Morning-Bird Bulb
Apologies to all who crossed my path yesterday. I was a minefield. Today I feign steady rationale.
This morning I walked out of the house to go to work. The large woman next door who yells at her kids was standing on the porch, smoking a cigarette. I haven’t liked this woman. For a long time she was a cold bitch to me and to Mark. (He did curse loudly at her when they were doing construction on their home very early in the morning.) But what did I do? We saw her and her husband outside the neighborhood one day; we said hello, the husband said hello, and she distinctly turned her head in the other direction. I felt like I was black in the civil war south. (I know, I the honky have no right to draw that comparison.) In the converse, she would stare coldly at me when I came to (then) Mark's house. One day she stared me down as I walked inside the house to get my bike, as I brought my bike out to ride, and then as I rode my bike back up to the house. Unnerving. So I decided to begin saying hello to her: 1. the ole kill-‘em-with-kindness tactic, 2. maybe I looked just as bitchy toward her. Now she says hello in return and even gives me a Jersey "how aw ya?" When I say, "I’m all right, and yourself?" She doesn’t just say the standard "fine, thanks." She tells me how she is. Because of our murky history I haven’t cared much how she is or wanted to carry on a conversation with her. She’s nosy, she yells blindly at her kids as a form of love and ineffective reprimand. I have considered what she might think about and feel and that she might not realize how abominable she seems to me from the outside. This morning when she said she was ok for the most part but stressed, I remembered that that is what I want when I ask people how they're doing. The courtesy "hi-how-are-ya’s" eat at me. When I ask someone how they’re doing, I, unless I succumb and fall to the gross flimsy of weather-talk, want to know how that person is doing. Almost never do I give a response anymore. Somewhere along the way I stopped giving a real response because most people don’t really seem to care. This morning I was glad that the large smoking yelling woman next door told me how she was really doing, which complicates my attitude toward her in a most alive way.
This morning I walked out of the house to go to work. The large woman next door who yells at her kids was standing on the porch, smoking a cigarette. I haven’t liked this woman. For a long time she was a cold bitch to me and to Mark. (He did curse loudly at her when they were doing construction on their home very early in the morning.) But what did I do? We saw her and her husband outside the neighborhood one day; we said hello, the husband said hello, and she distinctly turned her head in the other direction. I felt like I was black in the civil war south. (I know, I the honky have no right to draw that comparison.) In the converse, she would stare coldly at me when I came to (then) Mark's house. One day she stared me down as I walked inside the house to get my bike, as I brought my bike out to ride, and then as I rode my bike back up to the house. Unnerving. So I decided to begin saying hello to her: 1. the ole kill-‘em-with-kindness tactic, 2. maybe I looked just as bitchy toward her. Now she says hello in return and even gives me a Jersey "how aw ya?" When I say, "I’m all right, and yourself?" She doesn’t just say the standard "fine, thanks." She tells me how she is. Because of our murky history I haven’t cared much how she is or wanted to carry on a conversation with her. She’s nosy, she yells blindly at her kids as a form of love and ineffective reprimand. I have considered what she might think about and feel and that she might not realize how abominable she seems to me from the outside. This morning when she said she was ok for the most part but stressed, I remembered that that is what I want when I ask people how they're doing. The courtesy "hi-how-are-ya’s" eat at me. When I ask someone how they’re doing, I, unless I succumb and fall to the gross flimsy of weather-talk, want to know how that person is doing. Almost never do I give a response anymore. Somewhere along the way I stopped giving a real response because most people don’t really seem to care. This morning I was glad that the large smoking yelling woman next door told me how she was really doing, which complicates my attitude toward her in a most alive way.
3 Comments:
S'funny because everyone else in this state is surprised when a person actually does give a true response to the obligatory "How ya doing?" queries. Sometimes I like to supply a real answer to a random person just to throw 'em off for a minute. And yet, it then leaves me feeling even more hollow inside. Curse you, humanity!
I wish you had a baby hose, then you could fill my baby suitcase up with babies and we could have babies, together. That would be great.
i've taken to answering the question "how are you?" with words like "salty" or "meaty". and sometimes with just a sound effect.
Post a Comment
<< Home