Queen Bee, I Love You: Lessons from an Estate Sale

Today we have a GUEST POST from my good friend Kevin Roberts! Kevin's writing always  has me laughing out loud and THINKING, something that few authors have the ability to make me do. Today's writing was a bit of a departure from Kevin's usual subjects, as he is an expert in ADHD and cyber addiction. You can find his two books HERE and HERE , and be on the lookout for his newest title: "Schindler's Gift: How One Man Harnessed ADHD to Change the World," coming out soon! Also, if you're so inclined, please join Kevin and I over at his Facebook Group: "Navigating Life and Laughter With Your Unique Learner," where parents of different learners come together to share tips, encouragement and learn about navigating life's ups and downs from Kevin, with humor. I'm happy that Kevin wanted to stop by How Bourgeois, and I hope you are too! 

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Queen Bee, I Love You: Lessons from an Estate Sale.

I love estate sales. I used to love them even more than I do now, but television shows like American Pickers have, I think, contributed to estate sale companies feeling license to charge excessive, nigh exorbitant, prices.  Every item is portrayed as precious. Any item, estate sale agents maintain, is a potential objet d’art from some obscure artist, or from a “limited” collection.  

“Why is this Chinese terracotta statue seven-hundred dollars?” I asked the sale worker whose nametag said Marge. “Oh that’s an antique straight from China,” she replied. She did not know that I had purchased the exact same 26-inch statue at an estate sale the week before for $25. It had been priced at $100, but I made my purchase at 3:56PM, four minutes before the sale ended, and so the 75% markdown was in effect.  

I asked Marge how she knew it was a valuable and rare antique. She said she didn’t know and shunted me over to the woman who was presumably in charge. “That statue comes from north of Beijing,” the estate sale Queen Bee, who did not wear a name tag, told me. “Such large statues are quite rare. Do you notice the dusty patina on the base?” She used the word “patina,” so she must know what she’s talking about, right? I am sure most people do not vocally confront such absurd lies, but I hate fraud. I hate it so much that when I get calls from scam artists telling me I need to pay a $200 processing fee so I can get my $8600 rebate from the U.S. Grant Department, I keep the fraudster on the phone as long as possible, operating under the belief that by talking to me they are not talking to someone who might actually believe the scam. I see myself as a fraud interrupter. I see it as my civic duty and if I were independently wealthy I would form a vigilante brigade to track down these miserable human beings. Since such scams [LINK to this news story:  http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/indian-police-arrest-70-targeting-americans-tax-scam-42608520] lately are making victims call another number for verification, I go so far as to post those numbers on Facebook, inviting my friends to call and tie up the lines.  I do what I can. 

So, standing in the middle of a busy estate sale, I was not going to let the Queen Bee get away with such an egregious lie. I informed her that I had the week before purchased the exact same statue for $25. “I’m sure it was not of the same period and quality.” I showed her the picture on my phone. Unable to deny the apparent exactitude between the two statues, she tried to spin away the situation: “I’m sure that yours is a good replica, but our statue is the real thing.” I responded to this baseless assertion with a question: “How do you know? What research leads you to that conclusion?” She replied, “Experience, experience, experience.” I followed up, “What does it mean that it is the real thing?

The slight grimace on her face betrayed her growing anger, though she kept up a forced smile the whole time. Customers milling around had begun to listen in. “I know what it is,” she insisted, “because I have been in this business for twenty years, and I know a fake from the real thing.”  Undeterred by her bereft-of-evidence declaration, I inquired further: “What exact features of this statue leads you to believe it is a valuable antique worth seven-hundred dollars?”

She reacted to this question with an anticipatory smugness, a slightly evil smile that to me suggested she thought she was about to win the debate. “Do you see the patina on the base?” she rhetorically asked. “That’s clearly the mark of an older item.”

“Mine has that too,” I replied. “Let me blow up the picture here so you can see.” Exasperated, she turned away, refused to look at the picture, and simply maintained her expertise: “I am a professional and you are not. If you want to spend money on forgeries, that’s your problem. The price is seven-hundred dollars.” She said nothing more, but I noticed that most of the other customers had lost their appetite for buying. The whiff in the air of fraud understandably scared them away.

