Free Short Circuits by Dorien Grey Page A

have come up with a few simple rules to help my passage as smooth as possible.
    Many of my own rules are in response to the fact that I’ve always been excruciatingly aware that life is far too short under the best of circumstances to meekly accept those wrongs and unnecessary injustices over which I have any small degree of control.
    In no particular order of importance, here are a few of them:
    1) Never vote for any politician who spends all his campaign money hurling mud at his opponent. I want to hear what he’s for, not what he’s against, and if he hasn’t any positive, constructive things to say about what he plans to do with the office, he doesn’t deserve to hold it.
    2) Refuse to buy any product whose ads include the words “for well-qualified buyers” (which is a subtle way of saying “not you”) or “emerging science suggests” (I don’t want “maybe in the future,” I want “now”).
    3) Never tolerate rudeness or neglect from anyone I am paying to perform a service for me. I do not hesitate one second in asking to speak to the person’s supervisor and relating my unhappiness. (Often, in restaurants and retail establishments, the manager is not aware of the employees’ actions unless told.)
    4) Do not subject myself to any situation/play/movie/book in which I know I will find myself uncomfortable or upset simply because someone says I should. I witness and experience enough sorrow, trauma, and injustice in the day-to-day world without willingly exposing myself to more—and I certainly should not have to pay for the privilege.
    5) In any disagreement, decide if winning is worth the effort put into it, and at the point where it is not, simply walk away.
    6) Do not hesitate in defending those who cannot defend themselves.
    7) Refuse to spend time in the presence of bigots and proselytizers.
    8) Know the difference between ignorance and stupidity, and act accordingly.
    9) Though it is often not easy, try to see both sides of every issue.
    10) Never, ever, under any circumstances, be suckered into opening any message in my spam folder unless I recognize the sender’s name and know that it got there by mistake.
    11) Do my very best…though I often fail…to live by the Golden Rule.
    12) Avoid like the plague anything I am assured that “everyone is talking about.” If
I’m
not talking about it, it doesn’t matter.
    13) Even in those times when I am depressed or enraged by my own stupidity, never, ever take myself too seriously.
    14) Listen to what others say, respect their right to say it, but only do what my mind and heart tell me to do.
    As indicated in some of the rules above, I don’t always succeed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try.
    Now, sit down and make a list of your own rules. You may find it very interesting.

FROM FERTILE SOIL
    LIFE IN A SARDINE CAN
    When you’re a kid, you accept everything as being natural, simply because you’ve not lived long enough to realize there are other ways to live. At the time I broke my leg, having three people (and I think we had a dog) live in a glorified sardine can—a 14-foot long trailer—was perfectly natural. It was just, well, what was. My mom cooked on a small kerosene stove with a canister of fuel which had a hand pump not unlike a bicycle tire pump. She’d have to pump it vigorously several times before she could light the stove. To this day I can close my eyes and smell the strong odor of kerosene and hear the soft “pffftt” as the stove lit.
    When I was released from the hospital I was in a full body cast from just below my shoulders down to my right knee and all the way down my left leg and foot. There was a bar between my legs at the knee to keep my thighs immobile. I quite literally could barely move. And this was in the heat of summer. Mom used keep knives in the icebox, which she would use, when they were cold, to