Category: Explaining the Strange Behavior

Explaining the Strange Behavior, Lancient History, Women

It is Only Funny if I am Laughing–Not if I am Yelling

the outside lane

I told you a funny story involving a half-dressed man at my desk, so now I will tell you a story that I keep hoping will become funny in retrospect, but still hasn’t.  Some of you will have heard the story before. 

I was working for a company, and had a superior who was inappropriate about 60% of the time.  If he wasn’t being outright inappropriate, he was serving up the innuendo.  I was at about a 50/40/10 split of trying to deflect with humor, or saying some version of, “You are making me uncomfortable,” or just pretending not to have heard/understood what I had heard.

There came a day when this superior grabbed me in a headlock and ground his pelvis into my backside.  He ground himself so hard against me, that I could feel his junk.  I struggled and howled, and he thought this was funny, and he held me tighter and ground harder.  When I did wrench myself free, he was laughing and telling me to calm down, and I was doing nothing of the sort. 

I walked away to compose myself, and when I got back into my area (which was full of people for a staff event being held at that time), I tried to keep away from him.  He was having none of that, and kept forcing himself next to me.

I went home, told B what had happened, and didn’t go back.  Then came the process of having to explain to people of varying importance why I wasn’t going back, and being informally deposed by men, in a roomful of men, a group of which kept insisting that a) it had been a poorly delivered joke, but a joke nonetheless, b) that I had misunderstood the intent, and c) that I must have imagined part of it because that superior would never, ever do anything untoward. 

My short answer was repeatedly, “I don’t think I could misunderstand his penis grinding against my buttocks.”

Having someone–someone who directly controlled my finances–assault me was one thing.  Having to sit and be told that this person thought it was just a joke to assault me, and having to sit and be told that I had imagined being in a headlock while someone ground his pelvis into my backside was something else entirely.  And having to do it with only men in the room–men who (save for the one who was representing me) had the best interest of the company and the company’s bottom line at heart–was like having my face rubbed in a big, hairy, corporate crotch.

I hate confrontation, but I’m no wilting plant when it comes to standing up for myself.  Ask any HR department…ha!  I also had two or three things on my side that meant I had legs to stand on, should my chair be kicked out from under me–one of those things being a husband who had a good job.  I worry for women who are less able to confront, who don’t have the luxury of the Father-in-Law I have, and who aren’t married to spouses who can make ends meet until they find another job.  I worry for women who are truly at the whim of the smegma who think it is funny to sexually harass their underlings.

I worry.

Now, though, to cleanse the palate, I will leave you with a list of things that have become funny in retrospect–actually, these things were pretty funny when they happened.  Funny=not threatening, by the way.  As long as it isn’t threatening, it can be funny.

  • The time a boss who was wearing pantyhose, but no panties, pulled her skirt up and asked me if it looked like her thighs were rashy.
  • The time I walked in on a manager fondling a coworker’s new, naked breasts.
  • The time a coworker came up, bit me on the neck and said, “That’s how I ask girls out.”
  • The time my boss’s wife called me from the bathtub to tell me how sexually satisfied her husband (my boss) had just left her, only to have him come around the corner whistling.  I literally fell out of my chair onto the floor, trying to avoid eye contact with him.  He thought I was a moron.
  • The manager who used to walk up behind me and sit her belly on top of my head.  For fun?  I don’t know.  Nothing quite like being Fat-Hatted in the middle of writing an email.

 

Explaining the Strange Behavior

Biting the Bullet

the outside lane

My mom told my birth story frequently, as I grew up.  It wasn’t a happy one, like Thor’s.  I was born on Christmas Eve, in a military hospital, apparently full of people who just wanted to go home and celebrate Christmas.  I was holding up celebrations.  I was also tearing out insides.  Mom got pretty graphic about the exact amount of damage my delivery did, and how excruciating her recovery was.  I also cried a lot, was sickly, and sounded (to my own ears) to have been a misery to endure (though Mom always, always, always, while telling me what pain and suffering I caused, also told me that I was her greatest joy in life.)

That’s me on top, having a quiet moment between screams. I am told I cried a LOT, and rarely slept. That’s Thor on bottom, who was a perfect, magical unicorn baby, and who continues to be a perfectly normal (in EVERY way), yet still magical unicorn child.

I was in my late 20s before I realized that I had spent my entire life feeling guilty for how I was born.  Isn’t that silly?  You can’t help how you are born.  But I felt guilty for having caused my mother so much agony.

A side effect to that was feeling like I should never ask for drugs, since Mom went through her labor (up until the last 15 minutes of the 36 hour nightmare) naturally.  I thought that was a mark of excellence in character.  I was horrified when I had to be induced to have Thor, and was ashamed of myself for having an epidural.  (I would tell you now that epidurals are gifts from a benevolent god, and should be given out freely as soon as laboring women lumber into L&D rooms.)

It has also carried over into being afraid to ask doctors for help with anxiety.  This has meant me passing out on two different occasions, while a doctor did surgery on my foot–both times I could feel what the was doing, but was ashamed to ask for more of the local anesthesia.  The last doctor told me he’d rather numb my whole leg than have me throw up on  him.

