Balancing the scales

I've decided not to do Christmas cards this year. 

I know some folks are doing great ones: whimsical, playful, humorous, or just an attempt to maintain tradition in a year that challenges most of them. I wondered if creating a Christmas card would bring me a sense of healthy normalcy, because I do enjoy making them each year (I'm always in the "find the candids that show us as we are" camp and I think that will always be my style, because to me that's the fun part about making the cards, and it's us), but this year, it feels like a box to check, and this year, it feels especially important to reevaluate the importance of checking boxes when it might be healthier to let go of the expectation.

I've spent a lot of time talking about self-care with my students and trying to practice it myself. I've spent the fall working longer hours than I have since my first year of teaching, with not a lot of return plus the added scorn of what feels like, oh, everyone who isn't a teacher. Everyone has an opinion about teaching in a normal year, but in a pandemic year, it's pretty obvious that the "respect" folks claim to hold for teachers is pretty hollow when they're personally inconvenienced. (I know it seems I'm generalizing here. But also, I'm really not.)

In a normal year, even a hard one, I don't spend this much time feeling so defeated, angry, exhausted, and just...sad.

There are good things. Of course there are. Even in a pandemic, even in this strange context, even though I'm still struggling because what I do can never really translate to a screen, there's still no other job I want. Even now, so much is possible. Especially now, I owe my students the best I have to give. And my students still make it all worth it, so I'm still here.

But I'm tired of checking boxes. I think any teacher could tell you that we're feeling pretty micro-managed in a lot of ways right now (can we be trusted to be professional if we're teaching from home? Some folks seem skeptical about this, and it's not a coincidence that these are the same folks who seem to think that teachers are greedy takers if they dare to expect a professional salary). So I check a lot of boxes these days, boxes of no authentic value, merely to prove that I'm earning my paycheck.

Christmas cards do have authentic value to me, depending on the spirit in which they are given and received, I suppose. But this year, I can't do it. I can't check a box for the illusion of normalcy. I tell everyone I love to let things go and extend grace, and I am choosing to do that for myself as well. This is a thing I am letting go.

I'm sorry, Friends and Family. I do love your Christmas cards and will gratefully receive them if you choose to send them. If Christmas cards are transactional for you, though, and you choose not to send one our way again because this year I can't respond in kind, well, it is what it is. I don't know how to weigh my well-being against someone else's expectations right now.

Sometimes, the scales don't always balance.

*

I spent the first few Thanksgivings after college away from my immediate family. That first year, Matt and I prepared our own Thanksgiving dinner in our little one-bedroom apartment above the roaring traffic of Pacific Highway. I made my mom's scalloped corn, and he cooked a turkey. We had mashed potatoes. He made the pecan pie that he still makes every year. And every year, I would marry him all over again for that pie.

The turkey was a little dry, but the memories of the day are still pretty sweet.

We thought about trying to recreate the coziness of that day, with a little more experience and a bigger kitchen. In the end, though, we opted for ordering our dinner from McMenamins in Tacoma. A big Thanksgiving dinner is only a little bit about the food; it's really about the togetherness and cooperation and warmth. I didn't want to stress about a giant turkey dinner and the kitchen cleanup for the four of us when my daughter is just as happy to eat chicken nuggets and there was no reason to put out a spread of pita crackers and brie or fresh veggies and olives, too. Instead, we ordered food to go. I made my mom's scalloped corn anyway because it's really easy and I love it, and Matt made his pecan pie, because. See above.

It was a good decision. Matt and I took turns heading out for long runs and walks in the cool sunshine. (Matt probably ran twelve miles, but I don't want to know. I dug out my Turkey Trot shirt and ran my own personal 5k, then walked another hour listening to a podcast.) We hung out together. We allowed time for us to enjoy ourselves apart: iPad games, quiet reading. Late in the afternoon, Matt drove down to pick up our dinner and dropped off a couple of slices of pie for my brother and sister-in-law; after all, I think we've enjoyed every Thanksgiving since Isaac was born at their house, just minutes from our own.

In a non-Pandemic year, my high school students make hand turkeys in English class the day before Thanksgiving. Since I couldn't do that with them this year, I brought the tradition home to my own family. I realized, too late, that I'd left the good supplies -- the feathers and googly eyes -- in my classroom. But we had plenty of construction paper and card stock. We had glue. We had markers. We had random bags of dried beans and lentils from the art bin I put together when Isaac was born and I spent nine months on maternity leave with a three-year-old, determined to try "home preschool." 

