Exasperated

Feeling annoyed about several things…

• How can some folk treat you like you don’t count? I wonder if they would feel the same if they saw others treat someone they cared about that way?
• How people have nothing good to say about someone, and when she dies, suddenly she’s an angel with the strength and grit of 10,000, and the world will never see her like again?
• How everyone’s ridiculously overworked, and not even doing anything particularly rewarding, and then we end life wondering what it was all about?
• How just running a home is considered of no value compared to gumming up the public transport system every morning and every evening.
• How some people are determined to be accorded more respect than others, even when it’s a waste of other people’s time and energy.
• How charity shops are overcharging for things (muddy shopping trolley that somebody spilled something inside…. £8.50? A tiny handbag that still contains a sanitary towel and a shopping list for toilet rolls… £5.50? Dinky little jewellery cases with so much padding that there’s no room for most people’s jewellery collections – anything from £6 to £13?)
• How people stroll into a shop and don’t give you room to leave it first – do they think there’ll be plenty of room inside with you still trapped in there by them?
• How set top boxes, DVD players and VCRs operate together in such an incredible muddle that they don’t always do what you expect (much too complicated) and sometimes your set top box refuses to work at all when it was working perfectly well this morning. As a result, you miss Tenko, which you haven’t seen properly (with subtitles) for over 15 years.
• How things like kettles and juicers are sometimes made in such a shoddy fashion that they fly apart and injure people, and you worry in case it happens to you – but when you’re shopping, all the kettles and juicers look as shoddy as each other and you get the feeling it won’t make much difference which you choose.
• How people cheat, use small print, try to mislead you about what you’re buying, and don’t tell you the full price of their products.
• How DVDs force you to watch bits you don’t want to watch (by not letting you speed over them), and when you try to speed over something you’re allowed to speed over, it takes you straight into the middle of the film.
• How there are too many remote controls with too many buttons using too many different symbols in too many different places, and your brain starts to give up so that most of the time, even months after buying these things, you’re just dabbing all the buttons hopefully, trying to get things to do what you want.
• How some DVDs are so badly designed you start the film before you’ve even been given a chance to set the subtitles, and it’s not very clear that an X in the box next to subtitles means “I don’t want this” when you think it’s a check in the box for “I DO want this” and you have to go back and do it all over again when the subtitles fail to materialize. And finally when you succeed in putting the subtitles on, the DVD takes you right back to the spot you first discovered they weren’t running, when what you WANT is to go back to the beginning to catch anything else you might have missed (and I’m not talking about the bit that says ’20th Century Fox’ or ‘Dreamworks’ or the trailers of other films).

Think I’ll get to bed now, and let the Invisible Sulk roam unchecked… he might even get on this blog to you, you never know. I hope not.

Living in Our Own Little Worlds

I enjoyed the words of another blogger on how little we really know about each other: We Are Lonely People. To a friend I said that there seem to be all kinds of barriers between people, not just physical distance. She sagely replied: “There are so many taboos, shades of meaning, social etiquettes that sometimes it is like treading through a minefield.”

Well, I have certainly burned my fingers a few times, but it’s easier just to be oneself – and, from that perspective, to be more patient with others. I do understand (from experience) reservations about trusting people… it can take years. There are people I’ve known for a very long time and it’s as though they’re standing on the other side of a tent wall – all I see is the shadow. Sometimes I can tap on the tent flap and they’ll respond or not respond, depending on what they feel like. You sort of know them, certainly longer than people they see more of, but… well. I sound a little like Oswald Wynd, who wrote The Ginger Tree! He talked about how you know people so well and then they’re gone for one reason or another, and it’s as though your friendship with them has never been. That seems to be human nature, and the nature of socializing in general.

We lose friends for the most mundane of reasons – friends who have left the area or have got married and are busy adding to the population. As nothing is certain in life, we should be ourselves no matter who we’re talking to. Things fall out the way they do because they must.

My Zodiac animal is the Wood Snake – I had a friend who was a Fire Horse. Yes, the friendship just disintegrated into smoke, hissing and stamping hooves. Perhaps it was always meant to turn out that way, and that’s how I prefer to think of it now.

Whether we choose to communicate or not, misunderstanding each other’s intentions is so easy to do – particularly when at least one person in the mix isn’t prepared to give it proper thought and would rather just leave. If we had a better idea of what the other person felt about things (lots of things) we might be less inclined to make wrong assumptions, or at least realize that the good things outweigh the bad.

Quiz time – my result is as follows:

***You Are 68% Open Minded***

You are a very open minded person, but you’re also well grounded.
Tolerant and flexible, you appreciate most lifestyles and viewpoints.
But you also know where you stand firm, and you can draw that line.
You’re open to considering every possibility – but in the end, you stand true to yourself.

How Open Minded Are You?

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Dec 2007 edit: my score seems to have fallen to 56%! I got exactly the same blurb, though.

Did I Suddenly Sprout Horns and a Tail?

Like everyone else, I’m part of the rat race. After a lifetime of being stared at by other rats, I have to ask – what’s with this whole culture of staring? I was brought up to believe it’s rude to stare, and that’s something I live by. So why do so many others go ahead and stare anyway? Even much older people than me will pause to glare across the road when all that’s happening is that I decided to cross the road further along than they think is normal.

After coming across some excellent articles on the topic, I searched Google – and struck a rich seam of discontent. It happens to all of us, some more than others, and the majority hate it. Some try to bear it with patience, others use humour or give as good as they get (an eyeful for an eyeful) – but every so often someone is already having a bad day and will leap for the throat.

I’m not innocent myself. I fell into the trap while attending a party in the student flat I lived in. I don’t enjoy parties and didn’t want to be there, but had no choice. I was sitting with a couple of people, talking a little but not much, staring ahead in a glazed way. The person directly ahead of me just happened to be somebody’s boyfriend. He kept glancing round and catching me with my eyes on him. He smiled a little, seeming nonplussed rather than annoyed, but I was getting cross with him for constantly intercepting my gaze, and with myself for staring when I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what else to look at – the room was full of people and he was further away than most: a convenient target. It was an unfocused stare disguised as good nature, but I could see it was misinterpreted.

For those of you with better hearing, there could be much more to this whole business of gawking. You will occasionally overhear a tantalizing snatch of something, and curiosity might prompt you to hesitate till you get the rest of the story. It could go on your blog later as ‘overheard in Harrods’s china department.’ Maybe it’s just friendly interest or a willingness to step in if things get out of hand. Maybe this whole people-watching thing is only human nature. Perhaps it’s accidental – people look vaguely at each other on public transport or in cafés when there’s nothing else to focus on.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to misunderstand. Those who brought us up with the words “it’s rude to stare” knew what they were talking about – they knew what it is that we have to avoid. If you need any proof, the anger and despair of the goggled-at is well indexed on Google…