Three friends married women from different parts of the Midwest.

The first man married a woman from Wisconsin. He told her that she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from Minnesota. He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn’t see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done, and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from South Dakota. He ordered her to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn’t see anything, the second day he didn’t see anything but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has some difficulty when he pees.

-Author Unknown. If you wrote this piece, let me know so I can shake your hand, girlfriend.

What do Kanye West, Serena Williams and Rep. Joe Wilson have in common? They’re all card-carrying members of the contemporary club I call, “Mama Forgot To Teach Me Some Manners”.

Likewise, what do Beyoncé, Kim Clijsters and Barack Obama share in common? You guessed it: all members of the club, “Folks Whose Classy Mothers Taught Them To Behave in Public”.

Lots of nice perks come with public life. Generally speaking these include a varying combination of money, fame and power; all fun things to have. But along with those benefits come a few responsibilities. In return we expect that you won’t behave boorishly in front of our kids and then refuse to offer an authentic apology to those whom you’ve offended. Kids look up to you and like it or not, you’re role models.

I was raised by people who emphasized manners. And when I say, “emphasized” I mean that it was a requirement in all that we did and said and there were no exceptions. There were meaningful consequences when we forgot our manners in public. We were expected to behave a certain way which included saying “please” and “thank you” at the appropriate times, and calling someone else names was taboo. When we hurt someone, we were taught to offer a heart-felt apology, which required examining and changing our own behavior. I applied that same philosophy to the rearing of my own three kids, and now do so with my four grandchildren as well.

An authentic apology has a few identifiable characteristics:

1) It occurs because the offending person understands that what they did was wrong, not because a failure to apologize will cost them, and not because someone else is requiring them to apologize.

2) The offending person states what he/she did wrong and says, “I’m sorry”. Fake apologies go something like this: “If I did such-and-such and if it offended anyone, then I’m sorry”. That’s not an apology. It’s a conditional statement that throws blame back on the person offended and denies any real acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

3) A true apology gives a clear indication of the offender’s intention not to repeat the offense. (After all, if you realize you made a mistake, why would you want to make it again?)

Now I know inappropriate public behavior is nothing new, but it certainly seems to be happening with alarming frequency lately. The more often it occurs, the more of a trend it sets, lowering the bar on what we as a society consider appropriate behavior. When we let rudeness go unchecked without consequence, we can be assured it will occur with greater frequency in the future.

You know those bumper stickers seen on the backs of trucks that read: “How’s my driving? Call (phone number)”? Maybe we ought to stick something similar on the behinds of movie stars, recording artists, professional athletes and elected officials:

I have a hunch some things would change.

Clearly I’m not a frequent blogger, being that my last post was erm… December of last year? Wow. Worse than I thought.

Today I’m breaking the lengthy hiatus.

I’ve largely avoided getting into a heated debate over health care reform, and I’m not here to engage in one now. But something has come to my attention that I just have to share.

Several personalities have appeared on TV recently toting gigantic, apparently heavy copies of this health reform bill and slamming them down on a desk with a big thud, giving the impression that it’s some ridiculously huge volume that would take a rocket scientist a year to read.

For instance:

Big-Heavy-Unreadable-Bill - part one

Big-Heavy-Unreadable-Bill - part two

It certainly looked foreboding and intimidating to me… until I decided to Google it, download the thing and take a look at it with my own eyes. Here’s what I found:

H.R. 3200 is not that hard to read, is not nearly as lengthy as you might think, it’s not written in obscure legalese beyond the average person’s comprehension, and it’s freely available online.

Read H.R. 3200 online

H.R. 3200 Downloadable PDF

It’s double spaced in large print with wide margins in order to give ample room for legislators to mark it up. If it was reformatted for normal reading, it would probably be a mid-sized book of about 300 pages or so.

I’m no rocket scientist. Not even close. I’m an average person, of average intelligence who only completed one year of college. But I downloaded this bill and am reading and understanding it with no problem. If I can, then anyone can.

When we don’t read things for ourselves, the potential then exists for us to hear and believe and adopt other peoples’ opinions about an issue. While I can’t prove it, I suspect that many people (on both sides) who are publicly sharing passionate opinions on this topic have not actually read H.R. 3200. Heck, even some legislators admit they haven’t read it.

