You're not going to believe this...

Confessions of a wallflower
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, May 3, 2007 – Page 3

You're not going to believe this, but I have a terrible problem with shyness. If you know me you're having a hard time believing it because I've got such a big mouth. But don't confuse being over opinionated and often overbearing with being extroverted.

How can you be shy? You have to stand in front of classrooms full of students and teach them all day. What can I tell you, it's unnatural. It's also one thing to be an adult in front of a bunch of teenagers, but it's quite another to be in front of their parents, your colleagues, or administrators.

I like to imagine that all writers are shy. That's because its easier to relate to a keyboard and computer screen that to other people. I've known many an artist who was infinitely more comfortable with their sketchbook than with human company.

One of the most awkward times in life for shy people is high school. I had cartoons and occasional stories running in my high school newspaper since sophomore year, but my shyness was truly put to the test my senior year. That's when I was drafted into being the Editor. I hadn't applied, like any self respecting shy person, I was content being a contributor. But the only applicants were escaped mental patients so the journalism advisor and the outgoing student editor laid a heaping guilt trip on me that included a heavy mantle of responsibility. I didn't wind up being the best editor they'd ever had, but I like to think I wasn't the worst. I missed our first issue because I made my self sick from the stress of the thing and started the school year home with walking pneumonia.

What being the editor of the school paper has to do with shyness is this; the editor wrote a regular column each issue and the advisor felt it was necessary to run columnist's pictures with their stories. Sort of like our publisher now insists in this paper. The sports editor relished this opportunity to advertise himself to all the eligible girls in our school. I wasn't as sure, but I posed with my 1920's antique Remington anyway.

The picture alone isn't what made the editor's office a shy persons' hell, it was the mini-fame that it established. A shy person can hide pretty easily in a school of 2,600 kids, unless their picture appears in the student newspaper handed out to all 2,600 kids every three weeks in homeroom.

What this meant was that absolutely everyone knew who I was while I knew almost no one. Everyone wanted to tell me what they thought of what I drew or wrote, whereas I would've been more comfortable only having to interact with my immediate circle of four or five friends.

This sort of not real fame, but higher notoriety than the general population is made even worse by the fact that I've always been terrible at trying to remember people's names, let alone placing the correct name with the right face.

"Hi Ted, how's it going?"
"Uh, um, fine, 'whats-your-name,' how're you?"

Don't you feel sorry for my kids? God help our middle daughter Ellen, I'm always calling her by either of her two other sisters' names. Maybe that's why she has the most outlandish and memorable personality of the three. It's nature's way.

People who are more comfortable with themselves and with talking and getting to know others don't understand shy people. They think we're antisocial as if we somehow selfishly want to be left alone. I suppose that's true to a degree, insofar as we'd desperately rather hide inside our comfort zones.

But shy people don't deliberately want to be rude or insensitive, we're just paralyzed by the fear of saying or doing something lame- or, as in my case, we're afraid that we're going to come off as rude and insensitive by not remembering who in the world the person is that we're talking to. When you don't remember someone's name, they tend to feel like you don't like them or don't think they're important enough to care about. But you do care about them, that is why you don't want to have to talk to them- because you don't want to accidentally offend them. So... you avoid talking to them and that doesn't just make you appear "aloof" or "elitist," it makes them feel like you don't like them or that you don't think they're important enough to care about. As you can see, it's a regular "Catch 22."

Once at a community event someone complemented me on my column. It was a huge compliment too, comparing me to a writer I have a huge amount of respect for. But what are you supposed to do with that kind of thing? I said thank you, red faced and awkward. But I didn't know how to say, "now who are you?" Especially because I was pretty sure it was someone who I should've known. I was paralyzed by shyness.

Needless to say, my wife chastised me. After all, I probably made myself look rude, aloof, or elitist and no doubt made them feel like I didn't like them or like I didn't think they were important enough to talk to. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel that way. And if anybody else wants to tell me that I'm not bad at this, please don't be shy.

