My Question of the Day: If it would help you understand the opposite gender better, would you be willing to switch from being a woman to a man or a man to a woman for a week to gain this knowledge?

(someone sent me this question several months ago, but I can’t recall who it is; please remind me if this is your question and I’ll make certain to give you credit; thanks!)

My 2 Cents: I had to give this one some serious thought.

I’m going to have to say no. Switching genders for a week would not be an option for me.

I don’t think that’s enough time to really understand what it is to be a man. Being the gender you are is so complex that it would definitely take much more than seven days to really understand the opposite gender.

The question makes me think of John Howard Griffin, the author of Black Like Me. Mr. Griffin wrote a book about his experiences of becoming a black man in the Deep South during Jim Crow rule (the 1950s).

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

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1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

My Question of the Day: Children learn to speak based on what they hear people saying around them. It’s one of the reasons a parent and/or parents will hire a caregiver who speaks a different language, so the child(ren) can be fluent in his/her/their native tongue and another almost from birth. With that in mind, at what age should we stop using “baby talk” with children?

My 2 Cents: I’m not a parent, but I’ve provided supervisor for other people’s children, and baby talk was out of the question for me.

Even if the parent(s) did it, I never did.

Children are sponges when it comes to information, and they often mimic adult speech. Speak to them properly, and they’ll learn to speak properly.

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

My Question of the Day: Social media has truly changed the way we interact and engage. Facebook, in particular, has reconnected us with people we haven’t seen and/or heard from in years. With that in mind, what has been your most amazing reconnection through Facebook or any other social media tool that you’ve used?

My 2 Cents: I’ve made two amazing reconnections through Facebook.

1) When I was nine, my family moved from Arkansas to Oklahoma. When I was 39, my parents moved back from Oklahoma to Arkansas and built their retirement home on the land they’ve own since our family left Arkansas.

I went to school with a boy named Marvin Jordan up until my family moved away, and we considered ourselves girlfriend/boyfriend. I put his name in Facebook search, and he popped up right away. He looks exactly the same as he did when I last saw him at the age of nine. When I asked him if he remembered me, he wrote back and said, “Yes, you were my girlfriend before you moved away.”

That was so thrilling!

2) I have a friend from high school who I’d wondered about over the last 20-some-odd years. When I went home for my 20-year hish school reunion in 2007, I was hoping to see her there, but she didn’t show up.

Again, using Facebook, I did a search for Shelly West. She popped up and it showed her living in the same area as me. I sent her a note and she was happy to hear from me, too.

We got to going back and forth through messages on Facebook, and we discovered that we’d been working in the same building for the last two years, two floors apart and never ran into each other.

A couple of days later, we got together in her office and had a blast of a catch-up session!

It was amazing!

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

My Question of the Day: You have a good friend or relative who is determined to enter a competition to do something for which s/he totally has no talent. For years, you and so many others have tried to tell this person that this particular thing just isn’t his/her “cup of tea,” but s/he is absolutely determined to enter a competition that will expose him/her to the criticism of thousands of people. What do you do?

My 2 Cents: You can’t save a person who doesn’t want to be saved. I would make one, last attempt to ask him/her to think about what s/he is getting in to, and then I’d let it happen.

In the end, I’d be there to support him/her. I’m no talent scout, s/he may have the spark that someone else will see and know how to hone, so my good friend or relative can realize his/her dream. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

———-

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

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