Mention of audit strikes fear in the heart

Want to boost someone’s blood pressure? Tell them they are slated for an audit. Nothing strikes fear in a person’s heart quite like the possibility of having an aspect of his/her life scrutinized. Not just kinda sorta scrutinized, but truly, madly, deeply scrutinized by someone deputized to live and die by the sharpened pencil.

Think about it. What kind of a person would dedicate him/herself to a life of auditing? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not someone warm and vivacious, driven by a desire to connect with and help others.

No, an auditor is the kind of person whose mother received a baby shower gift labeled “baby’s first fine-toothed comb.” An auditor is the one who approached his elementary safety patrol job with zealous glee and remains a gleeful zealot whenever he smells an error, like a pig uncovering a truffle.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) actually contains a section on audit personality disorder. Only they don’t call it that. It’s located somewhere between anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

While some people appear to be born auditors, nothing can fully prepare the rest of us for a lifetime of being audited, although school assessment tests like the MEAP come close. Just as State-testing-driven students cannot focus on the things they want to learn in school, organizations cannot focus on the areas they most need to while simultaneously kowtowing to excessive external controls.

I agree with the need for standards. Common sense measures are very important. But the superfluous ones have the power to obscure purpose by dominating rather than informing workplace practice. At a counseling agency where I worked, we feared we’d eventually have to stop seeing clients altogether to free up more time to prepare for our periodic accreditation audits.

Twenty years later, I wish this had changed, but it’s gotten worse. Not just at work, but everywhere. Being the lucky soul I am, in my personal life I recently got audited by both the state social work board and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), experiences I would not recommend to the faint-hearted or time-crunched.

The social work board sent me a letter denying credit for a 31-CEU (continuing education unit) class I had taken toward the required 45 CEUs I needed to maintain social work license. But they eventually saw it my way.

The folks at the IRS incorrectly amended my 2008 tax return, sent me a refund to which  I was not entitled (following my paying them what I calculated I owed), then reversed their stance six months later. They then blamed me for their errant accounting and demanded I pay back the refund amount plus interest, which I did as fast as I could collect and return enough soda bottles to make good my check.

Here, I reference a previous column where I said getting rid of my mailbox would save a lot of hassles. I’ve discovered clearing one’s name when one has done nothing wrong is more difficult than faking honesty when one is lying. I call this “Fugitive Syndrome.” Nothing makes you look like more of a liar than telling the truth. It’s one of life’s many ironies.

Why should only the working stiffs be subjected to audit fun? I’d like to see an audit of retired people. They could hold a drawing among early morning mall walkers and Wal-Mart greeters, with the winner’s personal finances subjected to intense scrutiny.

“Stanley, I see from your 1040 that you had lottery winnings. Just how often do you go to the casino and how much do you spend each trip? And while we’re on the subject of travel, you can’t deduct the mileage from your gambling trips as a health-related expense, even if does alleviate your depression.”

I don’t care how consistently Stanley dots his I’s and crosses his T’s, he’ll emerge cross-eyed from the exacting scrutiny of those who make a living making people squirm. But at least being retired, Stanley has a little more time than I did to mount a defense.

So, auditors, heed this plea: Stay off my case for a little while. Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with strychnine, I mean “saccharine,” on it.

Bracing myself for adult orthodontics

All three of my sisters wore braces as teenagers. My relatively straight teeth and I suffered vicariously with them, bearing witness to their pain, wincing at the orthodontist’s lectures when he found telltale remnants of forbidden gum on their wires, deflecting my mother’s rants about how their crooked teeth were sending our family to the poorhouse.

Weren’t we already in the poorhouse from me taking piano and riding lessons?! And just where did those crooked teeth come from, anyway? Whose genetic material was rearing its ugly, misaligned head? I served as my siblings’ Johnny Cochrane long before the O.J. case put him on the map and TV.

When not lecturing my sisters over their braces, my parents spent their days praising me for having naturally straight teeth like my dad’s. But I figured they owed me the approximately two grand they’d spent on each of my sister’s orthodontia. They simply couldn’t see things that way, no matter what I said.

As their luck had it, my teeth didn’t go bad until I was well on my own, in my late 30s. Despite having four wisdom teeth removed, my remaining pearlie not-so-whites remained crowded together tighter than sardines in a can.