A crafty Pinterest Mom I am not. But we had fun. Even my husband, who seemed resistant at first, got into the project.

"This is actually really calming," he said, as we cut feather from construction paper. He even held up dinner a bit because he wasn't "satisfied with the plumage." I told him he'd have to finish later.

*

Dinner was off-the-charts delicious. Not as good as our traditional family dinner where multiple households work together, but it was never going to be that. However, it exceeded my expectations for takeout turkey and all the sides, I didn't emotionally invest in the preparation while battling the grief over what was missing, and cleanup was a breeze. We had a Zoom call with my parents afterwards, and while it couldn't compare to our usual post-feast game of Clue, I'm still grateful we could see their faces.

*

As I made the choice not to do cards this year, as I said it out loud to my husband and cried just a little -- a strange but increasingly familiar mix of relief and grief -- I wondered if maybe we should just give ourselves permission to be a little quiet this year. Not to overcompensate with more lights, more spending, more stuff, more attempts to recreate the normalcy we cannot have right now. And maybe we should rethink what we consider normal anyway.

No: I didn't wonder. I wished it.

*

Every December, right around New Year's Eve, I write a huge Year-in-Review entry in my journal (my actual journal, not this public blog; it's really just for me). I've done this since before Suzannah was born, and it's interesting to see my answers to the same questions year after year. It goes without saying that I've been imagining my 2020 Year-in-Review entry for about seven months now.

One of the questions is Who did you miss?

Everyone. Just everyone.

It's a strange holiday season, for sure. We've spent every single Thanksgiving since our kids were born with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Over the years, we've added a few kids to the mix. It's always a cozy, lovely weekend -- one of my favorites. We've never spent Christmas on our own. But I think about the thousands upon thousands of place settings that will sit empty next year, and about the folks who have never been able to take holiday gatherings for granted in the first place. Togetherness looks different this year, but it means we can still hope for next year. And maybe it's not a bad thing, to focus on what matters, let go of what doesn't, and grapple with the sometimes heartbreaking in-between. To let ourselves celebrate and grieve, both, and let it shape us as it may.

Gratitude in the anything-but-normal

Every now and then a mood strikes me and I spend an afternoon reading old journals. I've been filling journals my whole life, ever since my first diary with a teddy bear on the cover, given to me shortly before Christmas when I was six. At the tender age of fifteen, I burned them all, weeping. I swore I'd never do that again, and while I did shred all the pages of one old volume several years ago (and I have no regrets about that one), I still have a lot of them, even after burning nearly a decade's worth.

Today I thought about my own teenager, and about how one of the unexpectedly beautiful things about this year -- a year in which everything is absurdly horrible -- is this time with her. I never would have wished her high school years to begin this way, attending class through a screen, hunkered down alone in her room. I especially never would have wished this when we chose to choice her into my school when all of her friends headed off to a different one.

Then again, as terrifying as it still is to send my baby girl into a new school (I was beside myself with anxiety the entire summer before she started kindergarten, and I didn't sleep at all the night before she started middle school), this time I knew in advance that I was trusting her with the best of the best, that she would be in good hands. If anyone can make connections during a global pandemic, through a screen, it's the folks I work with. I know exactly how hard they're working, and I've always been proud to work alongside them, but now I see the results of their efforts in a brand-new and deeply personal way. My girl is doing well, feeling supported, even making her own connections in this strange new environment. And that's everything to me.

I was always sort of excited about having her at my school. I didn't harbor ideas that she'd want to spend her lunches eating with me in my classroom, but I loved the idea of having her close. And that's what I love now. I love that we sign off of our last period of the day and eat lunch together at our dining room table. I love that she'll walk by me sitting at the table, getting ready for my afternoon office hours just as she's getting ready to practice her trumpet or finish her homework, and lean in for a quick hug, for no reason. 

In many ways, I wish she could just have a normal ninth grade year. Of course I do. But I also know exactly what I'd be missing in a normal year as my teenager grows up and grows into her own independence.