I felt dirty as I stood there, however. I knew I was not guilty of fraud, but I was a part of that whole scene, and I, like perhaps most of the customers who had decided to stop by, made the scene possible. We were all looking for a bargain for an item that could help make our homes unique, distinctive, or more interesting. Most estate sale mavens also delight in the quest of it all. As I look deep inside myself, I believe that I go to estate sales because I have this treasure hunter instinct. My friend Lauren Stein and I talk frequently about this impulse. Lauren, for example, loves to explore with her metal detector. She likes to probe through her yard and discover traces of the past. She gets excited if she finds an old button or even some ancient trash heap. “What people threw away,” Lauren is fond of saying, “tells you a lot about how they lived.” I guess that Lauren and I are, at our core, adventurers.  Metal detecting and estate sale-ing give us an outlet for the impulse to adventure. I did, incidentally, buy Lauren a present from that sale, a pair of elevated Japanese, wooden flip-flops, called Geta [News story about how to wear them correctly: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/08/08/how-to-wear-japanese-geta-the-correct-way-and-avoid-blisters-at-the-summer-festival/].  

These flip flops [insert Wikipedia Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geta_(footwear)] originate from the idea of elevating shoes to avoid the mud and debris of busy streets. Lauren loved them! So, I made a “consumer kill” that day, but the whole incident just sent me into reflection.  I asked myself if I really enjoyed going to estate sales anymore and what I was actually getting out of it. The incident with the Queen Bee elevated my self-inquiry, like the Geta elevate the wearer from the dirt of the street, and caused me to call into question my motivation.  

In the first place, all indications were that this particular estate sale was from someone who had passed away, or at least been unable to live independently. The menagerie of Asian items was, after all, complemented by numerous home healthcare items, like a shower chair and a walker. As I stood in the place, after my confrontation with the Queen Bee, I started to think about my excitement at the Asian items. Clearly, the people who had lived there had similar tastes to my own, and it is likely that they experienced a thrill when they originally purchased these items. As I sat with that idea, my mind wandered forward to a time when someone in my family might hire an estate sale agent after my own passing, or perhaps my move several decades from now into a senior center. New customers, some of whom at this writing might still be in school, will attend that sale and they will fill their homes with items that used to fill mine. This recycling of “stuff” sort of troubles me. I just have the sense that I am playing in some superficial game that isn’t really leading to greater peace or happiness for anyone. I get a little jolt of satisfaction when I find “just the right” object, but I fear that all I’m really doing is filling up my home with items I don’t really need, and that certainly do not make me happy. I am, I fear, just making my life more complicated.

Maybe I’m just having a Zen moment with all of this, but I feel I am tiring of my consumer orientation. As much as I like to eschew ties to our consumer culture, though, I readily admit that I am not that different than the Queen Bee. After all, I go to estate sales because I want a deal. I am less and less interested in such sales because objects that I am interested in are tending to edge closer to “full price.” So, from that perspective, I am greedy, maybe just as greedy as the Queen Bee. So as I look into myself for the deeper lessons, yes, I am cheap and even somewhat greedy, and I suppose those are traits I am not particularly proud of. So maybe the Queen Bee is a mirror for me, one who is nudging me to look more fully at myself.  It is so enticing to think of myself as the bargain-hunting anti-fraud superhero, but maybe I am just human, learning new things about myself, often as the result of looking outward and being triggered by something or someone I claim to dislike. Can I love and accept the Queen Bee? I am going to try, because maybe if I can do that I can also step more fully into authentically loving myself.

The estate sale is truly a mirror for my own life. I enjoy finding fault in others, but the driving force of that is often that I do not fully embrace certain parts of myself.  I think it is like Carl Jung said; we all have a dark side comprised of aspects of ourselves we repress, hide and deny. Jung called this the shadow and he maintained that we can regain a great deal of psychic energy if we probe into and integrate those spun-off parts of ourselves.  Dear Queen Bee, thank you for helping me see where my mind is trapped. I am ready to move on.  :)

Different Learners Change the World

Dear bloggy readers - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers and friends of different learners, 

Today, I have a wonderful post to share with you! Do you remember earlier in the week when 

I wrote about the happy news of finding a unique learning environment for Noah?  How Noah "Goes to Kevin's" now, to learn and socialize and grow as a person? Well, Kevin has stopped by in my own, little corner of the internets in the form of a guest post today!

So many of us struggle with being "different learners" - you might have ADHD like I do, or dyslexia or dysgraphia or a processing issue. You might be a  kinesthetic learner and find sitting in your seat, listening to lectures from a teacher unbearable. Whatever way you or your child learns best, if it is not typically  part of a conventional education, Kevin will surely have some tips and advice to instill hope and inspiration in you!

As we get closer to the release date for Kevin's third book: Success and Failure with ADHD: The Oskar Schindler Story, I wanted to share a short post written by Kevin with you. Kevin talks about how different learners, often disregarded for their unique traits, can make for some of the most poignant, creative and positive changes in our world!

Different Learners Change the World - by Kevin Roberts

I am an adult with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and I run programs to help ADHD and different-learning youth succeed academically.  Every single day, I and millions like me struggle through this condition.  We have problems following through, staying focused, maintaining motivation, and completing tasks.  We do not function well in routine reality, but many of us thrive when life deals us intensity.  