After visiting my dentist for the upteenth time to have him remove ultra-waxed floss that had got stuck between teeth, I was desperate. So I made the mistake of inquiring what could be done. “Glad you asked,” he said, wagging the offending segment of floss he’d removed. “You’re a good candidate for adult braces.”

Braces? He had to be kidding. Nope. He told me the only hope for my crowded mouth was to cull a couple teeth from the herd and then use braces to re-space the whole lot. The entire process would take 15-18 months max. However, like most construction projects, it ended up taking three full years. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My employer’s generous dental policy would cover the bulk of it, now roughly double what my folks had paid for my siblings. The stars and planets had aligned for once. I snapped at the opportunity, an act still possible before being heavily wired and rubber-banded.

One catch, a home pregnancy test indicated I would not be going it alone. They had to hold off until I was in my second trimester for my son before they were willing to numb me to pull the teeth. It seemed strange to have a couple of perfectly good teeth pulled, but no stranger than being pregnant and wearing braces at age 36.

The orthodontist to whom my dentist referred me catered to kids. His office was not the somber digs of my siblings’ orthodontist, the serious Dr. Ponitz, who had also been the one to inflict braces upon my mother.

Dr. Bowman’s office was a multi-ring circus. Instead of the small, private examination rooms of most dental-related establishments, it featured a huge, open service bay “big top,” multiple orthodontic patients were simultaneously worked on by a colorful troop of technicians.

Let me preface my description of the office milieu with an empathic, “I’m not making up any of this.” In order to appeal to multiple tastes, every inch of the place was decorated in one of five busy themes: Autographed classic guitars, horror movies, NHL, NASCAR, and cat collectibles. All interspersed.

TVs playing music videos were suspended from the ceiling over each patient chair. And to ensure you weren’t simply visually assaulted, loud rock music continually pulsed from a surround sound system. As Ringmaster, Dr. Bowman lorded over it all, looking poised and fashion designer-like in tailored, gold chain-accentuated dark turtlenecks.

I was an orthodontic patient there through both pregnancies, secretly hoping my over-sized belly offended the hip technicians as much as their overly stimulating environment offended me. Connor and Kate kicked wildly in the womb during our visits, keeping time to the music.

Eight years later, while my teeth remain straight, I now have the opposite problem: They’re too far apart. But there’s no way I’m going back, unless it’s to take my kids. I’ll wait quietly in the lobby, checkbook in hand, poorhouse on my mind, eating my cotton candy and peanuts.

Why is it bad dogs seem to live forever

My dog Sousa just turned 15. We celebrated the momentous occasion by giving her a ham bone to gnaw on and putting her outside all day for the first time in spring. Perhaps you drove by and saw her on her tie-out, resting comfortably in the deep holes she has dug for herself under the shade of the maple tree whose root system she seems intent upon ruining.

We’ve had many good years with this versatile, still pretty healthy dog that was born from an accidental mating (registered Springer Spaniel with an English Shepherd). A circulatory defect discovered when I took her in to be spayed led to open heart surgery. She devoted her life afterward to making me grateful for my investment. Because she had to.

My kids insist Sousa’s living to age 15 is the equivalent of 105 in human years. It really is something, especially for a good dog. As the Billy Joel song title says, “Only the Good Die Young.” Good dogs have a tendency to die prematurely after bad things happen to them. Conversely, bad dogs hang around forever, usually in direct proportion to their level of worthlessness.

Take, for instance, the dog “Reilly,” who remains a blemish on our collective family memory. Part malamute, hound and God only knows what else, he was purchased by my father for use as a cow dog. It became painfully apparent early on the dog didn’t know sick ‘em and lacked the cranial space to learn it. My father obviously hadn’t been thinking, either.

Named after the annoying “Match Game” show celebrity panelist Charles Nelson Reilly, who also didn’t know when to shut up, Reilly barked incessantly. His claim to fame came the day we untied him and he cocked his leg and peed 57 times on the way down the lane to the lake. I can’t argue that we weren’t equally pathetic for counting, but he marked every fence post, light pole and large thistle!