So this is the journal entry that stayed with me today, written when Suzannah was about three months old:

I used to be a terrible insomniac. College was the worst, but I've always been a light sleeper, and when I go to bed I have a hard time turning off my mind, which is not always a good place to hang out in the middle of the night. If something is bothering me, even something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, I toss and turn and ruminate and obsess to a ridiculous degree.

I used to, anyway. Now, when I snuggle into bed with Suzannah in my arms, all of that evaporates. I hold my baby and watch her sleep and smell her head and everything else is just gone. I may sleep lightly, but it's a peaceful sleep.

Sometimes she's not completely asleep when we lie down. Sometimes if she's not completely asleep, I get up and walk with her, or nurse her a little, and she conks right out. But sometimes we'll just lie there together, and our eyes will lock, and she stares at me for what seems like a long time. And then she smiles sleepily. It just doesn't get better than that.

People ask when we're going to move her into her crib. People say she needs to learn how to sleep alone. People say she'll grow up clingy. But one thing I am learning to do is trust my own instincts instead of a book, or someone else's experience, and nothing feels right about trying to get her to sleep away from me. These moments are too fleeting already.

After I birthed my babies, I decided that no matter what, I would try to write something every single day, even it it was only a sentence, even if that sentence was just "sometimes motherhood is really fucking hard and lonely" scrawled across the page. Because something in me knew that if I didn't capture those moments, they would pass too quickly and fade into a blur. I wanted to keep and hold the moments I could, even the mundane ones, even the hard ones. Now, looking back, I'm so desperately glad I did. I love all the pictures we took; of course I do. But the words tell a more complete story, and a more honest and tender one. Many of them I'll just hold close; they're not for social media, or even this blog. They remind me to extend myself a little grace when we're all out of sorts. To apologize readily. To hold my arms open, always. To stop and breathe when I need it. To love our children as the absolutely unique people they are, rather than some idealized version of ourselves. To experience all of our moments, feel it all, and resist the temptation to rewrite the narrative for public consumption. I've written this before -- that sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when we're stuck in the small one. Looking back over our stories, though, and when I look at our lives right now, it occurs to me that this is exactly what I've always wanted. This, right here. These people. This partner, this girl, this boy, this family.

I've written this before, too -- that we don't ever turn dreamily to our partners and say, "Let's get pregnant and have teenagers." But it occurs to me now that this is exactly what we wanted: to raise these babies into people we love to spend time with. Those early journal entries show so clearly that our children have always been so very much themselves, and it is not lost on me how lucky I am to have have so much time with them now. In a normal year I'd be greedy for it. In this anything-but-normal year, I'm grateful for it.

This fall, I stole an idea from one of my favorite colleagues and had all my students sign up for five-minute one-on-one check-ins during office hours. It's probably the best thing I did all quarter. We didn't talk about school at all, unless the kids wanted to; rather, they chose a question from a list and we talked about that. Who's one person you really admire? What's one thing that makes you really happy? What's something that annoys you? What's the best book you've ever had?

And this: What is your biggest dream in life?

One of my kiddos chose that question, but she struggled to answer it. "I guess my dream is just to make a lot of money somehow," she said. "I want to make my parents proud. They've worked so hard, so I feel like it's my responsibility to really make something of myself." She paused, and then said, "What's your dream, Ms. Winslow?"

"Hm. Wow. Honestly? What I've got," I said. "I knew in high school that I wanted to be an English teacher, although honestly, I couldn't even have dreamed then that I'd love it like I do now. Like, I couldn't have imagined what it would actually look like. And I always knew I wanted kids, and mine have brought me, just, so much joy. Anything else, I guess, is a bonus."

"That's really cool. Wow. I love that a lot," she said. 

What I didn't have time to say, but what I wanted her to know, is this: there are things I want, sure. There are things I wish for, hope for. But something I've realized as I've gotten older is that I don't need to get everything I want to be truly, deeply joyful. To be happy. To realize that if I never have more than what I have now, it will be more than I knew to dream for when I was seventeen. It will be more than I could have asked for. It's more than enough.

"Now is when the real work begins."

When I'm feeling things, my feelings tend to come out of my eyes. It's just how it is. I've been crying a lot since yesterday. My friend Peggy commented last night, "I didn't realize how bereft of optimism I'd become." And that's exactly it, I think. So many of us have been sick at the thought of eight years of this, and now we can actually imagine a more hopeful future.

Watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden speak -- watching with my husband and children (especially my children) -- was exactly what I hoped for. I cried over what we've been missing, but I also wept because I feel hopeful. 

For three? Four? mornings in a row I rose long before dawn, raised the blinds in the living room, and waited for daylight. Isaac was the first to join me, every day.

"Did Biden win yet?"

And I said, "Not yet, but I really believe he will."

The official call came just before 8:30, just before the hair appointment I made weeks ago -- to go back to blonde. When I made the appointment, I hoped it would be celebratory, rather than an attempt to cope with anger and fear and loss. As it turned out, I got to tell my stylist that Biden won -- she hadn't heard yet. 

"Oh, thank God," she said. "Every night this week I've gone to bed wondering if we'll still have a democracy in the morning."

When Van Jones teared up on CNN, he spoke to so many of us: "It's easier to be a parent this morning. It's easier to be a dad. It's easier to tell your kids that character matters...Telling the truth matters. Being a good person matters." 

Four years ago, I sobbed in Matt's arms: We're raising a daughter. For that matter, we're raising a son.

So this matters. We need better than what we've had from the leader of our country.

*

But I'm still afraid of complacency. Trump didn't create the racists, misogynists, and xenophobes; they've been here all along. He merely gave them a voice, and they're still here, and we all know them. Naive, optimistic little me learned this week that I overestimated the number of conservative friends and family I believed would never vote for Trump, and while I'm heartsick I shouldn't be surprised. I just hoped that some things would be dealbreakers, at least for folks in my life: Unapologetic racism, white supremacy, white nationalism. Misogyny. Mocking the disabled. Anti-semitism. The incessant name-calling. The bullying. The narcissism. But they weren't dealbreakers, and that's a heartbreak for me.

Don't you dare speak about your pro-life motivations if you've never cared about children in cages, forced family separations, children sexually assaulted in custody at the border. Don't tell me that your goal is saving babies if you care more about punishing women than supporting their health. (Don't you dare claim to be "not political.") Abortion rates drop during pro-choice presidencies, but if that were ever the goal, instead of control, this wouldn't be the reason someone is a single-issue voter. Don't ever, ever claim to respect women. I just call bullshit, no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I always hoped you loved me, too.

But do dare to tell me. Truly. Tell me. Look at me, and make me understand: what made you choose a monster because you've convinced yourself it supports some greater good? (What is that greater good? Does it reflect only what you see in the mirror, and shut out anyone who doesn't look like you?)

Or let your silence speak for you. It speaks more loudly than your words.

Yes, yours.

*

So this is what it feels like, in 2020. To have the tentative hope of the next four years. To feel a little broken because four years of Trump held up a mirror to what we should have seen already. But also, to feel hopeful. I'm a teacher who sees the fire in our kids. I'm a mother who strives to raise children with fierce empathy, who understand their privilege and use it to make a better world. I'm a woman with a partner who shares these values. We know we have a lot to learn. We know we have work to do.

The Day After

I was awake at five o'clock this morning again, but not in despair. Just restless.

I walked for an hour as soon as it was light enough, and I walked for another hour at dusk, as wind sent the leaves skittering across the streets. Streetlights came on. I could see inside people's living rooms and kitchens as they watched TV or stood at the kitchen sink, little glimpses of ordinary lives hidden in the daylight.

On one particular part of my route I noticed several Biden/Harris signs and Black Lives Matter signs that weren't there two days ago (and haven't been, this entire election season). I wondered if they were worried about someone taking the signs, or worse. Nearby is the only blatantly Trump house I've noticed. It's hard to miss. The yard is full of clutter, and a Trump banner covers half the shabby siding. The light-up Budweiser signs in the window add a nice touch.

*

I walked seven miles today. The day was almost balmy, really strangely warm, but cloudy. Quiet. I needed the head-clearing quiet.

I think we know, now, how this will go. Now, my fear is complacency. I woke up in the same deeply racist country that existed yesterday and last year and since our country was born and built on the backs of Black people whose descendants have always known what I had the privilege not to see, not really. I shouldn't have been shocked four years ago, and today we should all know that what was really on the ballot was whiteness.

