[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 5: The Hardest Nos]

[Carla Schroder]

On Sunday 29 April 2007 18:53, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 05:21:10PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> > Homework: please share your best horror or success stories at dealing
> > with loved ones who want things from you.
>
> I learned a lesson from one of my favourite movies, "Labyrinth".  In it,
> the teenage heroine is taken for granted by her father and stepmother,
> and is always asked to babysit her baby half-brother.  The stepmother
> justifies her actions by saying that she wouldn't ask if Heroine had
> something else to do, like a date (insert worried encouragement that
> she'd really like it if Heroine went on dates), but as she obviously had
> nothing to do, she shouldn't begrudge helping.
>
> Okay, so this was just a movie, but it made me realize that I could
> easily be taken for granted by my brother and roped in to babysit nieces
> and nephews in exactly the same way, "because I didn't have anything to
> do", because I, like the Heroine in the movie, am not really interested
> in going out a lot, and having a quiet, restful night at home could be
> counted by some as "not having anything to do".

Isn't that an amazing leap of "logic": doing "nothing" = obligation to do a 
favor for someone else.

>
> So I made it clear to my brother that I was perfectly happy to be a
> backup emergency babysitter, but I didn't want to be first on the list
> of babysitters.  That worked out well; I got called on once or twice,
> I was glad to help on those rare occassions, he was glad to get my help,
> and everyone was happy.
>

Nicely done. 

-- 
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Carla Schroder
Linux geek and random computer tamer
check out my Linux Cookbook! 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxckbk/
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