Delusions of Pretentiousness

I am of the firm opinion that I'm not a pretentious person.  In fact, if I were to make a list of all the adjectives that have described me--or even of all adjectives that could describe me at any given point in time, including the past, present, and future--pretentious might make the bottom three.  Perhaps.  But only because it's possible I may have reason to become pretentious in the future.  But then, I may have reason to become any number of other things in the future as well.

 

People who only come to know me in limited doses make this assumption.  Take, for example, the co-worker who caught me reading a poetry collection in my first couple of weeks here.  She walked into my office to drop off paperwork during my lunch hour and found me curled up contentedly in a corner, reading Billy Collins' The Trouble with Poetry.  And automatically decided it was the sort of thing I did to show how smart I was.

 

Not true.  I lunch with my door closed.  And I've read any number of books behind my closed door.  Some of them are plane reading--for example, I don't expect to be anything but entertained by the books in The Dresden Files--and some of them are classics I've wanted to read for a while.  (Anna Karenina is one of the most beautiful and most depressing things I've read.)

 

Some people are amused.  Once they know me, they find it funny that I can--in depth--analyze the most recent episode of America Idol, the lyrics of any song of their choice, and any given work of literature that I've recently read.  And sometimes not-so-recently read.  That I can sing along to Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, and a number of other Broadway shows, but that I give equal time to a variety of contemporary country artists.  Not to mention I can still belt out all of the Sesame Street songs of my childhood, along with the entire soundtracks of all of the classic animated Disney movies.

 

In fact, for every appearance of bordering-on-snobbery, people who know me for long enough will find its surprising equivalent in kitsch or pop culture that had its heyday.  (Yes, there is a Jesse McCartney CD in my collection.  No, I haven't touched it in years.  Yes, I am, as a matter of fact, somewhat ashamed it's still there.  I am, however, completely unashamed about my Clay Aiken CD.)

 

In spite of all that, here are three things I've always wanted to do that have struck me as decidedly pretentious:

 

1.  Write a poem while sitting outside a coffee shop with what appears to be a cup of coffee.  (I say "appears to be," of course, because I don't drink coffee.  But nobody walking by would know it wasn't coffee.)

 

2.  Go on Jeopardy! and say something ridiculously intelligent in response to one of Alex Trebek's random comments.  (Do they script those, by the way?)

 

3.  Conduct a discussion about existentialism with a friend while wearing a neck scarf and a beret.

 

Make it four.  I've always wanted to acquire a famous friend that I could offhandedly bring up in casual conversation as an expert on a certain area of expertise as my trump card.  "Well, you know [insert famous name here] agrees with me, because we've discussed this often."

 

But I know that these delusions of pretentiousness are just that: delusions.  I'm far more likely to entertain myself by randomly remembering I promised my roommate from freshman year that I would write a critical analysis of Jewel's song "Am I Standing Still?" and then I never did.  And then inwardly debating if she would still be entertained by whatever I sent to her if I decided that, five years later, I still owe her that analysis . . .

Cell Phone Karma

When it comes to the recent phenomenon known as "cell phone," I'm a relative newcomer.  Unlike many of my friends, who are now sharing 5-year anniversaries with their electronic devices, I won't reach the 2-year mark for another two months.

 

Indeed, I recall watching many people during my college career and laughing inwardly at their great attachment to their phones.  Cell phones, I figured, were the worst sort of leash.  And what was worse--they were leashes people voluntarily tied themselves to and allowed themselves to be controlled by.  Sort of like getting out the leash to take the dog on a walk and finding yourself being walked by the dog instead.

 

It caused no small amusement for me to watch wide-eyed panic when people realized their phones were dying.  Or when their phones were temporarily malfunctioning.  And especially when they couldn't locate the exact whereabouts of their phones right away.  I had one particular friend who dramatically proclaimed her world would end if she ever lost her cell phone.  (Meanwhile--I, a recurring passenger in her car, worried about my world ending when she attempted to text message and drive simultaneously.)

 

But with this, as with so many other things in the course of my life, I've found myself in a situation that causes me to realize I've become the type of person I once found amusing.  And led me to think that, perhaps, people had at least a couple of good reasons for feeling tied to their cell phones.

 

Last night, my cell phone died.  Our apartment does not have a land line, and my roommate and her phone were not at home.  I desperately needed to ask her a question, but it was about dinner--so I made an executive decision and hoped she'd be okay eating what I fixed.  (She was.)  Then I looked for my charger.  And looked.  And looked.  (And mind you, I was looking with my good eye)  No charger to be found.

