Posted on

the stop-traffic phenomenon

You know how sometimes you’re standing there on the side of the road, waiting to cross the street, and a random car will stop and let you cross?

Yeah. You’ve had people do that for you, right? And you’ve done that for people too, right?

Uhm, please forgive me but …. I hate that. I do, and I think my reason for hating it is shameful and trivial and yet I still HATE it.

Sometimes, the car that stops is stopping a whole line of traffic behind him just to let you cross. Sometimes, there’s just that one car, not another car in sight behind him, and it’s just a matter of two seconds before he moves past and you’re able to cross the street.

So why stop? Why?

You know, I’m bothered by how much I elevate the trivial to the monumental and I’m also bothered by how that still doesn’t stop me from sharing. So, eh, let’s just proceed. I mean, I’ve already thrown myself under the bus, so let’s just roll it over me completely.

I imagine for the stoppers, the impulse is just a knee-jerk benevolence. They see someone waiting, they want to help, to make things easier for you, to feel good about themselves for the gesture. One or all of those, I guess. So what’s my problem?

A few Saturdays ago, MB headed out of town early on business, so I woke up and walked alone to a favorite coffeehouse a few blocks away. I have to cross a fairly busy two-way street to get there. The street has a median, so you cross to the median, look both ways, cross to the sidewalk. I mean, duh, Streetcrossing 101, right? On the way back with my coffee in hand, I stood on the median waiting for traffic to clear so I could cross. Since I know I have this weird and basically stupid issue, I did what I frequently do: turned my head AWAY from oncoming traffic to effect, oh, a nonchalant air. To ensure I didn’t look needy. To send the message, “Oh, I’m totally not paying attention, so you don’t NEED to stop for me.”

Several seconds later came the honk. I glanced towards traffic and, yep, seated high up in his semi-truck was a fellow waving me across the street. Maybe he had a good view of my cleavage from there. I mean, I was wearing a scooped top, but not THAT scooped. I don’t know. The basics of life elude me, as evidenced daily by this blog. I only know he created HUGE clog of busy traffic behind him just to allow me to cross. I felt my face turn red, crossed quickly, waved at him, and felt like a jerk the rest of the way home because I was irritated by a good deed.

Seriously. WHAT IS MY PROBLEM?

I think it’s this: I don’t like to feel beholden to the stranger in the car or the truck or the semi-truck. It embarrasses me, that sudden attention. Makes me self-conscious. Makes me feel guilty about the traffic bunched up behind the stopper. I’m just minding my business, perfectly happy to wait until the coast is clear, and someone’s goodwill suddenly becomes a problem for meeeee. It’s irrational, I know, but it bugs me. I feel as if a thank-you wave is insufficient. I feel as if I have to hurryuphurryup because I don’t want to make them sit there and say, “Oh, look at her, strrrrolling across. Well, no good deed goes unpunished, blahdie blah.” Sometimes, I DO just want to strrroll across the street and that’s why I’m perfectly happy to wait for traffic. And, honestly, sometimes if it’s a man …. well, I question why he’s doing it. I do. Please forgive me, menfolk. Most of the time, I employ my “look the other way” tactic and at least 50% of the time, it still doesn’t work. Someone stops, honks to call your attention to their good-deed doing, and then I feel forced to comply so they can complete their good deed. Maybe I don’t want to be an accomplice to their good deed. Maybe I just want to strrrroll in peace, at my leisure. I suppose I could wave them past, but I’ve never tried that. I don’t think I could. I think that would make me a (bigger) jerk. But sometimes …. sometimes …. and here is the dreck of my personality on glorious display ….. I feel as if the person in the car is saying, “I’m doing a good deed! Cross the street, dammit! CROSS!” So I across the street so they can feel good about themselves and possibly stare at the chest whilst I spill my coffee all over it. And maybe that’s the goal. We can’t rule that out. I don’t know.

I am now bugged that people do nice things.

So, basically, the crankiness has become metastatic.

Posted on

snippet

For reasons I can’t explain — or rather, won’t — the phrase/song of the week has been:

“Her burp cloth brings all the boys to the yard.”

I blame MB. It’s his fault. As usual.

