Ire-n Throne Explanation

[originally posted on Facebook on 15 May 2019]

I’ve been trying to think of a way to properly explain my disdain for how this final season of “Game of Thrones” has been handled, because it seems people see said disdain and think it’s one thing when it’s something else entirely.

That said, here’s the best way, at least at the moment, I can think to properly address why I’m feeling how I’m feeling:

Let’s say it’s a few weeks before my birthday and you tell me, regardless how much I protest that you don’t have to, you’re going to make me a pie to celebrate. You tell me when you’re going to give me said pie, and oh boy, it’s going to be the best pie I’ve ever had.

As the weeks progress, you send me pictures of ingredients you’ve purchased: flour, sugar, all the accoutrements; and one ingredient in particular sticks out – apples. So, with that, I think you’re going to make me an apple pie. Along with those pictures, you’ve sent me an image of what to expect: an elaborately done piece of baking prowess, complete with pristine crosshatching and little dough flowers for flair. It’s exciting – not only am I getting the promise of pie, but also the promise of a work of art! Yay!

But then “Pie Day” finally comes, and we meet up and after the initial cordialities and excited chattering, you present the pie you’ve made for me; this pie that, after those weeks of excitement and build-up, we’ve finally come to the end and is now a very real thing. This is it. All the waiting, all of the expectation. And here, the reveal…

… to something unlike the pictures sent, unlike the expectation brought on by the build-up. What sits in front of us is something akin to a pie, it is in a pie plate, has the impression of a pie; except, the dough is not cooked all the way, there is no crosshatching and strips of dough are simply laid haphazard on top of the filling.

As for the filling: where I was led to believe it would be apple, there is instead a very pulpy red substance. Cherry. Not apple, but cherry. Which is okay, I guess, as I like cherry as much as apple… but the raw state of the dough…

You excuse the raw dough by shrugging, saying you “ran out of time”. Seeing as time was spent, invested on both sides, I still partake of a piece and suffer whatever indigestion befalls me in the process.

This is the best way I can think to describe my particular ire with how haphazardly this final season of “Game of Thrones” has been treated. While fans of a property are not necessarily “owed” anything by their entertainment (I’m absolutely one for “if you don’t like it, just leave”) to completely dismiss the fanbase with shrugs and excuses as to why something with so much expectation from build-up has fallen insanely by the wayside is infuriating.

What’s worse: fans working reasonable defenses by filling in gaps those in charge didn’t care enough to fill in the first place. If proper care was taken to this piece of entertainment, fans shouldn’t have to dig so deep.

Agree with me, disagree with me, it’s a moot point at this juncture. I just wanted some apple pie, but I guess I have to settle for this cherry-soaked mess instead.

Phone Line Embraces

[written for Mother’s Day 2019 by andrew j. bartlett]

My mother is one of the few people with whom I speak on the phone, these days. Technology, with its FaceTimes and SnapChats and animated emojis, has removed that once necessary need for actually talking to someone when you need to talk to them; however, even though she and I definitely take advantage of all of the means of communication that technology and social media have allowed, we still set aside time every week to ensure we have had an actual, vocal conversation.

It’s a Monday night, a little after seven o’clock, and I’m driving home from another mid shift at work. The drive from Cary back to Raleigh is the perfect opportunity to phone my mother and have a decent conversation. So perfect is this opportunity that, since my Monday schedules are consistent, Mondays have become the routine day for a phone call with Mom. We’ve done it for several months, and have grown so used to the routine that when on days I’m randomly scheduled to close, I’ll receive a text around eight o’clock that evening, asking if everything is okay; or, as so happened most recently, I’ll receive a message from her, saying she might not be around for the conversation, due to something going on at the church or some other appointment that was made at the same time we would be talking on the phone.

Calling my mother lends itself to three possible outcomes.

The first outcome: Call my mother, she picks up and we have our normal, Monday-drive-home conversation that covers all manners of life that had taken place since the previous phone call. Sometimes she and I ping-pong the topics of conversation, trying not to bogart the spotlight equally; other times the conversation has a centralized theme, with one of us carrying the conversation, due to venting frustrations or talking about a situation that, quite honestly, could have been recorded for a full-length podcast episode.

The second outcome: Call my mother, she doesn’t pick up, but calls back immediately after. The sequence of conversation carries out in the same respect as the previously mentioned outcome. When I get home, we will probably talk for another ten or fifteen minutes, then we’ll let each other go to round out the evening in our respective homes – she with finishing up her chores for the day before calling it a night and heading to bed, me with finally paying attention to my cat because I’d neglected him all day and how dare I put him through such stress.

