CatGirl to me, upon seeing a ratty teabag packet lying on the ottoman:
"Mom, why is there a Lipton teabag lying there?"
"Oh, it fell out of my tote--I keep an emergency teabag in the side pocket just in case of a tea emergency" [Note: it lives in the pocket along with a few tampons and a few squares of Moonstruck chocolate....]
"But Mom,...LIPTON?" She says, disgust evident in her voice as she raises her nose in the air and points to the offending teabag.
"I know, I know. It would have to be a true emergency for me to drink that vile stuff..."[Note to self: replace emergency teabag with half-way decent teabag ASAP]
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11 comments:
I'm so proud of her! *sniff*
taught her well????
brand snobbery is pretty low on the list of things i want to teach my kids.
because we all have to buy things sometime, it's worth teaching kids how to distinguish between decent products and crap. Lipton, which is made from tea fannings (i.e. the trash from the real tea process) and has absolutely no flavor, is crap. Fair Trade or organic whole leaf teas, they are worth my consumer loyalty. :)
I seriously love your kids (am a little bit intimidated by their intelligence), but think they are awesome.
dcb, I'm with you on wanting to avoid "brand snobbery", but I think Jana wrote this post with tongue firmly in cheek.
This isn't to say that we don't have brand loyalty in our family, but it's a complex stew of factors:
- the company's social and environmental record;
- if the products are organic, local, free-range, domestic, free-trade, shade-grown, etc., etc, (the criteria vary, of course);
- sometimes we fall prey to advertising and culture (this is true with CG and my attraction to Apple, which is slowly being tempered).
FWIW, our children are learning, along with us, that being a responsible consumer requires a lot of homework, and an awareness of factors local and global. Price is just one factor in considering each purchase. But I think you read enough of this blog and Jana's posts on media portrayal of women, on eating local/organic, on driving less, etc., that you're probably aware of this context.
This is something of an academic question, but one I have been exploring for some time. Your input would be of great worth. Did you and John start drinking tea before or after you decided to leave the LDS faith?
hmmm...well considering the fact that I don't consider myself as having left the church, that answer might be an obvious one.
as for John, he grew up drinking tea (he wasn't raised in an LDS home). So perhaps the more logical question would be to ask when (or if) he stopped?
So I didn't really answer your question, but I also found it hard to do so. I don't remember my very first drink of tea, but I think it was back when I was about 9 years old and attending a summer camp in Oklahoma where the only beverage served to us during and between meals was sweet tea. I was thirsty and just figured that it would be okay for me to go ahead and drink the tea, even given the whole WoW thing--it seemed to me that God would want me to be well-hydrated. :)
I started drinking it several years after losing my faith, but some years before leaving the Church.
I write about it a little more here.
As a grad student who approaches the study of religion from a social sciences, I'm curious--what prompts your question?
Plus, you're asking a personal question, and I'd like to know more about what I'm responding to.
I'm sorry,
Let me explain myself a bit. As a former Catholic, I am doing a thesis on what you would call "the level of devotion" to their religion that people manifest when they decide what they have formerly believed is not in fact the word of God or is not true. While most of my information is from Catholics, I have good friends that are both LDS and former LDS and have used them for data also. One of the measures I use as an indicator of devotion is how well the individual adheres to the basic tenants of their religion.
From skimming your blog I had assumed you had formally joined the Society of Friends. While attending services of other faiths is a non-issue, formally joining another religion is listed as grounds for ex-communication based on apostasy.
I hope my question was not too personal. I did not intend it to be or to offend in any way.
In case you are wondering, most Catholics leave stemming from issues concerning Birth Control, Women's Issues, the current clergy issues and confession. LDS individuals seem to have issues with tithing, the Word of Wisdom, and Women and the Priesthood. Very very few actually live all the tenants of their religion when they leave. Surprisingly few say they lived all the tenants of their religion when they began to consider it not being for them.
FWIW, John and I were both temple-going Mormons up until we pretty much stopped attending LDS church. Though we felt a lot of dissonance about the doctrines, we still (for the most part) behaved as faithful Mormons (John's case is a bit different than mine so I am making a generalization here).
For example, we didn't stop paying tithing until a few months after we'd stopped attending, etc. But these behaviors are so complex--doesn't your study have some sort of thorough questionnaire to accompany the random anecdotes that you read on blogs???
Once again, please excuse me for being to vague. My data is collected and my paper is written. I did a great deal of questioning when actually collecting data. I was just wondering where you would fit in my data set when I asked the first question.
Sorry for the misunderstanding
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