Accidental Felon

I'm thinking about changing the name of my blog to The Accidental Felon. I keep breaking the law, sort of accidentally, and just barely missing being sent to the Big House.

You might remember that I blogged about my experiences on jury duty a couple of years ago. Well, apparently, that was a Gigantic Potentially Felonious Mistake (GPFM). Even though I did not give away any details about the case, and did not consult any outside sources, once the case was over, the defense used my blog as one of their reasons for appeal. They wanted to interview the jurors to see if my blogging had in any way tainted them. The judge said no. They appealed, and the appeals court said no.

I got a call from a reporter at the Chicago Tribune wanting to talk to me about the case and my blog. I said, sure, dude, just call me back over my lunch hour. Meanwhile, being completely ignorant about what had been happening on the case, I started googling it.

Holy friggin' crap. I discovered my name and the name of my blog and quotes from my blog in the appeals court documents. They used words like "juror misconduct" and "tainted" and "contempt." I immediately called a friend of mine who is a lawyer, and said, Perry Mason, I think I might be in trouble. I explained the sitch to him, and he said, "Do not talk to any reporters. Do not talk about the case. Do not mention my name. Just shut up." He also told me that, had the judge found out about the blogging during the case, he could have cited me for contempt and tossed me in the clink for six months without a trial. "You put your fellow jurors at risk," he said ominously.

Crap.

The story appeared in the Trib that weekend. "E. Peevie, freelance writer and mother of three, ..." it read--only it was my real name, thank you very much.

A couple of weeks later, I got a direct message on Twitter from Channel Five asking me to call or email Phil Rogers. I ignored it. The next day, they DMed me again, saying that Phil wanted to talk to me about the Metra case. I ignored it. Perry Mason would have been proud.

But then I got a phone call on my office phone from...wait for it...Phil Rogers. "E. Peevie," he said in a friendly voice, "This is Phil Rogers from Channel Five News. I've been trying to reach you."

"Um, yeah, Phil, I know who you are. I can't talk to you."

 

"Well," he said, "I'm doing a story on the Metra case, and I'm going to be mentioning your name and talking about your blog, and I wanted to give you a chance to respond."

"Thank you," I said. "You've given me a chance to respond, and I have declined it. I can't talk to you."

 

"But E. Peevie," he said, "We both went to Oklahoma State! Isn't that worth something? I just want to ask you a few questions." He had done his homework.

"Yeah," I said, "I knew that. But I still can't talk to you."

 

He asked me a couple more questions which I declined to answer, and finally I steeled myself to do the right thing. "I don't like to be rude, Phil," I said, "But I am going to have to hang up on you now." And I did. Perry Mason reminded me later that I should have just said "No comment" and hung up.

That night, on the five o'clock news, there was my giant face on the small blue screen. They had taken my photo from my Twitter account--which BTW is not a lovely photo AT ALL--and attached it to the story. And they showed still shots of my blog, and highlighted key portions where I had written about the trial. My friend Phil Rogers used phrases like "in defiance of a judge's admonitions not to discuss the case."

It went to the Supreme Court of Illinois, who thankfully decided that my blogging did not influence the outcome of the case.

Now that the Supremes have finished exonerating me, I am finally able to say that there was no intentional defiance or contempt. I thought I was being very careful to obey the judge's instructions--I was not discussing the case, just writing in general terms. Phil Rogers inaccurately said that I discussed specific testimony--but I only discussed the effect of the testimony on the witness, and did not quote specific testimony on the blog.

I am a story-teller, and I told a story. Yes, it's true that we occasionally lapsed into very brief discussions of the case while we were in the jury room--but every time, one of us would remind the group that we were not supposed to be doing it, and we stopped. I am confident that this happens in every single trial--and most importantly, my blog described it, but did not cause it.

And guess what? Sometime after the verdict against Metra was reached, the instructions that judges give to jurors were revised to include specific references to social media. That tells me that they are admitting that their instructions were previously inadequate. (My friend Officer Friendly likes to call this The Peevie Rule. I am not amused.)

I guess the state won't be calling me to jury duty again any time soon. Rats.

Young Sociopaths Next Door, Part 2

So, I was telling you about the pre-pubescent sociopaths next door, BUT.  There is more.