Reilly’s one redeeming quality was if a person stood still for too long, his tiny mind classified them in the same category as fence posts, light poles and large thistles. We figured this out the day he yellowed the ankles of a neighbor kid during a backyard game of freeze tag. “Hey, your dog just peed on me!” he cried. And we knew we were onto something.

Reilly’s compulsive urination habit became a powerful secret weapon against the unwanted farm product salesmen who liked to stop by and interrupt my father’s work and sell him stuff he didn’t need. All we had to do was let Reilly loose. He would casually circle his prey a few times before swinging in to douse their pantlegs.

Reilly put many a commissioned sales dog out of commission with his patented, full-bladdered assaults. The salesmen were so wrapped up in their sales pitches they never saw him coming. Or should I say “going?”

One day my mom backed over Reilly with her car, as was her practice with family pets, ranging from cats to lambs. I’m sure she could have taken out a calf or small horse, too, given the opportunity and a vehicle higher off the ground.

If you assumed Reilly was no match for my mother’s careless driving, you would be wrong. Her reflexes must have been off that day because she only broke one of his legs. He hobbled around for a while, injured limb in a sling. His constant lifting of the leg proved excellent physical therapy. He healed in record time and was back rinsing the dust off stationary people’s shoes before you could say “Disgusting!”

Due to his level of worthlessness, Reilly lived on for a dozen more years, during which time we had the privilege on multiple occasions of watching him mistakenly pee on the electric fence and howl when it zapped him in the privates. You see, people had to find their own fun in the years before cable TV and the Internet.

Thirty years later, whenever someone talks about the dog days of summer, the image of Reilly and the electric fence still come to mind. If there’s a moral to his story, it’s this: Keep moving.

Lone woman who doesn’t use hair color

Sitting through a large, boring, work-related meeting the other day, I started looking around for something to do other than the usual counting of ceiling and floor tiles to keep myself from fidgeting.

That’s what I used to do in church when I was a kid. I would also count all the windows, light fixtures and candles, then cross my eyes and count them again to make sure there were twice as many. Other times, I would leaf through the hymnal, counting how often a word such as “Savior” appeared or look for typos in the bulletin.

I’ve never been much of a doodler, so I have to create other ways to occupy my mind. Ideally, I would darn socks and mend underwear to keep myself busy when I have to sit for too long. But I’m guessing that wouldn’t be as socially acceptable as my past practice of crocheting afghans to pass the time at baseball games.

So instead, I do mental surveys of how many people I think are wearing contact lenses and note whose ears are pierced, followed by higher level math activities calculating how many pounds by which the room, collectively, is overweight compared to the national average.

Those curiosities satiated that day, I began noting how many women had obviously colored or highlighted hair: Everyone but me. I realized I was onto something far more entertaining than determining the ratio of brown versus black shoes or laced versus slip-on footwear. What can I say? My time and mind are terrible things to waste with drawn-out meetings.

Hair color observation presented as many possibilities as the representative hair colors. It appealed to my obsessive-compulsive need to detect patterns, form theories and categorize results. In no time, I identified three distinct reasons why women color their hair: To cover up the gray or white, to add spice to natural color palates, and to make bored someones like me wonder what the heck they were thinking.

For every four good color jobs, a fifth is noticeably bad. One in 12 is incredibly bad. Reading this, you may wonder if you could be counted among the hair color casualties. Mercifully, you can’t know for certain, for unless a color job is outright awful, the mirror never conveys an accurate picture. So it’s okay to continue leaving the house.

It’s not like anyone is going to tell you, certainly not the hairdresser you paid all that money to for unnaturally horrifying results. But we all know bad color when we see it perched atop someone else’s head. Reading this, your mind raced to several women you know with “interesting” hair color. Admit it.

As a wordsmith who delights in naming things, I couldn’t help but generate titles for the hair colors I saw. It might have said “Light Ash Blonde” on the box, but the finished product looked more like “Don’t Take Me Seriously Bimbo Blonde.” Other colors I classified that day ranged from “Why Bother Brown” to “Unrealistic Red” to an oddity I termed “Uncivil War Against Aging” which is a drab gray cover-up strategy that ends up blue-tinted. You know that of which I speak.

