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minor wondering

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Sunday, December 27, 2009
This afternoon a woman about my mom's age came up to the desk to check out some books and said "I love your top! It looks very Peter Max." (it's black with bright crazy paisleys - I love it and wear it probably too often.) I told her thanks and that I loved it too for that very reason. "But it's not Peter Max." her face fell and I felt bad and was thinking that this was one of the times where I should have just stuck to THANKS. Why am I such a ruiner?! It was bugging me because her expression was so familiar. Then I figured it out! It was the exact same expression as the woman at the hippie shoe store (birkenstock outlet that also sells danskos, which is what I was buying) - I paid with visa, she asked to see my driver's license and commented on my extreme hippie middle name. She asked if my parents were fans of the thing they were obviously fans of to give their first born a name like this, and I said "uh, yeah." She said that it was a very beautiful name; I said that I liked it now, but it was a great burden to me when I was a kid. (I treated it like a terrible secret, which of course manufactured even more trouble.) The lady's face fell and I felt like a jerk, but now that it has happened again (maybe even the same woman), I wonder where this keeps going wrong. Am I fated to keep having semi-awkward encounters with an original recipe hippie until I get it right? Is this a Groundhog Day lesson I have to learn? Or maybe this poor woman just has a face that falls after 2 minutes of conversation, no matter what the topic. Or maybe it's nothing of the sort and what's really going on is that my eyeballs are tiny projectors inventing problems where none exist.
10 comments on "minor wondering"
  1. Emma Burns12/28/2009 8:41 AM

    Ooh, ooh, I know this one! It's the script! My friend Leaves the sociologist and I used to talk about this. Everyone goes into conversations with a script in mind, the way things are going to go, only some are more adamant about it than others. If you aren't following the same script, they get all weirded out and disoriented and even offended. People who always talk to people who share the same scripts (people just like themselves--aka hippies, or other groups) are especially likely to get the same script back all the time, so they're most likely to get all freaked out and disappointed when they don't.

    Leaves was not at all a hippie so, as you can imagine, he had this happen ALL THE TIME. In fact I think it's why he became a sociologist.

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  2. Anonymous12/28/2009 9:10 AM

    Per the middle name: I had a friend in college who always signed her name with her middle initial. After years of this, I finally asked, "what the heck IS your middle name, anyway?" She told me it was Indian and that it was "Kumari" and when I asked what that meant she got very bashful, actually tucked her head down and said in a small voice "Princess" - as if it was something to be ashamed of!

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  3. Jen12/29/2009 12:51 PM

    Maggie: The Script! I hadn't thought of it quite that way before, but it makes a lot of sense.

    Anonymous T: Kumari is a beautiful name! But yeah - if all your friends growing up have normal sounding middle names like Anne or Lynn or Marie, having an "exotic" name (be it Indian or Hippie or whathaveyou) can make you very self-conscious! Nowadays it seems like weird/different names are less of a big deal, for which I say hooray.

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  4. Anonymous12/29/2009 7:11 PM

    But what is the G for? I still don't know and I am out of guesses.

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  5. Jen12/29/2009 11:26 PM

    here you go: mysterious G

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  6. Anonymous12/30/2009 7:03 PM

    That is most definitely not a name I would've or could've ever guessed. I like it.

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  7. Patty12/31/2009 11:56 AM

    Lovely middle name. Much nicer than mine: Ann--so predictable.

    I think it says a lot, Jen, that you picked up on the face slumps. You are caring and observant. But, you aren't responsible for other people's moods. I can see the nature of the exchange: they thought they had made a discovery, Yay for them. But reality squelched that.

    Interesting, really. The expected superficial social exchange is just "Hi, how are you?" "I'm fine. How about you?" "I am having a good day!" Minimum strokes. But, you know, they took it beyond that--into uncertain territory.

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  8. Jen1/02/2010 12:57 AM

    Thanks, Patty. I always have to remind myself that I'm not responsible for other people's moods! I'm better at it now than I used to be, but still...

    I think what you're saying ties in with what Maggie said about scripts. People are so interesting!

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  9. Emma Burns1/02/2010 11:39 AM

    You must have read The Great Gilly Hopkins, right?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jen1/02/2010 8:11 PM

    I have not! (But I think I have a pretty good idea what Gilly might stand for...)

    Should I?

    ReplyDelete

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