Category: Platypus people

The introduction of the platypus was such a shock to the British scientific community, in the early 1900’s, that they considered the monotreme an elaborate, well-conceived hoax. They thought they had the animal kingdom all figured out. Those of us who know some platypus people empathize, for when they began to express themselves we thought they were joking. We thought we had human nature all figured out. As we learn more about them, we realize they’re not kidding, and our shock turns to intrigue, as we begin to think they might be able to teach us more about ourselves from their funhouse mirror perspective.

Groundhogs, Led Zeppelin, and Our Existential Existence

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We love to define ourselves through artistic venues. We believe that listing off our current musical preferences provide a concise definition of who we are, and who we aim to be. Our preferences in all art forms define us in relative ways, but music appreciation appears to be the common denominator we use to define ourselves among other fans of music. Most adults continue to listen to the hit singles and albums they enjoyed back in that insecure, confusing period of our development that occurs roughly between age 15 and 25. I don’t know if it’s a sense of nostalgia we seek, or if we’re trying to relive an era of our lives we didn’t appreciate enough at the time, but most of us find ourselves trapped in that era when others defined good music for us on the sliding scale of cool. If others helped us define all of the variables inherent in the definition of cool music, and we regard our musical preferences as a concise definition of who we are, how much control did we have in shaping the people we’ve become? We might prefer to believe that we’ve left those mercurial teenage years behind us, as they become smaller and smaller in our rear-view mirrors, but some social scholars state high school is like a line from a hit single that preceded my era, but was nonetheless as ubiquitous in it, “You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

What this means, to some, is that it is almost impossible to reach such a level of confidence regarding our identity. It is possible to know thyself to elevated degrees as we age, but remain forever susceptible to getting this definition slapped around by the prevailing winds of cool and uncool? This spawns another question: Do we ever reach a point where this dimension of our identity is absolute and true? Those of us who reflect on our life and analyze our actions believe we learn more about ourselves as we age, but others state that even though the core tenets of our personality mature as we age, our core identity forms in the early stages of life. How often was that core identity slapped around by the prevailing winds of cool and uncool? “You listen to who? Uncool man, uncool.” This spawns another question: Do we ever reach a point when this dimension of our identity is absolute and true? We all prefer to believe we’ve made individual choices regarding the music we listen to on a regular basis, but are those preferences ours, or were they shaped by group thought, rebellion to group thought, and/or rebellion to rebellious thoughts?

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Why do research scientists study other animals to get to the root of human psychology? Is it because the nature of the reactions other animals have are more primal? Humans are often more difficult to test, particularly in groups, because we tend to project idyllic images of who we prefer to be, rather than who we really are. Animals test much better because they remain closer to the primal state, because one animal might tell us more about our psychological base than hundreds of idyllic human test subjects can.

I understand the general point about the primal state, but I don’t understand how animals can teach us about the comparative complexities of the human mind. As far as we know, animals do not have the mental capacity to sit around and contemplate greater questions of individual identity. Most concepts of this nature are too foreign and complex for them, but how simple and primal are their brains? 

On nature shows, we witness groundhogs watch one of their own fall prey to a predator. We assume their desire to watch a predator eat one of their own is born of simplicity, but could it be more complex than we’ve ever imagined? Is the desire to watch similar to our complex desire to rubberneck an accident on the interstate, or is that a primal, base desire on our part?

Groundhogs screech and chatter when a predator eats one of their brethren. We assume these screams are a mechanism they use as a last ditch effort to try to save their brethren. We also assume that they are attempting to warn other groundhogs in the vicinity, but could these screeches be similar to those that we engage in during horror flicks when we scream while watching a predator slaughter one of our own in a slasher flick? Is their fascination with horror similar our own, in that they’re horrified, but they can’t look away? Do they chatter about the images they saw later, in the manner we do when walking out of a theater, and do they mourn the lives of former friends and relatives in the aftermath?