"Mom," A. Peevie said, "Curly (formely known as A.Boy) took C.Peevie's game and M.Peevie's game, and he won't give them back."

I am starting to get tired of conversations that begin with, "Curly took..." or "Curly did..." or "Curly said..."

"How do you know Curly took them, A. Peevie?" I asked.

I just know, he insisted, so I suggested that he tell C. Peevie and M. Peevie to go to Curly and ask for the games back.  Less than an hour later, he was back.

"Mom," A. Peevie said, his eyebrows crawling toward each other other below a line of worry on his forehead, "Curly gave the games back." 

"Well, that's good, right?" I said.

"Not exactly," he said. "He said he found them in the grass.  He lied, Mom. He stole them, and then he lied about finding them in the grass."  The heartbreak of betrayal and disillusionment spread across A. Peevie's face.  Again.

"Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute," I said.  "He said he found BOTH games outside in the grass?"  That was enough to trigger my inner closer, and I headed over to confront the little miscreant.  He was standing on his porch next to his mother.

"Curly," I said, trying not to sound like a Guantanamo interrogator, "A. Peevie told me that we were missing two DS games, and that you found them in the grass.  Is that right?"

"Uh huh," he agreed, looking away.

"Curly, look at my eyes," I said, "C. Peevie's game was missing, and you found it in the grass.  M. Peevie's game was missing and you found it in the grass.  You're telling me you found two game boy games in the grass?"

He looked into my eyes briefly, but couldn't hold his gaze there. "Yeah," he said, unconvincingly.

"Where did you find them?" I asked him, figuring that the more lies he had to tell, the easier it would be to trip him up.

It didn't work.  "I found one over there by the street, but in the grass," he said, still not making eye contact, and pointing to the curb, "and the other one here, by the garden."

"Hmmm," I said.  I looked at him.  He glanced at me, and looked away.  "Curly, are you sure you didn't borrow the games without asking, and then you said you found them in the grass because you wanted to give them back?"

"No," he said.  "I didn't borrow them."

"OK," I said.  I was out of gas, and my career as an interrogator was going down the toilet.  But then his mom saved me.

"What do you say, Curly?" she asked him.  I was a little taken aback.  Why did she ask that question?  But Curly fell into her inadvertent trap.

"Sorry," he said softly, looking at his shoes.

"What are you sorry for, Curly?" I said, my new career back on track.  "Are you sorry that you borrowed the games without asking?  If you tell me the truth, I won't be angry with you."  Well, ironically, that last bit was sort of a lie.

"Yes," he admitted.  Then we had a little conversation about not "borrowing" things without asking, and about if you do something wrong, you just make it worse if you lie about it.  The fact that Curly could barely make eye contact during the whole conversation is a good sign, I think.  Perhaps he is not (yet) a sociopath.  But his mom better start taking this stuff seriously, or he is going to end up in jail whether he is a sociopath or not.

The most disturbing thing about this whole situation is that Mom was sitting there the whole time, and even at the end, she never said anything to me about her son stealing our stuff and then lying about it; and as far as I know, she never gave him any consequences for his antisocial behaviors.

And now I wonder if C. Peevie's mysteriously missing $80 baseball glove is upstairs in Curly's room.

Emotional Maturity

The other day I posted a hilarious (to me) true story about a conversation between C. Peevie and myself. Mr. Peevie mentioned it at dinner, and before long we were all laughing and joking about hair cancer.

"It's not funny!" C. Peevie. Long beat. "People are dying."*

*"People are dying" is what the drunk lady said to C. Peevie and his peeps when they were joking around on the El. It has become a Peevie household catchphrase.

"I can't believe you put that in your blog!" C. Peevie continued. "You are NOT going to heaven."

Later, C. Peevie and I were sitting on the couch. "I'm mad about your blog post," he said.

"Really?" I asked, cluelessly. "Why?"

"Because now everyone is going to think I'm really stupid," he said. "I was kidding when I said 'hair cancer.'"

"Sweetie," I said, "No one who knows you thinks you're dumb. And the other four people who read my blog don't matter."

"Well, I don't like it," he said. "It really made me mad." I looked at him. He was serious. I knew I had blown it.