When I travel, for example, my ADHD symptoms seem to vanish.  Being in new places and around new people excites me and activates my brain.  When I did a speaking tour through the United Kingdom and Europe this past March, I stayed organized and energized for two weeks straight.  I am an author and usually struggle terribly with writer’s block, but on that trip I completely edited my recently-finished book, started the outline for my next book, and finished the first stages of planning for an ADHD exchange trip coming this July.   While sitting still and completing rote tasks bedevils people like me, when life is filled with possibility and adventure, many of us with ADHD are unstoppable. 

The adults who surround ADHD young people frequently fail to focus on our strengths, and we can as a result develop serious self-esteem issues.  The good news is that there are great examples of extraordinarily successful people with ADHD and who learn differently, many of whom have changed the world.  We need ADHD heroes to inspire us and to counteract the steady diet of negativity that many of us receive in school.  

Love him or hate him, Sir Richard Branson has made a huge impact on the world of business.  Like many different learners, this amazingly successful billionaire does not play by the rules of the system, but rather creates his own systems, excelling in innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.  A visionary, he does not limit himself to one field, but is continually on the lookout for new and adventurous opportunities.  Like Sir Richard, ADHD young people often fail when shackled to the system because their strengths are pathologized.   Young people whose talents, like those of Sir Richard, include creativity, spontaneity, risk-taking, and playfulness are usually viewed by teachers as troublesome and problematic.  Weighted down with such labels, individuals like Sir Richard all too often perform poorly in school.   

So the place in which we spend 30-40 hours per week, an institution that essentially measures our worth, does not generally honor who we are and our unique contributions to the world.   We hunger for adventure, new experiences, and challenge.  Without these, we usually fail, or at least underperform.  School and many jobs just do not offer the stimulation we require to optimally function.  But solutions for different learners do not come from helping us succeed in living boring, mundane, and repetitive lives.  What if Sir Richard used his energy to force himself to play by the same rules as everyone else?  The world of business would be deprived of many innovative strategies.  

Another great ADHDer also struggled in school.  Unlike Sir Richard, this individual failed at almost every business he ever started.  But this man did something so extraordinary that his deeds will echo down the ages.  Oskar Schindler was kicked out of school, had numerous brushes with the law and, like many ADHDers who fail to find their way in life, struggled with addiction.  But during a brief period during World War II, the intensity and dire nature of circumstances brought forth his inner genius.  If you do not know the story, he outwitted the Nazis and saved 1200 Jewish people from the fires of Auschwitz.

Oskar Schindler had all the hallmarks of ADHD:  impulsivity, poor follow-through, difficulty staying on task, as well as terrible organizational challenges.  But when extreme intensity greeted him every day and when people’s lives depended on his actions and decisions, Schindler came alive!   A few wise Jewish businessmen in the Kraków ghetto saw Oskar’s genius and supported him in his most extraordinary endeavor.  Sir Richard’s parents also supported his every endeavor, and this fact underscores the importance of looking passed the disabilities, like Sir Richard’s dyslexia, and relentlessly shining light on a person’s strengths.         

In my work with different learners, I find that a very common strength is an innate desire to help others.  You will succeed in helping those of us with ADHD and learning differences if you work to empower us to find intensity and excitement, activities that activate our minds.  Better yet, help us find purpose.  People like us know the pain of alienation, of being shunted to the margins of school and the society at large, and so, many of us possess instinctual empathy and a desire to help ease the suffering in the world.  

We may not all have the skills and aptitudes to become billionaires or defeat an evil empire, but I assure that if you look carefully at a person with ADHD and peel back the problems and the difficulties, you will find an individual who powerfully wants to be of service.  You do us the most good when you help us help others.  With support, intense and relentless focus on our strengths, and the abiding belief that we have something unique to offer, you can help us—and we will—change the world.

My upcoming book goes into great detail on this phenomenon, The Oskar Schindler Story: Success and Failure with ADHD (Available on Amazon, July 2016).  Please contact me if you’d like to help spread the word on this groundbreaking book.  I believe this book will change the world!

To learn more about his work, or to contact Kevin, visit his website:  www.kevinjroberts.net.

Join myself and other parents like me on Kevin's Facebook forum: ADHD Change the World.

Finally, you can find Kevin's highly acclaimed first books, Movers, Dreamers and Risk-Takers: Unlocking the Power of ADHD   and Cyber Junkie: Escaping the Gaming and Internet Trap on Amazon.com.

Until next time, love yourself and love you kids, just the way they are!

xoxoxoxox,

Lauren :)