When humans die, we attempt to minimize the deceased so we can live better lives in the aftermath. “Richard was a great guy and all, but he was old,” we declare to minimize the pain and horror of his death. We might say something along the lines of, “He smoked,” or “he ran himself ragged for so long that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later.” One has to wonder if groundhogs have a similar need for detachment to help them achieve some sort of distance from the deceased, so they can deal with the complexities inherent in life and death better. Do they say, “Alfonso was great guy and all, but he was slow. He didn’t work out enough, and building and rebuilding his home was really one of the only forms of exercise he engaged in. I knew he was going to die, and to be frank, I say good riddance.”

Do groundhogs like and dislike other groundhogs based on personality traits? If this is the case, how far do they take it? Do they ostracize those who have strange growths on their head, or are they more accepting of differences than us? Do they castigate others based on work ethic, the obnoxious behavior of their pups, and would one groundhog ever exclude another from the cool kid, groundhog group based on a titty twister?

I used to give titty twisters all the time. If you were in my contingent, and I considered you a mentally stable male, I probably gave you a titty twister. I thought it was funny, and I considered it harmless. These titty twisters had no sexual motivations as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t do it to establish dominance over a twistee. I just considered it a funny thing to do to a guy standing there, doing nothing, and acting far too normal. I thought a good twist might shake them out of an otherwise boring, normal day. It’s who I was, and who I will probably always be. I don’t force people out of the norm with physical actions in that manner anymore. I prefer more subtle measures now.

When I gave a titty twister to this one guy, however, he punched me in the chest for it. I twisted his titty. He was being too normal. He had a normal expression on his face, and he didn’t say anything for a spell. I gave him a titty twister, because I thought he needed a random shake.

His reaction might have left me doubled over on a normal day, as I loved impulsive, obnoxious reactions, but his reaction carried a mean face with it. I assumed we were friends, but his mean face informed me that the punch sent a message that rejected everything I valued, and that our friendship was officially irretrievable. I’m sure groundhogs reject other groundhogs’ over over-the-top attempts at humor, but do they hold grudges? This guy told people he hated me after that, and he added an insulting characterization of my manhood.

Does a groundhog ever do anything to shake up the norm, or is their existence so primal that they’re simply happy to be alive for one more day? Does that attribute say more or less about human beings? Do we take life for granted to such a degree that we’re no longer happy just to be alive? Is this desire to shake our lives out of the norm a complex desire, or is it a simplistic, biological need to keep our brains firing at a rapid pace?

If a groundhog decided to perform an act of procreation in a different position, for example, would we document that decision as simple or complex? If the groundhog displayed a sense of listlessness prior to trying the new position, how would we document his actions? If the groundhog performed his act on other groundhogs when his selected mate wasn’t around, would we view the adulterous act as complex or simplistic? If we could see inside the groundhog’s brain and witness a dream of an army of aliens shackling him to a wall, while suckling on his reproductive organ for the semen nutrient they needed to survive, would we consider this a complex need for fantasy or a simplistic, base desire?

That former friend of mine, whom I titty twisted into an enemy was a heavy metal dude, and I was a heavy metal dude. I mistakenly assumed that commonality would serve as the glue to our lifelong bond.

Most of the people I grew up around were heavy metal dudes. We called all like-minded souls, hessians. I so badly wanted to be a hessian that I was willing to do just about anything to make it happen, but I had a tough time gaining entrance into their world. I didn’t like Rush or Iron Maiden, but I did like KISS. They regretted to inform me that my application to into the world of hessianism would require a rejection notification at this time, for KISS was too popular and mainstream. Feel free to reapply, they said, when your preferences evolve to more of an outlier group. If I stubbornly resisted Rush or Iron Maiden, they said, then I should feel free to explore the worlds of Slayer or Megadeth. “Sorry,” I said. I wanted to be a hessian, but I didn’t care for those musicians. Their album cover art was cooler than cool, with cool monsters and satanic imagery, but their music was beyond me. I wore the mandatory denim jacket and donned the requisite mullet, but for some reason I was on the outside looking in for most of my young life. It may have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t say the “Dude” but I didn’t give “a durn about nothing”, and I found authority figures laughable. I thought that should be enough.