 

And suddenly, I despaired.  What if my parents needed to reach me?  What if I had an emergency?  What if I needed, at some point in the night, to call 911 before my roommate came home?  All of a sudden, dozens of dreary situations popped into my imagination.  And inevitably, I saw myself consigned to death in all of them.  Simply because my phone had died.

 

Then I tried to access the Internet on my roommate's computer.  Because if my phone was dead, e-mail should be an adequate communication substitute for any situations except the most absolutely dire.  Right?  I couldn't get an Internet connection.  And it felt like my world was crumbling in on itself. 

 

After the melodrama reached its peak, I realized that one of the girls in my visiting teaching group lives upstairs and around the corner.  With our ward's Relief Society president and another of my good friends.  And that they are the sort of people who, if a friend came to their door with a deeply gashed and bleeding hand/leg/foot/arm/head, would gladly take them to the hospital.

 

Then I could breathe again.  Because for all of the good technology does, it doesn't do as much good as a completely human connection.

Whose Expectations Do We Meet?

There has been a question on my mind lately. And this is it: are we allowed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the standard the people who know and love us best? Or does it inevitably result in feelings of discouragement, apathy, and disillusionment?

I was raised to be independent. Goal-driven. Ambitious.

And in all fairness, I would say that I have become what I was raised to be. (Lamentably so, sometimes, according to my parents. They sometimes wish their children leaned on their shoulders a little more often. And unfortunately, I often tend to view a proffered shoulder to cry on as a crutch.)

I'm also the sort of person who enjoys a challenge. Who thrives on challenge. And who, at these moments, feels that every time she doesn't allow herself to be challenged, she's folding in a little bit on herself. Does that make any sense? It does to me, but I'm the one writing.

Sometimes I look at all of the people in my life who love me and who are impressed with me, and I can't help but wonder if they are a little bit delusional. Because right now, to be quite frank, I am less than impressed with myself. I'm beyond un-impressed with myself. And though I'm trying to change that, change comes slow.

And I'm wondering if I need to change me at all, really. Or if I simply need to change the way I view myself. As bright as I am, I can't believe it took me twenty-four years to realize that I'm harder on myself than anyone else I know. I forget that the people who know me are looking at me with two good eyes.

And that, apparently, there's obviously something there worth seeing.

So Apparently I'm Not American . . .

It seems that people who know me and see me often have reached a consensus: I was born in the wrong country.  Apparently, I'm as British as they come.

 

At first, I found this idea preposterous.  Just because I have a predilection for many things British (including, but not limited to: authors, actors, television, and chocolate) does not mean I'm living in the wrong country.  I mean, I like House quite a lot.  And it's an American TV show.  (So what if the lead actors is, in all reality, British?)

 

I'm also rather fond of Psych, Monk, Pushing Daisies, and Gilmore Girls.  And when I pointed this out to one of my friends--in exactly those words, she began to laugh.  Because apparently, it's not my tastes that make me seem more British than American.  It's the way I talk and the way I talk.  Several people have verified this.

 

Specifically, I'm fond of the adjectives "quite" and "rather."  Indeed, when I'm enthusing to my co-worker about something she should read, watch, or listen to, I often find myself saying, "I found it rather amazing" or "Seriously.  It made me quite happy."

 

It's rare that I become "ecstatic" or "enthused."  Or any number of other adjectives my vocabulary allows for.  I'm usually either "happy" or "quite happy," "sad" or "quite sad."  Although, in all fairness, sadness does have variants of "depressed" and "quite depressed."  Or, if I'm feeling variable, I'll subsitute "rather" for "quite."

 

And my argument against her characterization of me failed when I asked, unthinkingly, "Don't you think that assessment of me is rather over-exaggerated?"

There Are No Shackles on Me

I feel that I've been chastised by a Broadway song. 

 

Let me explain.  Lately, there have been some things in my life that have made me decidedly unhappy.  Some of these things are completely beyond my control and will only be remedied by time and patience.  But others are completely under my control and I, for reasons unknown to even myself, have insisted on feeling helpless about them.

 

Anyway, my roommate said something the other day that reminded me of a song from the musical Aida.  And I started singing the song, only to discover she didn't recognize it all.  She's never heard the music.  So I resolved we would listen to Aida.

 

The two leads in Aida both feel like slaves.  Aida feels like a slave because she is one.   And Radames, the Egyptian who captures her, feels like he's a slave to his social position and the marriage expectations that come with it.