Posted on

sorry seems to be ….

The whole psychology of the apology is interesting to me. Why people do it, why they don’t (duh), HOW people do it, how they mess it up, how to do it right. I’ve talked about this a lot on the blog in the past. I tend to think the apology as a social convention and spiritual necessity is on its way out. People generally think they’re right at all times. I understand that. I generally think I’m right at all times. And because we generally think we’re right at all times, we don’t want to apologize because that would mean we’re actually admitting we’re wrong and then what oh what will happen to our view of ourselves that we are generally right at all times? It messes with our head. But the extent to which it messes with our heads is tied, I think, to just how much our sense of self is invested in believing we are right at all times. The greater we’re defined by our own “rightness,” the more likely we are to feel diminished by an apology and, therefore, the less likely we are to actually apologize. Or the more likely we are to offer a non-apology apology which gives the illusion of hitting the mark but is really a psychological sleight of hand.

I’m about to copy and paste my own final comment in the now-infamous “Kevin” thread, which makes me look both needy and self-important and, well, I have to plead mea culpa on that. Whatevs. But I want to talk about an “apology” he gave at one point in that …. discussion? diatribe? harangue? Whatever that whole dealio actually was. I may look like I’m throwing him under the bus, but Kevin basically threw himself under the bus with no assist from me or anyone else. I’ve banned him now — if it actually worked, since I think he’s at least occasionally using an anonymous proxy to surf the Net — and he won’t be commenting here again, so I think it’s safe to discuss this as a case study, so to speak. I made the choice to ban him because I don’t want to have the kind of blog I think Kevin WANTS me to have. I don’t want to come on my blog and argue in the round every stinkin’ day. That’s just not who I am. Some people like that, are even energized by it. Not me. I just get dizzy and nauseous after a while.

Here’s what I said in my last comment on that thread. (Oh, and sarahk weighed in with a great comment at the very end.)

You know ….. another thing that’s stuck in my craw over this is what I call Kevin’s non-apology apology. (I’ve talked about the non-apology apology before on the blog.)

Way up in comment #29, Kevin said:

/Tracey, I’m sorry if my comment came across as condescending./

See that? The dropping of the “if” bomb in that “apology”? No. That’s not an actual apology. An apology is taking sincere, honest ownership of what you said or did and not qualifying it IN ANY WAY. The ever-popular “IF” Bomb apology is a way to sound as if you’re apologizing when you’re really not. That one little word — if — does a huge thing: creates a sliver of possibility that, no, the offender DIDN’T really do or say the thing that you’re offended about. And, yes, it’s a sliver of qualification, but that’s HUGE in an apology. A person who does that isn’t taking ownership. He’s saying, subtly, “It’s YOUR problem that you perceived it that way.” He’s saying, “Maybe I did that, but MAYBE I DIDN’T.” It’s not a true humble apology. It’s BS and I call it.

Kevin had numerous people calling him on his condescension and contemptuous tone. He offered his If Bomb, his non-apology apology, and THEN CONTINUED TO BE CONDESCENDING AND CONTEMPTUOUS while all the while claiming moral superiority to the rest of us. “I’ve kept my cool.” “I haven’t returned insults.” Or whatever. Well, yes, he did, as I’ve already said earlier in this thread.

But if a person apologizes and is genuinely sorry, he turns away from the behavior that created the offense in the first place. What Kevin did would be like a husband who apologizes to his wife for being drunk on Wednesday night — while he’s drunk on Thursday night. In dropping that If Bomb, though, he gave himself permission to continue his bad behavior because maybe it’s a perception problem of, oh, a half a dozen people or more. Maybe it’s THEIR problem, not his. If If IF.

Gimme a break. That’s meaningless. A gloss-over. A knee-jerk thing to say that you really don’t mean. And it’s definitely NOT an apology.

So clearly, I was ramped up or on the sauce again or, most likely, both.

This is not a unique example. We’ve all received and/or offered these kinds of apologies ourselves. I mention it as an example of a common practice, not to point out Kevin as a unique offender. He’s not.