One thing I learned in the beginning of my public square humiliation was that my practice of calling my grandma “My Nana” would be out, if I wanted to be a hessian. I didn’t have to hate her or anything she stood for, as that was a trait reserved for punkers, but I didn’t have to like her so much either. A hessian was to remain somewhat unimpressed by his grandmother’s entrance into a room. He might consider shaking her hand as an alternative to hugging her, and a “Hello ma’am” is a viable alternative to running across a room screaming, “Nana!” When the greeting reaches a conclusion, the hessian is then to go on about his business, as if he’s not concerned with her existence. Ignoring such staples could consign the music aficionado to the perception shared by Genesis and the B-52s listeners.

Genesis lovers valued simplicity over the adrenaline rush we found in the force of heavy metal, so we hated them, and hating things gained us a lot more mileage than any expression of love, adoration, or a fondness for anything or anyone. Hatred gave a hessian character and complexity. To the question, “Do you enjoy the music of Phil Collins?” one must answer, “No. I think he’s feminine.” Loving something subjects one to scorn and ridicule, and it gives a hessian the license to hate another. What you love is irrelevant be it KISS, Happy Days, or your Nana. Loving something is a weakness to poke and prod, until the recipient of such scorn is too embarrassed to love anything, unless it’s Metallica. One can say, “I love Metallica,” and their hessian membership card will remain unblemished, but that’s the extent of love in the hessian world.

If the scorned has never heard the music of Metallica, friends will instruct them to run out to the store tomorrow and buy Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, or And Justice for All…” If the listener stubbornly refuses to worship these three albums, after repeated listens, they run the risk of having a ‘poser’ label cast upon them. That person may as well take the denim jacket off, cut their mullet, and start calling their grandma “My Nana” again, because they’ll never gain entrance into the hallowed halls of the hessian.

Hessians can smile and laugh, but they need to reserve those reactions for moments of scorn and ridicule. A hessian can like KISS and Van Halen, but as I said that’s not enough. They cannot –I repeat cannot– like Poison, Cinderella, or Faster Pussycat. Doing so, will open up the floodgates for scorn and ridicule, granting all card-carrying hessians in attendance the smile and laugh allowance. I assume that social media forums have made life easier for teens in America by comparison, for a person can now block those who question their musical preferences.

This complex world of identity through music became a lot easier for me when I became a Zeppelin guy though. Prior to experiencing the sensorial, shocking world of Led Zeppelin, I assumed they could be lumped in with The Doobie Brothers, Foghat, and all the other relatively nondescript bands of seventies music. When I discovered how faulty that assumption was, I became a Zeppelin guy.

Most of the fellas I knew wanted to befriend Zeppelin guys. They wanted to talk with us, be like us, and accept us into their community. I could hang out with Zeppelin guys. We could talk for hours about the band’s iconography and folklore. I could even proselytize others into the Zeppelin world if I wanted another friend. I could just play the Led Zeppelin albums II and Zoso, and create a friend, complete with all the shared associations and memories that went along with it. After becoming a Zeppelin guy and creating more Zeppelin guys, I decided to progress from being just a Zoso and Zeppelin II guy to a Physical Graffiti and Zeppelin III guy. I learned every lyric and every beat on those two Zeppelin albums, and to some Zeppelin guys I progressed from being a Zeppelin guy to the Zeppelin guy. For loving those two albums as much as I did, other Zeppelin guys assigned complicated and mysterious Zeppelin guy characteristics to me.

“Yeah, II and Zoso are great,” I said to beginners, “but wait till you start listening to III and Fizzy Graph,” (Fizzy Graph was the nickname the Zeppelin guys gave to Physical Graffiti.) “I’ll lend them to you when you’re ready.”

It was a glorious world to enter into, a world of opportunity. In this world, Zeppelin girls existed, and one could taste forbidden fruits and still be one of the fellas. Hessians, punkers, and even some Genesis guys could stand side by side, in mutual admiration. This society involved musicians and music aficionados of all stripes. We could talk, laugh, and listen to the greatest music ever produced, for as all Zeppelin guys know, all music stems from Led Zeppelin.

Zeppelin guys felt like rule breakers, for who broke more rules than Jimmy, Robert, JPJ, and Bonzo? Rule breakers do have rules though, albeit unspoken ones. We Zeppelin guys still had to avoid giving a durn about most things, as being a Zeppelin guy wasn’t a cloak against being ostracized. We still had to despise Beverly Hills 90210, Michael Jackson songs, and Tom Cruise movies, and the fake, superficial, and artificial matters, they espoused. We also could not permit fellow Zep guys to call their grandma “My Nana” either, especially if they aspired to the Zep guy status.

