Birthdays / BMI / social disabilities / bullying

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Birthday Greetings, belatedly, to Allison and Heather. Sorry I'm late!

Happy Allison's birthday, Jen! As she was so determined about when to 
be born, you might want to check her horoscope and that for the day 
you had planned and see what difference it made...

Happy Birthday, Meg Demeranville the soon to be medical student!

Happy Birthday, Kristin with the good taste to appreciate our Remus!

Cindy wrote:

<< BMI is bogus, because someone who is in very good shape has a lot 
of muscle and therefore will weigh more. As a result, BMI may label 
perfectly healthy people as overweight or obese. >>

Yes. More than a decade ago, the airlines were forced to change from 
their rule that stewardesses may not be fat to a rule that flight 
attendents must fit into a specified height/weight table for their 
gender. Less (IIRC) than a decade ago, a male flight attendent who 
was a bodybuilder was surprised to be fired for being overweight. He 
sued and lost.

Saitana wrote:

<< I have borderline agoraphobia and an extreme fear of rejection and 
judgement (caused by years of being isolated from others my age) so 
talking to strangers is hard. I can't call up stores and the sort, 
I can't talk to salesclerks without prepping myself for ten minutes, 
I have difficulties going to unfamiliar places such as different 
stores, classes >>

Me, too! That's why the division of labor in MY household specifies 
that TIM has to make all the phone calls and talk to all the 
strangers and accompany me to new stores. 

I differ in a few details. I don't think I have any ADHD but I do 
have a serious phobia of driving a car, bad enough that I never got a 
driver's license, and I attribute my Social Phobia problems more to 
having associated in youth with others my own age than to having been 
isolated from them.

Quite a few years ago, I saw an ad in the newspaper: do you have 
the following symptoms? If so, you might have Social Phobia! Its 
questions were an exact portrait of me, so I clipped it out and kept 
it in my desk to this day. It's quite yellow now:

"NERVOUS AOUND PEOPLE?
1. Are you afraid of social situations?
2. Are you fearful of being looked at?
3. Are you afraid of making a mistake, looking foolish, or feeling 
embarrassed in front of others?
4. Are you overly concerned with what other people think of you?
5. Do you feel shy or anxious around other people?"

I'd like to excuse myself by believing that I telepathically 
empathically am impacted by their unspoken disapproval of me.

Storm Snuffles Magoo wrote:

<< Hi Everyone, long time, long lurk, I did a social phobia treatment 
course (ha! torture!) of which the worst excersise was standing up on 
public tranport and providing an unasked for tour guide commentary to 
the other, unsuspecting, passengers. >>

How did you survive?  

Tabouli (Hi, Tabouli! Say "hi" to your home from me!) wrote:

<< And a philosophy which *does* argue for intellect, and art, and 
the ability to question as "higher", as raised by Pip: << Do we see 
someone with 'intellectual ambitions' (or artistic ambitions) as 
superior to someone without? Is there a bias towards 'education makes 
you superior'? >>

But intellect and art and the ability to question are not limited to 
the 'intellectual ambitions' and 'artistic ambitions' referred to in 
that question. It's like the rude statements that someone on list 
(Elkins?) was complaining of a while ago: Why do you waste your time 
discussing Harry Potter on an e-mail-list when you could be writing 
a book or earning a graduate degree instead? Why do you waste your 
time painting murals on the walls of all the rooms in your house 
and making home-made birthday cards for your friends when you could 
be selling your paintings in a gallery or at least working for a 
greeting card company? Why do you waste your talent playing music by 
yourself at home when you could be putting enough into getting club 
gigs so as to get heard by people who could offer you a recording 
contract?

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:

<< Most of my students must learn to defend themselves or accept 
being subjected to endless bouts of being bullied. Not long ago, my 
boyfriend's younger brother was having a problem being bullied at his 
school. My boyfriend encouraged his brother to fight it out. I am not 
saying I agree with this, but my boyfriend's brother not only beat up 
the other kid, but they then became good friends. >>

and Jennifer Boggles replied:

<< How odd. Why would one *want* to be friends with a bully? Did they 
gang up on other kids together? :( >>

It is possible that what Ravenclaw Jenny's students usually go 
through is not bullying (maybe Shaun can give a definition of 
bullying; I believe it includes that only unpopular people are 
victims) but rather the establishment of a 'pecking order'. I'm 
familiar with this among my cats.