"Honey," I said carefully, "I'm sorry. I invaded your privacy by writing about our conversation, and I'm sorry. I'll take the whole post down if you want, or I'll put in a disclaimer that says you were kidding about hair cancer. I'm really sorry." I believe that sincere apologies should include the words "I'm sorry" at least three times, plus offer a real fix.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, but didn't say anything. "C. Peevie," I said, "I'll make it right, and I won't do it again. Do you want me to take the post down? Or," I suggested, thinking win-win, "you could leave a comment."

He said he'd think about it, but that I didn't need to delete the post. I promised that I would do better at respecting his privacy from now on, and would only post about him with his permission. This might seriously curtail my blogging material, but it's worth it to remain on speaking terms with my teenager.

Meanwhile, how about the emotional maturity of that boy? Only 14 years old, and yet able to come to me, express his feelings when I have seriously offended him, and work toward reconciliation and mutually acceptable boundaries. I have known since he was very little that he is gifted with an emotional intelligence quotient greater than that of most adults, but this awareness and maturity still have the power to astonish me.

C. Peevie is my hero.

The Santa Question, Revisited

When your kid believes in Santa, how do you deal with her inevitable encounters with the testimony of doubters and disbelievers?

Yesterday at school, a mom approached me and asked if M. Peevie still believed in Santa Claus. I told her no.

"She's been telling the little kids that Santa's not real," Mom of Little Kid (MLK) said.

"Oh," I said, feeling a little, but not a lot, guilty. "She shouldn't do that."

"Yes, I know," MLK said. "I thought I'd talk to you about it since I saw you here." And what? And then I can cast my forgetting spell so that the younger kids will have no memory of what she told them? And then I can tell M. Peevie (again) to be very careful not to talk about her mature belief system in front of the still-deluded?

MLK continued, "Yeah, my kids were telling me that a big kid at school was going around saying that Santa wasn't real, so we got the yearbook out and went through all the pictures to see who it was, and they pointed to M. Peevie."

Sooooo, you didn't just happen to see me and decide to have a little conversation about it; in fact, you spent time doing research to figure out which ill-mannered child had crossed the Santa boundary, planning to accost the bad parent who obviously neglected her parental duty to strictly instruct M. Peevie to keep the Santa Secret on penalty of...of...of something really bad.

OK, I'm probably overthinking this. But still. Instead of talking to me about my daughter's big mouth, shouldn't you be talking to your child, who will continue to encounter opinions, stories, and data that contradict her fond, innocent fantasy? Isn't it part of your job as her parent to help her make sense of her world? Surely M. Peevie isn't the only third-grader who has made the intellectual transition to reluctant realism.

Here's the real kicker: when I talked to M. Peevie, and asked her to please use discretion about her Santa skepticism around the younger kids, she told me that one of the playground moms had already had that same conversation with her. Wait, what? Really? This bugged me more than MLK having her kids pick M. Peevie out of a grade-school line-up. I asked her to tell me what happened.

"The little kids were talking about Santa," M. Peevie said. "Playground Kid asked me if I believed in Santa."

"What did you say, M.?" I asked.

"I said, 'No, I don't believe in Santa because he's not real'," she said simply. "And then Playground Mom talked to me and told me I shouldn't say that."

"What else did she say?" I asked, irritated. "Did she think you should lie to Playground Kid?"

"No," M. Peevie said. "She told me what I could say instead of saying that Santa wasn't real."

"Like what?" I asked.

"I can't remember," M. Peevie said. And this is exactly the reason that adults should not put it on a nine-year-old to protect their children's Santa-believing innocence: because she's been taught to tell the truth. Even though she doesn't exactly have to lie to avoid telling the painful truth, she would have to behave, think, and respond in a way that is beyond the mental and emotional capacity of many adults, let alone a third-grader, in order to avoid giving a direct and truthful answer. It's not fair to her.

Ironically, on the way home from school today, A. Peevie, who just turned 12, asked me if Santa was real.

"What do you think, A.?" I dissimulated, as I usually do when confronted with direct questions about the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and any other childhood larger-than-life fantasy figures. In fact, it's exactly what I did last year when he asked.