So, I was really proud of myself for insisting that the dentist numb my mouth this morning.  It’s the little things that show progress.  I don’t care who thinks I am a wimp.  I don’t care who thinks I am weak.  I don’t care if I did sound like a mewling fool, and if I was an oversensitive baby.  If I don’t want to feel pain, and I have the means of avoiding it, by god, I am not going to feel pain!

You know, all this is stuff… I wish I had worked through in my 20s.  It would have made the 30s and now so much easier.  But I guess I had other mess going on.  I had to survive my 20s to get level in my 30s, to get awesome by my 40s.  The important thing is that Thor gets the benefit of the work, and he won’t have the same struggles I did.  Every generation gets a little better, a little smarter, and a little closer to living on Mars.  I have taken one small step for dental anxiety, and one giant leap for mankind.

 

p.s., I am really glad I insisted because I still felt pain, but it was manageable.  Had I not been numb, I might have bitten off someone’s finger.

 

 

Explaining the Strange Behavior, Lancient History

Sleep, Struggling, and Shame

the outside lane

Remember when you could sleep like this?

 

My childhood came before seatbelts were mandatory in cars, much less carseats for children.  I spent my toddlerhood standing on the bench seat of our car, beside my mother, tucked behind her shoulder, or sitting in her lap, or, when I was just too wiggly, in the backseat tumbling like a tumbleweed.  I’m glad for carseats now.  Especially since cars are so much dinkier than they used to be.

I love that picture.  Kiddos run and run, like puppies, until they just stop, flop over, and fall into the exhausted innocence of their sleep.

I should be asleep right now, but I am going to see the dentist tomorrow, and you all know about my dental anxiety.  Can’t sleep.  Crowns will eat me.  That’s my motto for the night.

What else?  I watched the Katy Perry movie and wanted to put her in my pocket.  Even though I realize I am being manipulated by a media machine, it is a happy manipulation.  I found myself truly smiling in several places, and dang if I didn’t shed a tear for the girl when her marriage ended.

I was a fan of Russell Brand’s until I read his second book, and then I thought, “This is a person who wants someone else to fix him, but does not want to do any of the work to fix himself, and does not want to take responsibility for keeping it fixed.  This is a person who wants a minder, or a nanny, or a valet.”  And I felt sorry for Katy Perry because it was clear that as soon as he realized she hadn’t fixed him, he was going to be moving on.

Fixing is funny.

I wrote a long, long post earlier about how embarrassed and ashamed I used to be of the fact I had hoarded so much clothing (even saving things from junior high long after I was past college, while still buying compulsively), and how that hoarding had led to me being nearly buried in my own wardrobe.  I wrote about how my friend Stephanie came over to help me declutter and organize, how she came over to fix me.  But what Stephanie fixed was the symptom of my problem, not my problem, so within weeks of her decluttering my space, I had destroyed it once again.  (I will always be thankful for what Stephanie tried to do to help me.)

Me, sitting in a mountain of clothing. Stephanie had come to help me. I was pretending I thought it was funny. Otherwise it was just too mortifying.

I had to learn to let go of things.  I had to learn to part with and separate myself from the physical wall I was using to protect myself from things both in and outside of me.  I had to find the root of my problem (which was fear), and I had to work it out.

I still struggle with compulsive shopping.  Even if it is just picking up $1 bin items.  It is very difficult for me to go into a store and buy just exactly what I went in to get.  I am much, much healthier about it than I once was, though.  Now, I might compulsively buy myself a coffee.  I haven’t been on a mad spree in over a decade.

I’ve been hunting for that picture for a while, wanting to post it.  I used to be incredibly ashamed of it.  I’m not proud of it now, but I can look at it and see a girl who was struggling, and a girl who needed help–not a nasty, lazy girl.  No one lives like that because they like living that way.  They live like that because something is wrong.  Happily, I am a woman who sought help, and am a hundred times healthier.

Now, if I could just convince myself to go to sleep…

 

 

books, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Friends of Mine, Inside Lane, Politics, Religion

Books, Cures, and Poor, Poor Baby Jesus (Updated)

the outside lane

I started a new book.  I can’t tell yet if it is good.  I’m two chapters in and the story has my attention, but the writer writes exactly the way I speak, and I find myself-in-other-people annoying, so I can’t decide whether or not to enjoy it.  I will end up with a grudging appreciation for it, as I do most things that remind me of myself. 

It is funny how we can be repelled by our own personalities.  My dearest friends are usually very different from me.  I gravitate toward big personalities (admittedly, I am one of those), but behind those big personalities are methodical, organized, slow-burning characters.  I have come to realize that the reason I get so irritated with short-fused, paranoid, self-effacing, mercurial talkers is because I am a short-fused, paranoid, self-effacing, mercurial talker.  (Thus, the heroine of the new novel is infuriating, being the poster child for above flaws.)

I do idealize solid people.  I idealize people who are doing the jobs they went to college to learn, and who have done the same jobs for entire career spans.  This fascinates and intrigues me.  To date, the longest I have ever stayed with one industry is five years.  Granted, I have returned to that industry (it also being the industry I most enjoyed), but I don’t feel like that counts because I only returned one peg above where I left it off 15 years ago.  I am in awe of people who commit to a course of career and keep it.