We also had to fortify our Zeppelin guy status on a continual basis, then the Zeppelin guy status if we were lucky enough to achieve it. A Zeppelin guy still had to guard himself against complacency in the Zep guy world, or we could lose our status entirely. It was all right to enjoy the music on In Through the Out Door, for example, but a true Zeppelin guy could not love it, because the music on that album relied on synthesizers too much, and John Paul Jones had far too much influence on it. It lacked the raw Page/Plant magic of the first six albums, and every fella who wanted to maintain the Zeppelin guy status had to know that.

We all know that the brain of a groundhog is less complex than that the human brain, but we also know that even the most simplistic, primal minds react to music. If a groundhog listens to the same music, however, will he, over time, develop an affinity for it? Will certain groups of groundhogs break out of the pack and develop discerning taste? Will these groups begin to develop an affinity for Zeppelin over Genesis? Will they begin to ostracize Genesis lovers just to gain some cachet within their own groups? Will groundhogs reach a point when it is no longer about the music for them but the iconography and complexities they developed in their particular group in the groundhog community for the music they chose to love? Will their love for the music strengthen over time, and if it does, will it reach a point when one can characterize that love as complex, or will we simply deem it a simplistic desire to belong to that group of groundhogs who listened to the same music other groundhogs considered cool, and will the groundhogs ever begin to see the distinction for what it is?

Are You Superior?

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I met a guy who didn’t mind dressing me down psychologically. Yet, he probably wouldn’t admit it, even if I called him out on it. Dressing people down in such an obvious manner is uncouth, and it suggests that the purveyor is superior while doing it. I could feel him doing it as walking down the aisle toward him. I was smiling, and I felt him analyze that smile. I could tell that he perceived smiling as a weakness. When he looked at the shirt I wore, the manner in which I walked toward him, and the way I greeted him in a nice manner, I could tell he was scoring me on an analytical chart, and I could tell I wasn’t do well. As much as I hate to admit it, his superficial analysis of me affected our initial interaction. My natural insecurities took over, and I felt inferior to him in a way that I spent weeks trying to redefine. 

This loathsome character is anecdotal evidence of a strange psychological phenomenon in our every day conversations. He’s anecdotal, because most of us don’t examine others in such an obvious manner, but do they psychologically dress us down in a more subtle, less obtuse manner? Do they score us on their personal analytical charts without intending to do so during our casual conversations? They probably don’t know why they do it. If they did, they likely wouldn’t attribute it to a search for superiority, but they do know that they’re searching for something that will give them some intangible, hard to describe feelings of superiority.

If an individual is muscular in a noteworthy manner, or gifted in the athletic arena, they already know the feeling of superiority, as most of us grant physical traits superiority. For the rest of us, this search is not as simple. How do we compare to others? How do we stack up? It’s often difficult, and fruitless, to stare into a mirror and gain true, objective definition, so we do it on the backs of others through our day-to-day interactions to try to gain some information about our identity.

The searches may occur in the first few moments we begin speaking to them, and it often involves scrutiny of our physical appearance. Are we well groomed? Do we brush our teeth? Are all of our nose and ear hairs trimmed? Do we have a socially acceptable hairdo? How much did we pay for that hairdo? How much did we pay for the clothes we wear? Do we wear fashionable clothes? If clothes make the man, what kind of men are we? Some say it’s all about the shoes. Others say that by creating a pleasing dimple in our tie, by denting that tie with the thumb in the tying process, we can create quite a first impression. Most people don’t speak in terms of superiority or inferiority in polite company. Yet, those same people worry about the first impressions they make. What are impressions, but an attempt to define ourselves among our peers?

Is it all about the clothes, or do we make a better first impression through a confident posture, the way we sit, the manner in which we hold our head when we talk, or whether or not we look our counterpart in the eye? Do we have a tongue stud? Are we tattooed or non-tattooed, and who is superior in that dynamic? It’s all relative.

