22.10.08

Having my opinions tweaked

Once upon a time, I went to a very conservative Christian school. This school was actually very good in education, but, as you might guess, it had some problems. I knew, it was a fact in my mind, that gay people were all oversexed, would hit on everyone of their desired gender, and loooved converting innocent straight people.
At this same time, I was hanging out with this group of girls, all older than I was. I don't remember now how we all knew eachother, but it was a loosely linked set of maybe 15 girls. One day, one of girls was relating a story about how a security guard someplace had been hitting on her, or maybe just talking to her and trying to say she should go talk to some of the guys at wherever she'd been at the time. And, she said, she finally told him she was gay, and he was actually very accepting about it, although curious, asking her questions about it.
Me, on the other hand, I was flabbergasted. She was gay? I found out later that I was the only one surprised, she'd been out a while. But, but, I knew her! I had a hard time thinking of her as oversexed, and she'd never hit on me-- wait, yes she had. She got me flowers on my birthday. But when I saw it as an innocent, non-flirtatious gift, that's where it ended. She was just a normal girl, wow.
I remember sitting in classes the few days, just thinking about this, completely blown away that, oh man, something I'd been taught had just been proven very wrong.

Similarly, years later, I had a good friend online, and her weight came up in a conversation with me and a few others, probably talking about dieting or health or somesuch related topic. She's... see, I hesitate to describe it, because it's still so negative in my mind. Long story short, some experimental antibiotics caused her weight to balloon from a healthy size to morbidly obese. At one point she was telling me that she'd lost about 300 pounds so far-- and hoped to lose another 100 or 150.
But I know I'd be really angry about someone describing her as "fat," even though I have no qualms about describing my rotund cousin as such. In my head, I try to defend this, saying that a) my cousin is a bitch and b) the "gland problem" that caused her weight was cleared up by 5th grade or so. I point out to myself that she doesn't seem to realise her size, being a cheerleader in high school (boys behind me at pep rallies describing it as too horrifying not to watch), worrying that her pregnancy would show. My own thought on finding out she was pregnant was to be aghast that someone had sex with her, and yet when I drive over and visit my friend and she tells me about her vacation with her boyfriend and all the condoms they went through, I laugh with her, not at her.
Maybe, to me, fat describes an attitude. Maybe I'm just a big hypocrite.

Lately I had been wondering what a friend of mine does for a living. I know her husband has some manner of high-end office job that sometimes entails travelling about the country, but while she might have a time conflict with a gaming night or because she's taking him to the airport, dropping the kid off at school, I couldn't remember her ever having a time conflict due to work. I don't generally consider myself nosy, but this was beginning to bother me -- how was it that I'm her friend but have no idea what she does? Surely she must do something, right?
I finally found out within the past week, and I've been having a smaller-scale version of the "Oh man. Wow." reaction I had to finding out that gay people weren't evil.
She's a mom. She's a writer, too, and recently published(Amazon got my copy to me a few days ago, and I loved it), but firstly she's a mother, a stay-at-home mom. (As an aside, her kid's 11 or so and is one of four kids I've met whom I don't want to shove in a barrel in a dark basement until it matures.)
She's very different from my perception of most stay-at-home-mothers, primarily because other stay at home mothers I've known seem to have few to no other skills and I suspect they stay at home because they never considered anything different. Rather, she's intelligent, an excellent writer and an excellent cook, with hobbies outside the home.
I still think most stay-at-home-moms, especially the ones who go online with screennames like Billysmom and momof4 (Don't you have a name outside of your children? Is your motherhood all that defines you?), made a career choice about as much as a high school drop out "chooses" to flip burgers the rest of his/her life.
But, I can't look down on her. I'm certainly not saying, "Wow, I used to like and respect you, but I found out you don't have a real job." I'm saying "Wow, I'm really surprised to find out this person I like and respect is a stay at home mom, and goes against all these stereotypes I have."
Or... "Huh. Wow."

1.10.08

If you say insightful things too often, people start coming to you to talk.

In real life, I tell a lot of stories about zany adventures. My friends have commented that I live an interesting life. No, no, I say. I'm just the scribe. It's the other people who have the stories.

I have two stories today. One is from WoW, one isn't.

Story number one. I'm doing some minor housekeeping and accounting in WoW, when a girl I know asks if I could critique her characters, because they suck, she says. (I play on an RP server.) Most people, their character is an extension of their own mind in some way-- what they want to be, what they would be, what they have been (details like being a Night Elf or former Stockades inmate not withstanding). I gently advise her of this fact before pointing out that her characters are emo, mean, or incapable.
I find out later that she's asking because one of our regular RP buddies finally snapped at her. This has been boiling for months, so I'm unsurprised, but I understand how she was. We talked about friends; she asked me if we were friends-- I said not very much, but I'm not hostile to her. We talked about the psychiatric profession. I'm hoping that maybe being the third person to voice to her that she *should* talk to a counselor will tip the scales. We talked a little bit about my own chat with the psychiatrist, so I hope that will make it a little easier on her, knowing that someone she knows has done it and not had the world collapse on her.
She said, "You're a good listener, C, even if we're not really friends."
I said, "Yeah, every once in a while, I say stuff that's insightful, but if you do it too often, people stop listening to you altogether. Or they want your advice all the time."
I told her that she was handling this more maturely than the last person I had to have a similar talk with, who is still not speaking to me. (That girl is a story for another time.)


I excused myself from her, to write a note to another friend, who has been having some trouble with boys lately.

A real estate agent shows you a house. It is a beautiful house, with everything you didn't even know you wanted, well within your price range. The real estate agent tells you that she feels obligated to tell you that it did have a very minor ghost problem, but they've had priests come out and it's fine now. Do you buy the house?
You order an affordable but kindof mid-quality cut of steak. Your steak is late coming, your waitress tells you that there was a mix-up, it's going to be a bit longer on your steak because they had to cook it over- but they're upgrading it on the house to the really good cut of steak. Are you happy with the outcome?
You are on the search for the Holy Grail. You have dug through centuries of myth, theft, under-the-table sales and conspiracy theories, and you have found it! The person who has it now is well aware of what it is, you can feel the power of god radiating from it-- and he's going to *give you* the Holy Grail because it has a gem missing out of one side and he hates it. Do you gladly take it, realising this guy is a buffoon?

If you're a 20-something young man who answered yes to all of that, I have a great girl for you to meet.

She wrote a blog post about her troubles, and I sent her a note in response. I told her she is smart, mature, attractive. I told her if she needs a hug, I'm here; I told her that while I can't say I've been in her exact situation, but I can relate in tiny tiny ways. I told her I have a recording of a guy saying that "smart, attractive, a nerd, and actually likes you" is the holy grail of women.
My heart goes out to her-- she's intelligent, eloquent, mature, incredibly kind (and diplomatic when people are assholes to her), and she really is attractive. (I didn't say specifically in my note to her, not wanting to sound like a perv, but she's got great legs. She's probably the only girl I've seen who can wear those short shorts without looking skanky or horribly disproportionate. )

Too good to be true? Yeah, she hears that a lot. Usually shortly before she gets to the part of the date where, because she's painfully honest in addition to all her other good qualities, she has a talk with them that ends with her turning her head and putting her fingers on her Adam's apple.

I don't know. I almost think she shouldn't tell people till later in the relationship, but then what? They can not take the chance to get to know her, or she doesn't tell them and they get mad at her for dragging it out.

It's a good thing she can be diplomatic to assholes, because she's sure dealing with a lot.