//Christian

My Blatant Overuse of the Word (and Letter)

“Gosh, you don’t know how much you’ll miss being mistaken for a Satanist until it’s gone.”

I post on this blog, ergo, I am self-centered. That and if you count the number of times the word, “I”, “me”, “my” or “mine” are used, it’s appallingly high.

In my defense, it’s not like I want to be a self-absorbed, self-involved, self-serving, egocentric, egotistical narcissist. Let’s just say I am attempting to address the issue.

Really, it’s all borne of growing up shy, introverted and socially maladjusted. I was certain (as certain as one can be of anything: gravity, french fries, bastards) that I should take great interest in myself because no one else on god’s green Earth was going to. Except for my family. And my friends. But NO ONE ELSE.

The upside is, I immensely enjoy time alone. The downside is, for some reason other people like to receive equal time and attention.

A perfect example (if I may say so myself): when I was younger, I viewed asking how people were as one of those obligatory social niceties, indicative of people’s shallowness and, as Holden Caulfield would say, phoniness (never my favorite work by Salinger, even as a teenager). See, because someone asking how I am doesn’t really care how I am, it’s just something reflexive you say, to the point that sometimes it goes like this:

Hi, how are you?

I’m fine, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Dollars to donuts (as my geology professor used to say), you’ve had that exact conversation. (He also used to point out that if there were an earthquake this minute, all of the people in the back row would be dead. After awhile, no one sat in the back row.).

And I can ask how you are but I’d rather know if you read that Malcolm Gladwell piece about racial profiling in the New Yorker or if you’re hungry and want to get something to eat or do you have that TPS report because Suzanne is asking for it.

What I have learned is, you have to respect the gesture behind things. Yes, you are supposed to answer “Good” or “Fine” (no matter what) when people ask how you are. But someone making an overture is not necessarily going to launch into a conversation about the genocide in Darfur.

The other key factor of my seeming self-absorption is my inability to small-talk, and I don’t mean “small-talk” pejoratively.

I went to a Waldorf school (i.e. private, humanities oriented) for 13 years, kindergarten through 12th grade. Many of my classmates were also “lifers”, so we literally grew up together. Those who weren’t lifers were still quite close. There were 30 people with whom you’d spend a minimum of four years, only separating for language and art classes. So cool kids, dorks, outcasts, cliques all overlapped and intermingled.

The basketball team was also the cello section of the orchestra and most of them got straight “A”s. My friend Kelly demanded that she be allowed to play on the boys’ soccer team if there weren’t enough females interested to form a girls’ team. (She used to get so frustrated because when people asked whom she fancied she’d say “Kirk Hammett” [of Metallica] and invariably we all thought she’d said “Kirk Cameron” [of Growing Pains and now Evangelical Bullshit] and it would take at least five minutes of confused conversation to straighten it all out. [No one actually used the word "fancied", I just fancy saying it.] Also, we teased her about her Canadian accent).

They eventually let her on the soccer team though some Christian schools subsequently refused to play us. They all thought we were Satan worshippers anyway. We LOVED that. Gosh, you don’t know how much you’ll miss being mistaken for a Satanist until it’s gone.

Football and cheerleaders were despised. The one “cheerleader” we had didn’t even go to our school. He was a gay raver kid who just liked to cheer.

So, with all of this time together, these were kids around whom I was not shy. I never really learned to just shoot the shit. Because why would you talk about the weather with someone you’ve known for 13 years? Why wouldn’t you talk about something more pertinent and interesting to all?

I’ve been working on my social skills, truly I have, but I still catch myself sometimes. Someone will say, “How are you?” and I’ll say (nicely), “Good. Do you have that TPS report because Suzanne is asking for it.” Then I’ll remember to stop and ask, “How are you?”.

Lob, return. Lob, return.

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A Very Serious Issue

Citizens, I just wanted to bring to everyone’s attention a very serious issue affecting millions of people in the United States today: clusters of mute Christian clowns are going into nursing homes and molesting our old people. 

[Thanks, Paul!]

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