*

None of my conservative-leaning friends are posting angrily about voter fraud. Maybe they're hiding those posts from me, or I've blocked them already. But I have this really terrible habit of reading posts by friends of my friends, and some of my friends have some gems on their lists. I follow a few of them sort of regularly out of this weird masochistic curiosity and I KNOW, I SHOULD STOP THIS. It's ridiculous. But they really do believe, apparently, that Biden cannot win, and if he does, it's a total fraud. Whatever "news" sources they read have told them that Trump was slated to win by a landslide, and I can tell you which sources they're citing, all the while they rant about the "fake news media." And my word, these people needed more school, or teachers who could teach them how to assess the reliability and validity of their sources. Did they not learn this? (These particular folks, mind you, are big fans of "doing your own research.")

Trump is following his own playbook to the letter. He was always going to cheat, because he knew he couldn't win any other way. He was always going to declare voter fraud if he lost. There will be no gracious concession. What's horrifying (although no longer shocking) is how many people believe him. How do you explain, calmly, using small words, that counting all of the mail-in ballots is not voter fraud? Mail-in ballots favor Democrats. It is not a great conspiracy that as those come in, Biden gains votes. This seems very simple to me. These are not even the protestors in Michigan trying to shove their way into downtown Detroit's TCF Center; these are people who live among us and are probably perfectly sweet when they're shopping at Jo-Ann's Fabrics. See my post from last night about being nice.

(Friends, if your friends are posting this garbage -- and they totally are, because I'm following some of them in some weird streak of masochism -- please address it. I know it's uncomfortable, but it's also important. I'm happy to engage with anyone on my actual friends list if I see it, but I'm not going to get into it with my friends' friends. After the 2008 election I told someone that no, Obama wasn't going to take away all this person's guns and 2008 wasn't the last hunting season he'd ever have, and for my troubles I received a message calling me a libtard. I have precisely zero shits to give about what someone thinks about me on the internet, but I do think we need to do work with the people in our lives. And I fully admit I have to figure out how to do this more effectively.)

Do all of the folks who are sure this is massive voter fraud think Trump should sue ALL the states who vote blue? Maybe he should just sue all the voters?

And if we were that good at conspiracies, and fraud, then...wouldn't COVID also be gone today? Instead of hitting our record number of new cases? Asking for a friend.

*

I've been texting or messaging with a couple of former students in the last couple of days. They give me hope and I love them so much and they remind me exactly why I do the work that I do. Plus, one of the great gifts of teaching is keeping relationships with some really fantastic humans I grew rather attached to over our time together.

And they're voting. 

Election Night, Part 3

It's strange to pray so hard and yet not really believe in what I was raised to believe is the "power of prayer." I don't know. I still pray, sometimes. But not because I believe it does anything. (I'd be terrified if it did. Because the most terrifying white supremacist misogynist evangelicals probably pray far more eloquently and far more often, if that's what it's about, and I wouldn't stand a chance in hell.) 

I guess I still do it because, as Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, it's an act of love.

Election Night, Part 2

I could just keep adding to my last post, but part of me wants to write more posts than I did in 2019, so here we are.

An hour after I last wrote I'm breathing a little easier. Early results indicate that Inslee is safe as governor in Washington, and Reykdal holds a comfortable lead for the Superintendent of Public Instruction. These are important.

First results also look promising for two folks I was excited to support in our local elections -- Jamila Taylor and Jesse Johnson. Local elections matter.

My home state is more depressing, but I can't vote in Montana anymore, and Montana wouldn't welcome me home anyway. Montanans don't take kindly to outsiders (ask me how I know), and as someone who has put down deep roots somewhere else for her entire adult life, I think that's what I am now. I've written more about that than I can process here tonight. But I have to say, tonight when I was trying to distract myself I read a post that was one of those, "You know you might be from Washington when..." things, and I related to literally all of them. I didn't hate that. It made me smile. I chose my home well. And believe me, in this country, staying where I am feels like a matter of survival. Anyway, no one in Washington has ever suggested that I don't belong here just because I'm not a sixth-generation Washingtonian, and this is the state my children can claim as their birthplace. They'll have roots in other homes as well, because Matt and I love other landscapes and that runs in our blood, but tonight -- tonight especially -- I am clinging to the home I've chosen.