A. Peevie did not bite. "I don't know, Mom," he said. "That's why I'm asking you."

"He's not really real," M. Peevie asserted, and A. Peevie quickly and peevedly cut her off: "I'm not asking you! I'm asking mom."

"Well, A.," I said slowly. "I like to believe in Santa."

"That's not really an answer, mom," A. Peevie observed accurately. "Is he real, or not?"

"Hmm," I said, stalling for time. "Well, don't you think you're kind of Santa, when you give a gift to someone?"

"Um, no," he said. "No, I do not think I'm Santa. Is he real?"

"A.," I said, "Do you really want to know the truth?"

"Yes," he said, sadly, "Even though I think I already do."

"Yeah, I think you already do, too," I said. "But in a way, he's real, because he's an idea, a symbol of giving and generosity. He reminds us that God gave us the best gift of all, Jesus."

"So he's not real," A. Peevie concluded, and sighed a huge sigh of sorrow.

"Does that make you sad, A?" I asked.

He slumped in his seat and looked out the car window at the twinkling holiday lights flashing by. "Yes," he said; and then he was quiet the rest of the way home.

M. Peevie chimed in again, remembering our conversation about The Santa Question from a year ago. "When mommy told me that Santa wasn't real, I cried and cried," she said.

Sigh.

Creepy, or Just Me?

A boyfriend from eons ago--let's call him David McCall--contacted me through LinkedIn. He used his American name and had shortened his long Middle Eastern last name to a less ethnic-sounding name. He was ostensibly looking for an editor for an engineering report and his resume. I wondered who the guy was, and why was he asking for rates from a writer in Chicago when writers in LA are a dime a dozen.

Then I put two and two together: the first name, the still-recognizable last name, the engineering specialty, the LA location, and most importantly, the LinkedIn connection through the university we both attended--and I figured out who he was. But why the sneakiness? Why contact me as a potential client instead of coming right out and saying, hey, it's me, how the heck are you?

It felt sneaky and manipulative to me, so I did not respond.

The next day, I had another email from David McCall--this time using his full name instead of the Americanized version. This time he was straight up, re-introducing himself, asking about my parents and siblings, and hoping to get re-connected. He also mentioned the engineering report--but I still think it's a smokescreen, a way for him to say how he found me without saying he was looking specifically for me.

I don't know--maybe I'm a little too optimistic about my own attractiveness. But hey, who wouldn't want to hook up with me? I might be a middle-aged, overweight, mildly depressed, unemployed, happily married mother of three above-average-but-incredibly-loud children, but I do have great hair and a killer sense of humor.

But since he was honest, and since I was impressed that he remembered my parents names and the names of all my siblings 20 years later, I responded to his email with an email of my own. I was friendly, but not too friendly, and included details about my perfect family and my deliriously happy marriage, so that there would be no misunderstanding about my intentions.

(Listen to me. I really do have an inflated sense of self-worth, don't I? Like if I'm not careful, every man on the planet who once vaguely knew me would be knocking on my door if I wasn't clear enough about my lack of availability. I crack my own self up.)

When David M. wrote back, I was immensely relieved to find out that he was married, with two very young children. I thought, finally, he's reached a happy, healthy place. (Early on in my marriage, this guy would call me once every four or five years, and tell me yukky stories about his pathetic lonely life and tell me I was still his best friend; and I could not wait to get off the phone. I was happy when he finally stopped calling after about ten years.)

Anyway, I started regretting accepting his friend invitation on LinkedIn when he called me on my cell phone one afternoon shortly thereafter. On my cell phone--after no contact for almost 20 years! My own parents don't call me on my cell phone! Where the hell did he get the number? I wondered-- and then I realized: it's on my email signature line. I gave it to him myself.

And here's the weird part: I picked up the call because the number had a 773 area code--the area code of my part of Chicago. I thought it was going to be a neighbor or a friend, and when I heard this voice from my past, I was flustered, creeped out, and probably rude. I told him I couldn't talk and to call back later. My stomach was still churning hours later--but that might just have been the tuna I had for lunch.

How and why was he calling from a 773 area code? Does he have some kind of magical re-routing software to hide the origins of his calls? It's very 24--and again, this felt slightly manipulative to me.