Sometimes that “if” will placate the offended or wronged person; sometimes, it won’t, but it’s definitely a useful — and cowardly — tool to make it look as if you’re humble and sorry, as if you rillyrilly care. At the core, it’s a deflection, a way to boomerang the whole issue back into the face of the offended, leaving them wondering, “Hm. Did I overreact?”

I don’t write about this thinking that I’ve got the whole apology thing nailed down because I don’t. It’s HARD to apologize. It is. I guess at this point in my life, for the sake of personal and spiritual growth, actually, I force myself to look at criticisms I receive and ask if there’s any truth in them, anything I need to own, no matter from whom they come (Doc, anyone?) and no matter how they’re phrased. And, yamahaha, Crackie, is it painful. It IS. Since I’m generally sure I’m right, I’m always feel as if I’m going to DIE when I sit down with a criticism and force myself to consider it. At that moment, I’m certain just the act of entertaining these less than pro-me thoughts will shrivel my pro-me brain into a useless tiny raisin rolling around in my head, killing me as swiftly as touching a live wire. Basically, it sucks. If I look at it as something I’m doing for me, though, something to keep me from becoming hard and calcified and bitter, then it hurts a tiny bit less. A very tiny bit less. When it’s an issue regarding a loved one, I try to ask myself, “Do I want a relationship or do I want to be right?” If I present it to myself that way — because, yes, I have to sneak up on myself — it’s an easy choice. A tiny bit easier choice.

Apologizing — really doing it — keeps us in touch with our own humanity. Our own frailties. That we can and do screw up. It acknowledges, too, the humanity of the person we’ve wronged or offended. Done wholeheartedly, it’s a weird but wonderful way to bind us together in the messiness of the human stew. Both parties find relief in the transaction when it’s sincerely given and sincerely received. Both parties are “seen.”

I don’t want to become numb to my own humanity. I don’t want to become numb to the humanity of others. If I can’t apologize or equivocate when and if I even do apologize, I’m already becoming that drone, emotionally numb and spiritually calloused, too captivated by my rightness to give a tiny rat’s bottom about anyone else.

And I don’t want to live my life gazing at the reflection of my own perceived rightness.

Because … how lonely is that?

Posted on

“you lost me”

Christian Aquilera on the “American Idol” finale the other night. Honestly, the ONLY good thing to come from this season of complete and utter dreck. I watched intermittently only and cared not one bit who won.

Uhm, who won again?

Check this out. (Fast forward to about 4:07. Anything before that is just the American Idol rejects singing Christina and it’s cringe-worthy.)

But the woman herself? Amaaaaazing. Raw. Staggeringly beautiful.

Posted on

jokes, haha

I think I’ve talked before about the relative who sends me dumb blonde jokes. (I’m blonde, for those of you who don’t know or haven’t clicked on the About page.)

Unfortunately, the joke sending has now morphed into sending random jokes that are offensive to all women. Equal opportunity offense. I don’t know what to say to this person. I really don’t. Because if I speak up and others find out about it — and others WILL find out about it — I’ll look like a real sourface prissypants. Which I am, I just don’t want to look like one. I’ve created an email filter, but occasionally a joke gets past it. Then the email is magically clicked on. You know, somehow. Okay. Well, mainly because it’s there and I see it and I experience a phenomenon I just made up that I will call “pre-anger” or “anger foreplay.” I get all hot and bothered about the whole dealio, just thinking about what that email might say, so of course, I HAVE to go all the way and READ the damn thing just to have the sweet release of anger that I’m so jonesing for and just to prove that my pre-anger anger was justified. (This all makes perfect sense inside my head.) If the jokes were funny, I’d forgive the offensiveness. I would. I mean, if you’re going to be offensive, you’d best be wet-my-pants funny, Slappy.

The problem here is the jokes are 1) NOT funny, and 2) SO offensive.

Here’s the email joke this relative sent this week:

A woman goes to the doctor, beaten black and blue.

Doctor: “What happened?”

Woman: “Doctor, I don’t know what to do. Every time my husband comes home drunk, he beats me to a pulp.”

Doctor: “I have a real good medicine for that. When your husband comes home drunk, just take a glass of sweet tea and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don’t swallow until he goes to bed and is asleep.”

Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.