 

In the song "Enchantment Passing Through," Aida and Radames are talking about how they'd both like to sail away from their troubles.  How they would both be free if they could sail away.  Aida gets very angry when Radames implies to her that he, too, is enslaved.  She tells him, "If you don't like your fate, change it . . . You are your own master.  There are no shackles on you."

 

When I was introducing my roommate to this song, those lines felt like a slap in the face to me.  When it comes to parts of my future, I can't control them.  But when it comes to others, there are no shackles on me.  I'm free to change them.

 

And so I shall.

Quiet--and Not-So-Quiet--Desperation

In Walden, Thoreau wrote that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  When I worked for the state, there were a couple of women in my office whose very existence proved a refutation to that statement: they led lives of decidedly noisy desperation.  Everyone knew when things went wrong with these ladies' lives.  And things were always going wrong with their lives.

 

I remember thinking, the first time I read that particular quote, how profoundly sad it made me.  I read Walden for the first time after finishing my freshman year of college.  And it had been a hard year to date.  A year where I had felt as though I were leading a life of quiet desperation, despite having a few confidants who knew about my struggles from January to April 2003.  Indeed, my blog post of a few days ago was quite the anomaly for me.  I'm the sort of person who tends to internalize and then reach a point where some form of expression becomes inevitable.

 

As a matter of fact, I tend to internalize to such a point that when the expression becomes necessary, the Katie runneth over.  So to speak.  You know what I mean.

 

And let me be frank: I prefer quiet desperation to noisy desperation.  Or quiet desperation infrequently expressed to select people.  Noisy desperation never seems as serious to me.  It seems more like a plea for attention than anything else; it's one thing to wear emotions, it's quite another to broadcast them to anyone within hearing range.

 

If Thoreau's statement is correct, I think it's because people become passive.  They let themselves be acted upon and they choose not act; they accept their circumstances in spite of discontent.  Their winter of discontent turns into a spring of discontent.  And then into a summer and fall of their discontent.

 

It's so easy to recognize this.  Why is it so hard to not fall into that trap?

Matchmaker, Matchmaker . . .

At my future sister-in-law's wedding shower on Saturday, one of the ladies from the neighborhood I grew up in commented that it would be an eventful spring and summer indeed: between the wedding, my younger sister's graduation, my older sister having her third kid, and my brother returning home from his mission, my family has their hands full. And by "my family," I mean "my parents."

But they are not too busy, it seems, not to make observations about my love life.

As many of you may know, I have standing appointments with the chiropractor and with three piano students on Thursdays that require my presence in Centerville. So I stay at my parents' house every Thursday night. It's good entertainment and good company. And my mom is usually good for an insanely competitive game of Scrabble unless she has something else she needs to do.

Due to the scheduling of said appointments, I inevitably end up trying to swallow entire dinners whole in the ten minutes between arriving home from the chiropractor's and starting the first piano lesson of the night. But this past Thursday, I didn't even have time for that.

An hour and a half and a severely growling stomach later, I settled down to eat a bowl of delicious soup when the doorbell rang. It was a security salesman. Despite noticing he was attractive and that he looked about my age, I gladly turned him over to my parents. I wanted my soup, and I didn't care about getting the house a security system; I had always felt safe there. Except when my older brother got angry when we were younger. And I'm pretty sure they don't make security systems that handle those eventualities.

Anyway, I finished my soup and went downstairs to relax. Ten minutes later, the phone rings. My mom requests I answer it, but then gives up on me running up the stairs when I know it doesn't take two of them to talk shop with a security salesman. In fact, it only takes one: my dad. He's the one who can ask about technicalities. So she answered it, took a message, and went back to talking with the salesman.

A few minutes later, I found myself deep in conversation with my parents. About how I'd foiled their plans to get me to come upstairs and flirt with the security salesman who, they had realized just prior to the phone call, was a returned missionary and oh-so-available. Tall, dark, handsome RM? Of course they thought he needed to meet their daughter.

And he did, briefly. I answered the door.

If I would have realized how fond my parents could become of a salesman in twenty minutes (he earned huge brownie points from my mother by taking off his shoes when he came into the house), I wouldn't have let my mom know he was there. Except my mom taught me to be polite to everyone, and I didn't want to be the person to shoot down the nice salesman. I just wanted my soup. And some bread. And some relaxation.

And I got to have them and keep my dignity too.