First impressions can be difficult to overcome, but some suggest that what we say after the first impression has greater import. If we have a noticeable flaw we can garner sympathy or empathy, through an underdog status, with what we say in the follow up impression we provide.

To further this theory, some believe that if we notify our counterpart of our weakness –say in the form of a self-deprecating joke– it will redound to the benefit of a strong follow up impression. The subtext involves the idea that doing so will end their search for our weakness, and the feeling of superiority they gain will allow them to feel more comfortable with us. This, we hope, might result in them enjoying our company more. 

Comedian Louie Anderson turned this into an art form. Moments after taking the stage, Louie Anderson informs his audience that he’s overweight in the form of a well-rehearsed joke. The first impression we have of Louie is that he is overweight. When he addresses that first impression up with a quality, self-deprecating joke it disarms us. We thought we were superior to him, based on his physical flaw. By acknowledging that flaw, Louie takes that feeling of superiority away from us, and he gives it back to us with his definition of it. That re-definition of our superiority allows him to go ahead and manipulate us in all the ways a comedian needs to manipulate a crowd. The distraction of our physical superiority is gone, and we’re now free to enjoy the comedic stylings of Louie Anderson.

The problem with a successful follow up rears its ugly head when we begin to overdo it. When our self-deprecating humor works in the second stage of impression, we attempt to move into the more personal third and fourth stages of getting to know our counterpart better. In these stages, we begin to feel more comfortable with the person on the receiving end, and we let our guard down. The problem we encounter, partially due to our insecurity, is that these people might not be as entertained by us as they were in the second, more self-deprecating stage of impression. As a result, we might begin to fall back on the more successful, second impression to lessen the impact of our attempts to be more personal with them. “Of course I’m nothing but a fat body, so what do I know,” is a qualifier that we insecure types add to an insightful comment we make that they don’t find as entertaining. When that proves successful, and our counterpart begins laughing again, we begin committing to this qualifier so often that we become it in their eyes. They can’t help thinking this is who we are, because it’s the impression we’ve given them so often that it becomes part of what they think of us. One way to test if we’ve fallen prey to this progression is to remove that successful, qualifier that we have been adding to the tail end of our jokes and stories to gain favor with them. If we have been adding it too often, the recipient of the qualifier might add, “That’s true, but aren’t you fat?” to the tail end of our story for us.

Some of the times, we commit to these additions to complete the rhythm of a joke or story, but most of the times we do it to insert some element of superiority or inferiority. Thanks to certain situation comedies, and the effect they’ve had on the zeitgeist, some jokes, stories, and thoughts feel incomplete without some element of superiority or inferiority attached to it. I used to be a qualifier, until I realized that too many people were exploiting my qualifiers for their own sense of superiority. It was so bad, at one point, that I couldn’t say anything halfway intelligent without someone adding, “That’s true, but aren’t you fat?” at the tail end of it.

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It’s my contention that most of us are in a constant search of indicators of superiority or inferiority. If our counterpart is religious, we may feel superior to them because we’re not. If we are religious, we may want to know what religion they are, and we may base our feelings of superiority on that.

“They’re all going to hell,” a friend of mine whispered when we passed a group of Muslims. When I asked why she thought this, she said, “They don’t accept the Lord, Jesus Christ as their personal savior.” 

I’ve heard Christians use that condemnation many times, but I rarely heard someone use it as a weapon of superiority. I realized some time later that this was all this woman had. She hated her job, her kids hated her, and she was far from attractive, or in good shape. She needed that nugget of superiority to help her get through the day, and to assist her in believing that she was, at least, superior to someone in some manner.

On the flip side of the coin, a Muslim friend of mine seemed forever curious about the American way of life. She would constantly ask me questions about the motivations I had for doing what I did. I didn’t mind it at the time, for I didn’t mind jokes about how Americans seem to be driven by sex, violence, and other “unclean” motivations. I also didn’t mind that some of her questions involved me, as I didn’t mind being self-deprecating. It didn’t dawn on me until later that she was searching for points of superiority. She saw the Muslim religion as a clean religion from which she gained a feeling of purity. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, until she used that as a weapon of superiority against me.

