a sucker, a Tootsie Roll, a cupcake, an ice cream cone, a soda pop. These people are the hardest to deal with because they really have my children’s best interest at heart, and I know they are offering these things out of kindness. And if they were the only people I had to worry about, I wouldn’t be worrying at all.

The problem is that my parents, in-laws, friends and family are not the only folks offering my children sweets. They get it from everyone, everywhere, all the time. Every event is an excuse to splurge on sugar: holidays, birthdays, Saturdays, a trip to Disney World, a trip to Grandma’s, a trip to the post office.

Today, for example, I took my 15-month-old daughter and 5-year-old son for a checkup at our family doctor’s office. After the appointment, my son got a sucker. Then he went to kindergarten. Because he had been a good boy all week, he got another sucker which he sneakily popped into his mouth after I had strapped him into his car seat. After picking him up from school, I headed to the bank. The teller offered him yet another sucker, but I stepped in and politely declined because, as she could plainly see, he still had the one from school in his mouth. Safely back home, I told him we would not be having any more sweets today. After dinner, though, we had to go to the grocery store.  And sure enough, our grocery store offers suckers. While I was busy glancing over my shopping list, my little charmer very sweetly asked the elderly greeter if he could have one, and of course, she was delighted to oblige such a cute boy. Before I realized it, he had his third sucker of the day in hand. I did manage to stop him from opening it, though, and tucked it into my purse to add to his ridiculous stash of candy back home. After all, Halloween was just a week ago, and he brought home POUNDS of sweets from his trick-or-treating venture.

So now we’re at the grocery, and I’m astonished by how effective Madison Avenue is. It’s quite a tribute to American marketing that my kid recognizes the Trix Rabbit even though we have never purchased Trix. As a matter of fact, I avoid the cereal aisle whenever he’s with me because he goes stark mad, running around and pointing to all the boxes he recognizes from the commercials on Nickelodeon. The cookie/cracker aisle is also tough, especially because the food companies do all these promotions with kids’ movies such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Cars,” and “Happy Feet,” and my son gets so excited about the cookies that have “Captain Jack” or “Lightning McQueen on them. I feel like the meanest mother in the world whenever I have to say no. Fortunately, my son is pretty good about taking no for an answer, but we’ve seen lots of kids who are not. My heart goes out to all the mothers whose kids throw screaming fits because Mommy won’t buy the Oreos with the green “Shreck” filling.

Then there’s the soda. My mother, my sister and my husband’s best friend live on Coca-Cola, so they think I’m an utter food freak because we rarely buy soda of any kind. I see soda as a treat. It has no nutritional value, and even the diet kind is bad for your teeth. Even without having it at home, my kids get plenty of it. Whenever we go out to eat, they get diet soda. They get it at my parent’s house and at friends’ houses.

Truth is, I’d love to be able to offer my kids a soda or other sweet treat now and then, but I never get a chance because the rest of the world is constantly pelting them with sugar. So I’m the bad guy, refusing to buy junk food, declining the offers of candy from various businesses we frequent, monitoring the consumption of their holiday treats. Is it worth it? I suppose time will tell, but so far, it seems to be. My daughter’s yet to visit the doctor for an illness (knock on wood!); my son has been just twice, and they are both at very healthy weights. For two children with a family history of obesity, diabetes, and bad teeth, they’re doing really well.

My mom had my son over to her house to play on Saturday. When she brought him home, she told me that he had asked her a snack at one point. She’d offered him a cookie, and he asked if she had anything “without sugar.” She was impressed. I was pleasantly surprised. I might be losing battles here and there, but I might actually be winning this war. And if any war is worth fighting, it is a war in which my children’s health is at sake.

For several years now, the GOP has been selling itself as the party of “family values,” the party of good, Christian church-goers, the party of the “moral majority.”

Hmm…

Now we hear that Representative Mark Foley, a Republican representative from Florida (land of Jeb Bush and voting debacles), has resigned suddenly after he was discovered to have sent inappropriate and sexually suggestive e-mails and text messages to a minor. That minor was also male. So Foley resigned and checked himself into alcohol rehabilitation. The new family values trifecta: underage solicitation, homosexuality, addiction.

And it just gets uglier. Several high-ranking GOP leaders actually knew about Foley’s relationship with this Congressional page and did little about it except to warn Foley to stop. Way to protect the kids, guys!

For those people who actually bought the whole “We’re-the-family-values-party” routine, the Foley scandal must be shocking and upsetting. To the rest of us, though, this is just another log on a big bonfire.

In 2004, Ed Schrock, a Republican representative from Virginia and co-sponsor of anti-homosexual legislation, resigned after his gay phone sex conversations were uncovered. Can you say “fraud,” boys and girls?

That same year Representative Don Sherwood’s (R-Pa) extramarital affair with a woman 40 years his junior was exposed when the girlfriend called 911 because Sherwood was choking her. Most people would consider that adultery and assault. Of course, Sherwood claims he was just giving her a backrub. Oh, and did I mention that he initially denied the affair and only admitted it later. Okay, so let me summarize: lying, adultery, assault or just rough foreplay if you buy Sherwood’s version. Busy guy. And I thought Republicans hated men who cheated on their wives and then lied about it! Didn’t they have a field day with Clinton for just that? Evidently, it doesn’t bother them too much when one of their own does it. Sherwood was re-elected!

In another tale of adultery, Republican representative Steve LaTourette of Ohio cheated on his wife with an aide and set her up with a firm that lobbied the Transportation Committee of which he was a member. Adultery AND conflict of interest. Nice.

You’d think a group that prides itself on family and Christian values would really try to follow Christ’s teachings and keep their families together, right? After all, Jesus warned of the dangers of divorce multiple times. Yet Congressional Republicans have enough divorces among them to make the state of Nevada blush with shame. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) is not only divorced but doesn’t even speak to his three daughters by his first wife. Obviously a true family man.

Then there’s my favorite conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh, who has drug problems which everyone knows about although he doesn’t admit them. He’s also divorced - three times. No kids, thank heavens. I can’t imagine how sorry I would feel for any children fathered by that man.

Of course, everyone has issues. Some of my favorite people are divorced, gay or struggling with drugs and alcohol. I have no problem with divorcees, homosexuals or recovering addicts.

Hypocrites, however, really honk me off.

Republicans have been touting themselves as representatives of morality, virtue, Christianity, and family and trying to set the rest of us up as the “Anti.” I’m not perfect, but I can say that I’ve never cheated on my husband, never been divorced, never had sex or been tempted to have sex with a minor, never had a homosexual affair of any kind, and never been addicted to anything. I can’t speak for every Democrat in the country, but judging from the number of Republicans who’ve been caught in these messes, I’d say our percentage is better.

Is the Democratic Party perfect? Not by any stretch. Although off the top of my head, I can remember only two scandals in the Democratic Party: Teddy Kennedy’s stupid stunt at Chappaquiddick and Clinton/Lewinsky. The Chappaquiddick nightmare was in 1969. Let’s see, since then, the Republican Party has not only given us all the disgraces listed above, but two of the most outrageous scandals in American history - Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.

Hopefully, Mark Foley’s shameful conduct will be a wake-up call for some people. The GOP does not represent the kind of values Americans want to foster in our families. It’s time to tell them so. Vote on November 7th, folks. Send the GOP a message: these are not our values!

References:

• C. Hulse & R. Hernandez, NY Times, 10/1/06
• C. Schecter, Huffingtonpost.com, 10/1/06
• wikipedia.org: Don Sherwood, Mitch McConnell, Ed Schrock
• K. Muse, rushlimbaughonline.com, 6/04