Woman: “Doctor, that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband came home drunk, I swished with sweet tea. I swished and swished, and he didn’t touch me!”

Doctor: “You see how much keeping your mouth shut helps?”

Wow. WOW. WOW. So we women deserve to get the crap beaten outta us because we can’t keep out mouths shut???

WHAT??

If that weren’t bad enough, I noticed on the list of recipients the name of a young girl, a mutual acquaintance, who happens to be about 18 years old. (And, yes, the sender is a male.) Is this the message he wants to send to an 18-year-old girl he cares about? That women just need to keep their yaps shut? That not keeping your yap shut is the thing that makes a man hit you?? That it’s YOUR fault if you’re hit?

I imagine most women reading this either have experienced being hit or know women who have been hit. I have. I do. And it’s not the woman’s fault. It’s NOT.

In what universe is this joke funny?? Or, really, tell me if I’m overreacting. And then tell me what you’d do about this person who’s sending these jokes.

I have no idea what to do. Or, rather, I know what I WANT to do, but I think the price of doing it may be too high.

Posted on

lost about “lost”

Uhm, so what up, “Lost”? Because you wrote yourself into a corner, you fall back on the relativism of everything is possible, everything is right, whatever YOU think it means is what it all means?

Thanks a lot, Slappy.

Did anybody else watch the series finale? I need to vent but I don’t want to give away spoilers here.

Posted on

snippet

We are watching “You’ve Got Mail.”

ME: Did you hear that lyric?? “I’ve been around the world, had my pickle in a girl”????
HE: Hon, I think it was “Had my pick of any girl.”
ME: Oh.
HE: Yeah.

Posted on

si se puede

A while back, a friend who’s on Facebook (uhm, all my friends are on Facebook, apparently) emailed me about some “Christian” page on Facebook that I should join — you know, when I join Facebook. (Hahaha and all that.)

But I was SO annoyed with her description of this page, I created a FAKE Facebook identity just so I could get a gander at the stupid thing. Yup. (And, no, I will not be starting a page. I created a name and that was it.)

So this “Christian” page: It’s called “We CAN find 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook.” Here’s its stated purpose:

The purpose of this group is for Christians to take a stand in their beliefs and be counted. our goal is 10 million. It is a big goal, but I believe it can be done! Thank you for joining and please invite your friends!

Okay. So you go there. You join. And somehow you’re standing up for Jesus? Being counted? (Well, I believe you’re being counted, but maybe not in the way you’re hoping, silly Christians.)

Give me a break. The whole thing strikes me as totally ridiculous. So you find 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook. So what? Who cares? To what end or purpose?? So Christians can stand around and go “YAY! There are 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook!!”?? That’s just retarded. What do the people who’ve joined this page think will happen if they reach that 10M goal? The rapture? The second coming? People around the world saying, “AHHHHH!! There are 10M Christians on Facebook, I am now convinced me that I’d better accept Jesus as my savior immediately!”?? And what will the people who’ve joined this page DO when and if they hit that mark? Send “Christian hearts” to one another’s Facebook page? Have a cyber party with cyber cake in “Cafe World”? (Yes, I do know some things about Facebook.) Seems to me like the moment the page clicks over to 10M will be more anticlimactic than a New Year’s countdown. I mean, at least that involves the entire world. And at least people get kissed.

Come ON. It’s a pointless endeavor. Sorry, Christians, but it bugs me. You’re making me and any other basically sane and intelligent Christians look bad. Please stop. This is what’s becoming so irritating to me. Either the collective Christian IQ is plummeting precipitously or else I’ve just been exposed to a spate of real dummypants lately.

Look. I’m sure there are more than 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook worldwide, so why is this important? Why is this something worth doing? Just listing yourself as a Christian on Facebook makes Jesus all proud and tingly? No. He’s going, “Quit wasting your time with that crap. And leave me out of it, kthx.” IF you asked each Christian who came onto your page to give a dollar to World Vision or Feed the Children or something, THEN you might be doing something worth doing. But you’re basically saying , “Hey, Christians. Come over here and sign Jesus’ yearbook.”

Well, he doesn’t need me to.

So I don’t wanna.

And you can’t make me.

Nyaah.