I’m sure someone during that same meeting was checking out my nondescript hair, wondering why I don’t do something to it, probably thinking, “Her mop could sure use some highlights.” It’s human nature to want to groom the other monkeys around you.

So why don’t I color my hair? I used to. When hair frosting was big in the late 1970s, my mother frosted my eighth grade head. It turned out so badly, she went out and bought a box of color to return it to its natural blonde state. I soon found myself a passenger (more like a hostage) on the perpetually southbound hair coloring train. As with leg shaving, once you start hair coloring, you just can’t stop.

Fortunately, my grandma Kate, who had helped me color my hair, eventually refused to continue as my accomplice in this crime against nature. “It’s not your hair, it’s your self-image that’s off track,” she said. With locomotive speed, I tore up my ticket for the Neutral Golden Blonde passenger section. Ride over!

Self-forgiveness the hardest kind to give

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and re-thinking about guilt. I’m not sure if it’s the books I’ve been reading, the Easter messages I have been hearing, or the discussions I have been having that’s triggering it.

A co-worker shared how disgusted she was with herself that she’d been putting off something she should have taken care of months ago. The more she thought about how pathetic her procrastination made her, the more she seemed to buy into the patheticism, making her even more pathetic and helpless to do anything about her situation.

This is the same woman, mind you, who cuts the rest of us slack for our shortcomings and forgives our foibles. When I’m down, I can always count on her for encouragement and a renewed perspective pep-talk. But if she ever talked to me the way she talks to herself, I would stop looking to her for help re-charging my spirit.

Sometimes we seem to genuinely need to feel bad about ourselves. When I hit myself emotionally with the equivalent of a rolled up newspaper, I mistakenly believe I’m insuring that I won’t screw up again. Which, of course, I will. That newspaper metaphor is why it’s called “dogging yourself out.”

But I usually self-flagellate most rabidly when I’ve committed an offense I’m unlikely to duplicate. So there’s really no need for my stern self-talking-to and rubbing my nose in it. Actually, the heavy-duty self-recrimination would be better reserved for my more consistent goofs and the character flaws I never seem to entirely eradicate.

I’m not alone in my self-reproach. It’s pretty universal. Even Mother Theresa must have had an occasional finger-wagging self-talk. Did she accuse herself of selfishness or stupidity? Was Gandhi unconditionally accepting of his faults? When we ask “What would Jesus do?” it’s typically in reference to his dealings with other people, not necessarily himself. So it’s hard to know how often he felt the need to kick himself in the seat of the pants before confessing to his Father.

Growing up Catholic, I never much cared for confession. Well, I liked it as much as the next kid who’d been dragged somewhere against her will, threatened with grounding and shoved into a small booth for the purpose of having a soul-revealing chat with a religious authority figure wearing a flowing robe and funny hat.

Why? Because we’re all sinners, whatever that meant. Not exactly the “come to Jesus” moment my mother thought she’d orchestrated.

For confession purposes, I’d come up with some lame personal shortcoming involving an activity I had the audacity to guiltily enjoy. Like making up scary stories about creatures such as bedroom closet wolves and nocturnal floor spiders to frighten my older sister to the point she would (hopefully) be too scared to get up and use the bathroom during the night and thus lose sleep from her full bladder. Or better yet, wet the bed.

The priest would respond that while he didn’t think these kinds of behaviors were definite signs I was cruising straight down the road Hell, they nevertheless could be considered speedbumps along the route. And I might want to consider taking a slightly different path if I wanted to end up somewhere else.

What did I learn from this experience? If I were selling this kind of confession to my kids, I would bill it as an opportunity to unburden themselves, and who doesn’t need to occasionally take a load off? I would encourage them to share what’s weighing most heavily on their hearts and preventing them from feeling good about themselves and contributing more to the world. And I’d mention someone died to buy them second chances.

Perhaps this is the value of formal confessions and penance. They purge us of a debilitating sense of unworthiness and validate us when we feel less than human, enabling us to move forward again beyond self-perpetuated paralysis.

Fortunately, I now know there’s another, more direct route for these confessions. I can go straight to the top and speak to the priest’s supervisor. The REALLY big man, Himself. Any time I feel the need. No waiting in line. And if He can forgive me, maybe I should, too.