The search for where we stand in this chasm of superiority and inferiority can be a difficult one to traverse, so we often attempt to answer our questions on the backs of others. It’s a shortcut around introspective examination and self-reflection. Some feel superior to another, based on another’s religion, their politics, their race, or their education level. Some even gain feelings of superiority based on the manner they use to brush their teeth. Those who brush their teeth top to bottom are not doing it in the manner advised by the American Dental Association, but do those of us who brush our teeth in circles find vindication and validation from our dentist? Others base their comparative analyses on the manner in which they shave their pubic hair. If one person leaves a strip and another shaves Brazilian who is superior, and who is inferior, and where does the person that lets it all grow wild stand in that dynamic? We all have some positions of superiority and inferiority, and most of them are relative.

This modern battle for psychological definition often calls for the subtleties and nuance of guerrilla style warfare. The age of standing toe to toe occurred in the days of duels, and The Civil War, are over because most modern field generals would never risk their troops in toe-to-toe battles that former battalion leaders considered the gentleman’s way to fight. On that note, no one of the modern age would ever ask their counterpart if they think they’re superior for that might involve some sort of equivocation that details the strengths and weaknesses of both parties in which no one is a winner and no one a loser. No, the battle between two modern day, psychological combatants, more often than not, involves a never-ending battle of guerrilla warfare-style pot shots.

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Long before my mind’s eye was opened to the comprehensive nature of this conversation, I met a kid named Walter in high school. A decent description of Walter is that he was at the bottom of the teenage boys’s totem pole. He was the rabbit and the ground squirrel at the bottom of the food chain. An indecent way of describing Walter is that he was a target for every other boy who feared being in the crosshairs of every other boy. In this indecent description, I was superior to Walter. If I was above him, I was clinging to the divider by my fingernails.

Walter did all the things boys like. He never let a slight go by without reply, and his replies were feckless screams of indignation. Teenage boys love nothing more than knowing they can get under another boy’s skin, and there’s nothing the subject can do about it. It makes them feel superior to drive another boy crazy, and it gives them a greater sense of superiority when that kid acts as if he’s being attacked by a hive of hornets. 

It would’ve been so easy to join the pack of jackals, as I saw an overwhelming number of my peers (those of us clinging to the border that divided us from Walter) join in on the barrage against Walter. The fact that I did not was based on sympathy and empathy. I knew what it felt like to be on the other end of a barrage. If Walter dominated the bully charts, I was in the top five. I thought we rabbits and ground squirrels should stick together and advise one another on how to deal with these awful moments in our lives. Not only did Walter fail to heed my advice, because why would he, I suffered from almost as much abuse as he did, but he joined the barrages against me to take a step up on me in this superior vs. inferior world.

‘Et tu, Walter?’ I wanted to yell, ‘but I refrained.’ You gave me ample opportunity to ride you, like a horse, to the promised land, but I refrained. Did I expect gratitude, respect, or appreciation from Walter ? Did I expect him to recognize me as one of the goodfellas who chose to refrain? If you knew Walter as well as we did, you knew he had a no-one-gets-out-of-here-alive mentality. I knew that, but I thought he might consider the numerous times I refrained. Not only did he fail to value, or even recognize my efforts for what they were, he apparently thought less of me for doing it. 

I don’t remember if I wanted Walter to recognize my previous efforts of refraining, or if Walter joining a barrage against me fueled some competitive animosity I gained for him, but I joined in on the next barrage against Walter. The funny thing was Walter didn’t react any different. 

For those, like me, who might feel guilty about cashing in on those opportunities to nuke another person for the purpose of gaining superiority, there is no reward for refraining. Even the most inferior will take any opportunity they can find to make another look bad. They enjoy it without reflection or feelings of empathy or solidarity, especially when they consider the new target to be superior in some way. Others don’t enjoy this, as we have intimate knowledge of the embarrassment that can accompany looking bad in front of others. We also feel some empathy for those who expose flaws that can be easily corrected. We hold our fire. In a perfect world, others would value such judiciousness, and they would return it. For various reasons, including the idea that most people do not know when we’re refraining, it is not valued. Some may even consider any refraining a display of inferiority on our part.