(Telaryn let me know that, “Reports are coming in that the statement is a parody and not, in fact, attributable to Akin.”  Good to know!  I found this retraction/correction.)

Explaining the Strange Behavior, music, songs to learn and sing

Fight, Fight, Fight for This Swagger Jagger

the outside lane

Cheryl Cole, nee Tweedy, is one fifth of a British girl group (Girls Aloud), manufactured on a competitive reality show, turned celebrity/solo artist.  Cher Lloyd is a British solo artist, mentored by Cheryl Cole on a competitive reality show.  Cheryl is huge is the UK.  Depending upon your level of interest in British pop culture, you may or may not have heard of her.  She sputtered when she tried to break the market in America.  Cher is well known in the UK, but has achieved a global success that Cheryl was not able to attain, breaking the American market with a re-released single from her first album–on her first try.

This is Cheryl Cole:

This is Cher Lloyd:

They are remarkably similar physically.  Both are tiny, pretty, brown-eyed girls with sweet features, and great smiles.  They are remarkably similar as vocalists, as well.  Neither are great shakes as singers, but both have released funky, poppy, can-dance-to-them tunes, produced by some of the biggest names in the business.  Both have been taken under the wings of major rap and hip-hop artists, and they share very similar management.

So why did one work in the American market and not the other?

I would wager that the reason Cher Lloyd broke the states, and Cheryl Cole didn’t is the same reason that the Spice Girls are still US favorites, and most of the US has no idea what Girls Aloud are. 

If you head over to YouTube and listen to some Girls Aloud [this is one of my favorites], you’ll come away thinking, “Ah–obvious successors to the Spice Girls throne.” [and for fairness, my favorite Spice Girls video]  But, for all their trying, they weren’t.

The Spices (Posh having been name-linked to Cheryl Cole through shared interest in their husbands’ professions.  Posh is married to soccer god David Beckham, and Cheryl Cole is divorced from Becks’ former teammate Ashley Cole–why do I know this?!) were a manufactured girl group from nowhere, who burst onto the scene with color, and excitement, and posturing, and nonsensical lyrics, and “Girl Power, feminism, blah blah blah!”  They were all platform heels, insane hair, and performance art, comprised of one really good vocalist (Melanie Chisolm, Mel C a/k/a Sporty, sadly, also the least charismatic of the group), three decent vocalists, and Posh (the one who struggled in all areas, save looking good.) 

Girls Aloud were formed by process of elimination on Popstars the Rivals, a precursor to the X Factor (from when Cher Lloyd came), with one of the Spice Girls (Gerri Haliwell a/k/a Ginger Spice) as part of the judging panel (again, why do I know this?!)  They burst onto the scene with glorious beauty, and lip gloss, and nonsensical lyrics, and erm…lip gloss!  They were all luscious hair extensions, and false eyelashes, and wind machines, comprised of one excellent vocalist (Nadine Coyle), three middling vocalists, and Cheryl Cole (the one who struggled in all areas, save looking good.  Even Ginger Spice said so!)

The Spice Girls were in on the joke.  They had carefully and definitively cultivated images, but they weren’t just the image.  They came to work.  They came to perform.  They came to show you a good time.  And if you laughed?  Well, they were laughing, too.  Spice World, anyone?  (If you have not seen Spice World, you are truly missing out.  I mean this sincerely.)  They were successful because they came to entertain YOU.  They were focused on pleasing YOU.  They played to the audience.

Girls Aloud had little to no sense of humor.  Their carefully cultivated image was glossy video sex appeal.  Aside from Nadine’s vocals, the group didn’t have anything much different from lingere models, and their imaged was propped up for the audience to admire.  They were serious about achieving celebrity, and there was no joking about their images.  (I cannot find the interview they did with Russell Brand, where he throws them for a loop, calling the least attractive of the group the most beautiful, and ignoring the two most popular.  He negs Nadine so effectively, I expected her to climb into his lap for attention the first time I saw it.)

So which would you rather go see?  A group of middling singers who perform and engage, and work to bring you entertainment, or a group of middling singers who perform and pose, and work to look attractive, expecting that to be enough?  And don’t get me wrong, Girls Aloud are gorgeous, but no way in hell would Nadine Coyle be making Spice World.

It’s the same thing with Cher and Cheryl.  Cher, though a poor singer, is a brilliant performer.  She is engaging and energetic, and she is working her tail feathers off to bring you a good time.  She wants to perform because she loves the audience.  Cheryl is beautiful, and she clearly works at making the best of what she has vocally, and she clearly works hard at learning her performance.  But she performs because she wants you to love her.

Spice Girls/Cher Lloyd=Want You to Love the Show They are Doing for You

Girls Aloud/Cheryl Cole=Want You to Love Them

And you know what the American market loves?  A good time.  You show us a good time, and we will love you.  We will zigga-zig-ah your socks off with appreciation, no matter how goofy your hair is.

That’s how to break the American market.  Just like a helicopter!