Social Insecurity

Social Insecurity
by Ted Mallory Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper Thurs. March 3, 2005

As a History Major, I believe that we can learn a lot from our predecessors. I believe that we can learn a lot from “the Greatest Generation” which can help us with today’s problems. Please consider what President Franklin Roosevelt State of the Union Address from January 6, 1941- a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew us into WWII:

“For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and
strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and
economic systems are simple.

They are:

● Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
● Jobs for those who can work.
● Security for those who need it.
● The ending of special privilege for the few.
● The preservation of civil liberties for all.
● The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and
constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.

We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.

I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.

A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.”

FDR believed in the old Midwestern, common sense axiom, “We’re all in this together,” but in George Bush’s “ownership society” it’s every man for himself. He got himself elected by telling us that we deserved a tax cut, he said that the budget surplus was our money so the government should give it back. Of course, 80% of the cut went to the riches 2% of Americans. That certainly wasn’t in line with FDR’s “principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay.”

In his last State of the Union, former President Clinton proposed that any budget surplus be reserved until Social Security is strengthened. You’d have thought that Bush would’ve rethought, even retracted his massive tax cuts immediately after 9/11 especially after considering how it affected the economy.

Now Bush wants to “privatize” Social Security. He makes it sound good by candy coating it with the notion that you will own your own Social Security in a personal “savings account.

First of all, Social Security isn’t in as much trouble as Bush wants to scare us into thinking it is. Even if we do nothing, Social Security will be safe until at least 2042. After that it will still be able to pay 75% of benefits. Thanks to a commission set up in 1983 by President Reagan and Alan Greenspan, Social Security has a reserve fund of nearly $ 1.6 Trillion. Those are in U.S. Treasury bonds, quite literally, the safest investment in the world.

Some Republicans have suggested one approach that hasn’t occurred to Bush- raising the ceiling on income subject to payroll taxes, which is now about $90,000 a year. Barely 6% of Americans earn more than $90,000 a year. Why should those of us in the middle and working classes have to pay for Social Security, but the wealthy don’t? That’s not fair. That’s morally wrong.

Imposing Social Security taxes on incomes of up to $200,000 would go a LONG way toward shoring up whatever weaknesses Social Security has. That would certainly be more in line with FDR’s “principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay.”

What Bush isn’t telling us is that it would cost as much as $3 Trillion to change Social Security from what we have now to what he proposes. What he also fails to tell us is that optional private accounts will siphon money out of Social Security. When you take your money out of the group insurance plan at work, the costs go up for everybody else in the plan. When you take money from a public school so that parents can use a voucher at a private school, the public school has less money- how can it be expected to improve itself? The people who know how to invest wisely and feel comfortable doing it are people who already have plenty of money. The people who depend on Social Security the most will have less funds to count on.

I propose that Millionaires waive their right to collect Social Security. That would be the fastest and easiest way to save it. So what if there are fewer workers paying in once the Baby Boomers retire? If none of the Millionaire Boomers are collecting, because they’ve got plenty of personal investments already, then those people who really need it won’t have to worry about losing it.

Just when you thought that the negative campaign ads ended with the election, last week, Bush supporters went so far as to accuse the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) of opposing troops in Iraq and supporting gay marriage. It’s a smear campaign led by a conservative lobbying group called “USA Next” who plan to spend $10 million on commercials attacking the AARP because it opposes privatization.

In his first inaugural address in March 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR told us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. He also made it clear that we all have to help each other, because we’re all in this together:

“…We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good.”

Social Security was established because we felt a sense of social responsibility. Bush believes only in personal responsibility, in individual ownership, competition, and survival of the fittest (richest), the law of the jungle. So did the three Republican Presidents who preceded FDR-Harding, Coolidge and Hoover and it led to the Great Depression. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to invest Social Security in the stock market.