But toxic individualism is alive and well across landscapes that I love, I think, and it still saddens me. Maybe that's why my home state is likely to elect as governor the man who assaulted a reporter a few years ago. And I watched on national news as a former Montana neighbor, one who fed me peanut butter sandwiches as a child, on whose pullout couch I slept more than once, proclaimed that it just made her love him more.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

The "pro-life" party that celebrates and incites violence. (Trump obviously loved Gianforte for that moment.)

*

And Trump takes Florida.

*

I voted in my first presidential election twenty years ago. We didn't have the results that night, but I remember creeping out to the living room in the little apartment I shared with Carmen, turning on the tiny TV, and hissing, "Are you kidding me?"

I wasn't particularly excited to vote for Al Gore, but I did. And I was very excited to vote.

*

2000. 2004. 2008. 2012. 

As a white straight woman raised in a traditional Christian family, I didn't stand to lose a lot in any of these elections, obviously. I grew, I think. I learned. I hope. (I hope I learned to listen. I'm still learning how to put that into action.) I wept when Obama delivered his speech in 2008. And I breathed a sigh of relief in 2012, but I also had some great conversations with friends who voted for Romney.

Those friends didn't vote for Trump in 2016. Things are different now. If you still think it's just a matter of opinion and not folks's literal lives, I don't know how to talk to you, and I probably wouldn't have had a great conversation with you in 2012.

I'm so anxious. I'm not without hope (which is not the same thing as optimism) but I'm anxious all the same. Please, don't let this happen again. I fear the breaks that cannot be repaired.

Election Night, 2020

Sick with anxiety. That's how I feel.

I share a particular trauma with my colleagues; on the night of the election in 2016 we were hosting student-led conferences, and they brought in big screens so we could watch everything unfold while we talked about kids' grades in English.

I cried all the way home that night, rage-cleaned my bathrooms in the middle of the night, and wrote and cried and wrote and cried through the next week, and I surrounded myself with folks who were not silent in the face of the horror. 

The rage has not diminished.

I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and I find it difficult to breathe.

Please, spare me your religious platitudes about how "God is in control." It's not helpful. It's not comforting. It's patronizing. Tell that to someone who fears for the rights so many of us take for granted. If I felt whimsical enough to turn the fight for democracy into a BINGO game, or a drinking game, "God is in control" would be on there for sure.

I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and it really has turned out to be that awful. And people voted for him again, and I'm afraid of who those people are. If you voted for him again, please know I don't believe you value me, or my daughter, or my students, or any of our rights, no matter how much you might love me or tell me how much you love my stories. I parted ways with a long-time friend who spouted nothing but Christian platitudes, claimed to love my stories, and blithely supported the ones who would harm the students who made those stories possible. The ones who encourage literal violence against them. A vote for Trump is an act of violence.

If you voted for him, don't come near me for a good long while.

I just feel sick. 

*

Edited at 7:15 p.m: Okay, seriously, Trumpers. Stop telling us to be "nice" when you're voting for a person who literally incites, champions, and cheers his supporters on to violence.

Fascists can be perfectly pleasant in line at the grocery store, as I just commented to my friend who was admonished for her "hate" on her own Facebook page. I am so deeply uninterested in "nice." Nice keeps you comfortable, and comfortable is part of what got us into this mess, now isn't it?

It reminded me of a conversation on another friend's page after the debate in which Trump refused to condemn white supremacy. This is what I said, word for word, to a person (NOT my friend, by the way) who thought people weren't being "nice" to her for supporting Trump, and of course she wasn't racist: 

There is no such thing as "not racist." As a daughter of a conservative family in a red state, I used to believe...we were all equal without engaging in anti-racist work. Because I wasn't racist.

But now I believe there are racists and there are anti-racists. I have a LOT of baggage to unpack and it's work I still have to do. I strive every day to do anti-racist work, and I have to confront my complicity in racist systems every day. That's uncomfortable, sure. But I have benefited every single day of my life from systemic racism, and I have to do better. It's not enough to say I love and respect black people...we have real work to do.

The person to whom I was responding told me my "speech was conducted angrily."

Go hug a Nazi, I guess? Because be nice.

*

Still feel like I'm going to throw up.

*

8:26: Why is this even close? The second time? What is wrong with people?

(I'm asking that like I don't know the answer.)