Later I found that he had emailed me again, requesting my parents' phone number because, he said, "I miss them." My parents. He misses them. Oh, and he asked again for a quote on revising his resume. Doing his resume will require talking to him on the phone for about an hour, and frankly, I don't really want that kind of contact with an old boyfriend who got a little too clingy after our relationship was over. I didn't respond.

About a week later, I got another email from him alleging that that he had heard about the shooting at a church in Illinois and was worried about my family's safety. Again, a little disingenuous. David McCall knows I live in Chicago, and the shooting was nowhere near Chicago. He asked again for my parents phone number.

I wrote back, curtly told him yes, we were fine, and said that I'd need to check with my parents first before giving out their phone number. I never did get back to him with the phone number, or with a quote on his resume. I should have emailed him and just told him it made me uncomfortable--but I didn't.

This week, a month later, I got another kind of weird and freaky email from him, written all in the third person about a man who happened to be surfing the internet looking for a technical writer when he happened upon the profile of a writer who turned out to be his old friend. He even mentioned the earlier calls from 15 - 20 years ago, and specified that he had no ulterior motive, "particularly after knowing that his friend is also happily married."

Doesn't that clause imply that if his friend were not happily married, that there might have been an ulterior motive? I wonder what his wife thinks about that.

His email continued,

"The man kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a response from the writer, but for some odd reason, the writer never, ever bothered to get back to the old friend...Was it right for the friend just to put off the man and deny his friendship? Probably not. The good book says the following..."

--and then quotes three Bible verses, including this one from Job: "My relatives and my close friends have failed me." He asked me--in the third person still--to delete everything he sent me.

He visited my blog at least four times the first week that he contacted me--but I don't know if he still comes by The Green Room. He might be reading this right now and thinking, hey, what a bitch! Or perhaps it will give him a clue about normal social boundaries. Part of me is thinking, how does he have time for all this, with two very young kids and a wife and a big-ass engineering job? I can barely get a blog post written once a week even though I have no clients and my kids are in school all day!

The more I think about it, the more irritated I am that this person has any expectations of me at all, let alone has the nerve to send me an angry, manipulative email quoting the Bible at me! It's exactly this kind of response that confirms for me that my instincts were correct.

I'm probably I'm not being very Jesusy here, but at this point, I don't even know what Jesus wants me to do about this.

Is it creepy, or is it just me?

I Got Your Enrichment Right Here

Prepare to be shocked and appalled. Ready?

Remember Mrs. Sheets? We were discussing M. Peevie's educational plan with the principal and the second grade teacher. During the discussion, Mrs. Sheets actually said, "M. Peevie is not unique." Oh, M. Peevie is bright, she agreed--but there are several other very bright kids in her class.

What kind of a teacher says something like that to a mother? Oh, hey, I know! One that is completely without the common sense she was born with. She might as well hand me a note that says, "Would you mind very much kicking my ass? I am dying to have you knock me to the ground and stomp on my trachea."

Mrs. Sheets--wait; you know what? I'm going to give her an honorary Ph.D. She's now Dr. Sheets.

So Dr. Sheets also said, "We don't want M. Peevie going around thinking that Mrs. MiPi doesn't have anything to offer her, or that she's too good for second grade, so please stop giving her these messages." Oh yes, she did. Because she has personally heard me telling M. Peevie to disrespect her second grade teacher.

I'm not even done yet. This one will make you shudder at the sheer audacity of it. At one point, Dr. Sheets said, with mind-boggling arrogance, "It's fine for us to talk here in this room about how to keep M. Peevie challenged, but these are not things that you should be talking to her about."

Yes, indeedy. She was telling me what I could and could not talk to my daughter about. And you all know how I feel about That Uncrossable Boundary.

I did not respond well in the pressure of the moment. I did not call Dr. Sheets on even one of the unbelievably insensitive things she said. I nodded my head, and once or twice I said something defensive.

I wish I could go back and script a witty, articulate, and pointed--yet Christianly appropriate--response that would have her realizing her clumsy insensitivity and humbly asking my forgiveness. (What I should wish for is the desire to forgive her, the desire to show her mercy. Give me a day or two.)