The third outcome: Call my mother, she doesn’t pick up, and so I end up leaving a voicemail. Though the rest of the outcome plays out like that first of the second outcome, with her eventually calling back, and then transitions to that of the first outcome, with a regular conversation taking place, my mother does this thing that’s amused me for the longest time: she’ll call back, without listening to the voicemail first.

Now that Monday phone calls have become routine, it’s not as big of a thing as it was before, leaving a voicemail and having it not listened to before the subsequent call-back. Back then, a voicemail would be recorded, and shortly thereafter the phone would ring, “Mom” would show up on the caller ID, and after the initial greetings, my mother would say, “Saw you called, what’s up?”

I used to joke with my mother about my leaving a voicemail. If I left a voicemail, it wouldn’t be listened to; if I didn’t leave a voicemail, I’d get an immediate, frantic call back, with the preface of “saw you called but didn’t leave a voicemail” followed by the asking of if I’m okay. I once asked her, after leaving a fairly lengthy voicemail, why she didn’t listen to the voicemail before calling back. Teasing her, I said, “What if the voicemail strictly instructed for you not to call me back, because if you did, the phone would explode upon being answered?”

Her response: “Well, that would have been a very short conversation.”

Along with this, my mother has other such quirks on the phone, endearing and amusing; along with our love of words and speaking, these quirks make conversations with my mother entertaining in and around the topic of conversation itself.

Another thing my mother does, when she and I are in the midst of a conversation, is when she gets interrupted by my stepfather or she needs to check on something for a quick moment, she’ll interject a litany of “hold on a second, sweetie” that then turns into a string of “hold on, hold on, holdonholdonholdonholdonholdon“. That entire time, I’ll have been quite since the initial “hold on a second, sweetie”. I know why she does it: she doesn’t want to miss a single beat of what’s being talked about, but her attention is split in half at that moment, and it’s her way of responding to it; once she comes back from the source of the interruption, it’s back to conversational basics and the story is continued.

For years, I had noticed that my mother would end her phone conversations almost the exact same way, every time. Just as you would start a conversation with a variant of “hello”, you would end it with a variant of “goodbye”; only, my mother would pause for a moment, hum lightly, before saying her variant of “goodbye”. I never figured out what that light hum was until just a few years ago, when I started to do it at the end of my phone conversations, as well.

My mother is the poster child for the idea of making sure a person you love feels loved, in whatever manner you can do so. She sends gifts, answers phone calls and text messages in the middle of the night, and at the end of a phone conversation will ensure that she’s told you that she loves you, at least twice. Her mindset is ensuring that, if this is the last conversation you have with a person, you make sure your last words were good and loving. When she and I would get into knock-down, drag-out arguments over the phone, which would ultimately end in one of us hanging up on the other, it wouldn’t be more than an hour later when either of us was calling the other back to patch things up and end the interaction on a positive note. Even if one or both of us were still sniffling from the extremes of our earlier words, we would still tell the other we loved them.

In person, my mother is physically affectionate; mostly in the form of hugging you. She may put her hand on your arm while you’re talking, for comfort or solidarity, but if she gets the chance you’ll find her arm around your shoulder or completely wrapped up in a firm embrace; she is so excited and happy to be standing there with you, she wants you to know by embracing you with the fullness of her arms and her heart.

I, too, am a hugger, and it is from her which I get my penchant to want to hug my friends when I see them or when they are going through difficult times. It’s this personal penchant for the physical embrace that I finally realized what the slight pause-and-hum was at the end of these phone conversations with my mother: hugs, over the phone lines.

At the end of every visit, I hug my mother, it’s what we do. Now, at the end of every phone conversation, a metaphorical visit as it were, we take a moment before saying our goodbyes to imagine we were hugging the person on the other line. We take a moment, hum, and then say our goodbyes until the next conversation, where the routines, the sequences, and the conclusions all run their course again; the only difference being what happens within that seemingly structured set of steps. As well as the folks involved, of course.

Honestly, it’s one of the best quirks to have acquired from my mother, phone-wise. Mind, I’ll listen to voicemails before calling back, on the off-chance it’s a message warning off the eventual call-back – I’m nice that way, what can I say. However, I will end every loving conversation with a slight pause-and-hum, imagining that we are not speaking from distances too far to physically reach, but that you are right across from me; and I scoop you up in a hug that took years to put to perfection. Even if you’re not a physical hugger, and while I’ll respect your boundaries, on the phone you’re in my world, imagined in the same room as me, and you’re going to be embraced to further enforce my love and care for you. Don’t like it? Well, take it up with my mother.

Now, with that – come here, you. This is going to be a big one!