My point is that anything we hear from a third party has two inherent problems:

1) It may not be the truth.

2) We’re all human, and everyone tends to carry a personal bias, no matter what the topic.

I figure the only way to avoid those problems is to just read the thing myself and make up my own mind. I invite you to do the same.

Here’s a related thought. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years watching a wide variety of network news programs and here’s my observation: All news networks are biased; some to the left, some to the right. And it’s not really a problem so long as we realize that. News anchors and reporters are human and have opinions just like everybody else. So I’ve decided to watch our lawmakers in session for myself on C-SPAN. In doing so, I’m hearing what they say every day in its original context, while cutting out the middle man (or woman) who may be reporting that same action out of context, through the filter of a biased opinion.

I think we Americans are some of the luckiest people on earth. We can go online, download any bill introduced by our lawmakers and read the entire thing. We can tune in to C-SPAN and watch first-hand what our elected officials are actually doing and saying on our behalf.

Why should we not do so?

I really should pay more attention to my blog’s stats reports. Just happened to check those this morning and noticed a lot of traffic coming this way from smashingmagazine.com. Lo and behold, it seems my blog made their Top 50 Beautiful Blog Designs list. Whoah!

I’d love to take the credit, but the truth is that my son is responsible for Lynnterpretation’s snazzy retro design. Toby has been working alongside me since his graduation from college, and to be honest, I’ve learned just as much from him as he has from me. We have more fun than any two people should really be allowed to have at work, including frequent, spontaneous badminton tournaments, leisurely bike rides and hourly snack breaks.

Thanks, “Mini-me”. You can’t begin to fathom how proud I am of you.

Just my Lynnterpretation.

My attention was drawn this morning to a video short posted by Ad Age.

It reminds me of a little guessing game we play in this family. We’re deeply intrigued with the inventors of handy gadgetry. The latest, greatest invention always sparks an instant debate over whether its creator was male or female, based upon the level of intuitiveness and real-world usefulness of the design. Now nothing against you guys out there, but when males invent things intended for use by women, a great deal of the time we don’t understand what you could possibly have been thinking. Our needs are different from yours, our brains are wired differently, and if you really want to market an item to us, you have to think like we do.

Before going any further with this, let me tell you why you should care. It’s standard marketing wisdom that women control 80% of all household purchases. That’s why marketers of household supplies, kids’ gear, food, cosmetics and clothes are good at reaching women. But women buy gender-neutral stuff, too: cars, auto services, technology; the list includes everything but Viagra. Women today influence 85% of automobile buying decisions, according to GM. They also purchase 65% of new cars. Women make 75% of all healthcare decisions, whether for themselves or their families, according to a recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. They also make up more than half of all health consumers.

Now if you’re married or have a serious relationship with a female, you don’t need to read this next paragraph. (You could write it.) Let me tell you how the consumer world works in general. We ladies make most of the buying decisions for our families. Shopping is what we do and boy are we good at it. We also like the most bang for a buck and don’t tend to buy useless junk. We invest our money in the stuff we find truly useful; things that will make our daily lives easier. If you make a clutzy can opener that’s difficult and messy to operate, we’ll buy someone else’s can opener instead, but we won’t stop there. We’ll waste no time in calling all of our gal pals to warn them about your really dreadful can opener so they don’t make the same mistake. Kaboom: instant viral marketing, and believe me, we have a lot of friends on speed dial.

In short, what women want right now is attention to detail in product design and service; the right choices, not endless choices; and a more thorough, thoughtful selling process that respects our desire to understand what we’re buying before we take it home. We also care deeply about customer service. Women make final purchasing decisions based on the relationship with the seller, not on statistics and quantitative data. Given a choice between two nearly identical products, women are likely to decide based upon customer service and the ongoing relationship with the vendor. If you take care of us after we purchase your product, you’ve got a loyal customer for life.

We also prefer simple, straight-forward instructions over 200-page manuals, not because we’re incapable of understanding but simply because we don’t have time to read through pages and pages of instructions to get to the operational basics. Most of us are uber-multitasking with families and careers to balance. Quick start manuals are a girl’s best friend.

All in all, we’re a formidable force to be reckoned with in today’s marketplace. Why do you think we carry these big handbags anyway?

Just my Lynnterpretation.