But what I will do is ask Mrs. MiPi to limit M. Peevie's interaction with Dr. Sheets, because I do not trust her. We will do just fine without enrichment, thank you very much.

Dr. Peevie on Healthy Boundaries

Everywhere I go, I see/hear/read about people having trouble with boundaries. It seems that for many people personal boundaries end up trampled in the dirt under the feet of other people's expectations. A lot of times setting a personal boundary means saying "no." And almost always, not setting appropriate personal boundaries brings unnecessary feelings of responsibility, stress, and guilt.

Feelings of responsibility, stress, and guilt are important in all relationships; and when they come from appropriate situations, they help us remember to treat people with kindness and respect--just the way we want to be treated.

But when those feelings arise from inappropriate situations, or a lack of appropriate and healthy boundaries, they are not helpful. They hurt our relationships, and they hurt our own emotional and mental health.

Before I go any further in our boundaries workshop, let me first acknowledge that I am just as emotionally unhealthy as the next person, and frequently moreso. I'm often depressed, moody, and hot-tempered. I am sometimes a martyr, and sometimes I'm just plain selfish and lazy. There's a whole bunch more, but I'm starting to feel bad about myself now, so I'll leave it at that. You get my point.

But boundaries, for some reason, I get. Maybe it's because my best friend is a therapist.

I was reading a blog written by a mom who was uncomfortable telling her child not to do something that other nearby parents were letting their kids do--because she didn't want the other parents to think she was judging them.

Call me rude or insensitive, but I would have no problem at all saying, "M. Peevie, do not climb that tree,' even if the other parents within earshot were letting their kids climb it. So the other parent thinks I'm too strict? Don't care. So the other parent thinks I'm judging her? Unfortunate, but not my problem. (I might actually be judging her, but not out loud.)


I am especially particular about boundaries in the parenting arena. I do not want other people parenting my children unless I or Mr. Peevie have turned over direct or implied responsibility. For example, if we're at your house, and you see my toddler approaching your irreplaceable collection of Lladro sculptures, I totally understand that you might want to step in front of her and redirect her. (Of course, an even better option might be to ask me to redirect her--but sometimes a situation calls for urgent action!)

But if I'm at the grocery store with my hand on the back of my child who is standing up in the cart, I do not appreciate the pimply grocery clerk telling my child to sit down because he might get hurt. I will be responsible for protecting him, thank you very much, person-who-is-making-minimum-wage-and-is-not-even-close-to-getting-laid-let-alone-becoming-a-parent. If you absolutely must insist that the child be seated in the cart, then please direct your instructions to me, but NOT to my child.

Here's another example: My friend Josephine helped her SIL plan and execute her wedding, and she was telling us about all the stress she had felt during the process. A lot of the stress was caused by the bride not being willing or able to make decisions, and as the wedding approached, major items on the plan-your-perfect-wedding checklist remained unchecked. Like the music at the reception, for example. And the flowers.

I felt bad for my friend because she had experienced such a stressful time. But at the same time, I did not really understand why she felt so much stress about a wedding that was not her own. Her SIL was making choices (or NOT making choices) that would have an impact on her own wedding, and the outcome was not only out of Josephine's control, but also not her responsibility. I understood that she wanted to help her SIL--but I could not understand desiring to help someone so much that their own negligence would cause me to feel stress.

So I said this to Josephine, and asked her why she felt so much stress. She said, "Because I care about my SIL, and I wanted her to have a really great wedding." OK--I get that. But again, isn't it possible to care for someone and want the best for them, but also to step back and let them bear the responsibility for their own choices?

In other words, under those circumstances, aren't you making a choice to feel stress about something that is out of your control? And why would you make that choice? Why would you choose to add unnecessary stress to your life?

One place where I'm not as good at setting boundaries as I'd like to be is with my parents. For some reason, I often let them suck me into arguments about theology or politics, and those discussions sometimes leave me feeling beat up. A person should be able to express opinions without being emotionally filleted--but in my family, if you step outside of certain lines, you better be wearing body armor.

I know I'm simplifying things a bit too much. But let's have a conversation about boundaries. Are you good at setting them? Have you set boundaries that people don't seem to get, or constantly try to erode? Do you worry too much about other people's feelings, at the expense of your own mental health?