In a perfect world, our interactions would involve others recognizing inferiority and superiority in a gentlemanly manner. We would wait for enemy fire before firing, to win the battle off the field as well as the one on it. The problem with refraining too often, or only firing in self-defense, with those we battle in psychological warfare, is that most enemy combatants do not view refraining as an order to hold your fire. One would think that in the absence of pot shots, the other party would recognize any cease and desist order. In my experience, they don’t. They sense weakness, and they open fire. Something about the human condition suggests that even the most empathetic and sympathetic souls stay vigilant. Every once in a while, we need to fire off a few rounds just to keep our enemy combatants hunkered down behind shields. Are we superior, are they inferior? We don’t care. We just want to keep them level with us, as we learn that the individual with their mind’s eye open to the psychological games we all play must keep firing, if for no other reason than to remind all of our opponents of the arsenal we have at our disposal. 

If you enjoyed this article, you might enjoy the personal experience that drove it: Are You Superior? II

When You’re Strange

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“Be nice,” is the advice we should give anyone accused of being crazy. “Be nice and smile a lot,” we would add. Someone, somewhere might say, “She’s crazy,” but they usually don’t mean it. By jumping past all of the progressions we have for casually noting that someone might be a little off, we’re trying to be provocative when we joke and say someone is crazy, and provocative is funny. They might start out at weird, followed by strange, a little nutty, a little off, and just plain different, but most people won’t make the leap to crazy in a serious manner. So, when our peers start putting their opinions together about us, “Be nice and smile a lot.” 

This doesn’t sound like an adequate defense to such a malleable charge, but if someone accuses us of being crazy there’s probably not much we can do to change their mind. This defense acknowledges that by suggesting we convince those who surround us that we’re kind, and we genuinely care about them. By doing so, we might gather some loyal defenders who will form a team that mount a unified defense against any and all accusers, until our accusers begin to think they’re in the minority.    

Most of us have never had anyone seriously question our sanity. They might say things like, “You’re crazy,” or “You’re insane,” but they often say that with a wink and a nod. To those who have seriously been accused of being so far outside the mainframe that it has diminished their quality of life, we offer this advice because we’ve witnessed others rush to the defense of a person they consider nice, regardless what anyone else says. These defenders are prone to dismiss most eccentricities of the nice and kind as endearing qualities. As these eccentricities begin to build up, people will talk. They will share stories and compare notes, but again, if the subject of this scrutiny is considered nice, sweet, or genuinely cares about those around them, their defenders will fight for the accused.

One of the primary components of selling this nice façade is a warm, pleasant smile. A genuine smile not only speaks of peace of mind, it disarms observers searching for cracks in our foundation, and it might serve us well in our attempts to conceal our eccentricities. Anyone who has seriously been accused of being crazy might be surprised to learn just how disarming a simple, warm smile can be. “You think she’s crazy?” observers might say in the face of another’s accusations, “because I think she’s nice.”

“And you’re basing that on what? Her smile?” the accusers counter. “Because Ted Bundy had a pretty, radiant smile. Do you think he was normal?” It doesn’t matter, for the idea that a crazy person seems nice, based on nothing more than a warm, glowing smile is the primary point and the end of the discussion for them.

Another key plank to insert in your fight is to show concern for others. If you find out, through the grapevine, that your worst accuser’s grandmother is sick, take a moment out of your day to ask her about her about it. “Hey, how’s your grandmother doing today?” This will touch her in a way from which she might never recover. If you do it right, and your concern is genuine, your greatest accuser might end up your greatest defender.   

We have bullet points that we seek when trying to spot crazy people. It’s a self-defense mechanism we use to protect ourselves in the dark, wild, and sometimes savage environs of the average workplace. Are these bullet points fair? It doesn’t matter. We have created them to help us avoid saying, or doing, the wrong thing to the wrong person who might go crazy on us, and one of the most prominent bullet points we look for is nastiness.

Being nasty is the subject’s best defense mechanism. Most of us don’t choose to be nasty, but we’ve been attacked so many times over the years that we’re defensive when we meet new people. Attack before being attacked is the go-to some have to protect their vulnerabilities. They’ve become so accustomed to being attacked over the years that being nasty is the first arrow they reach for in their quiver. The goal of this preemptive attack is to convince others to avoid them. That could lead to them missing out on some quality workplace relationships, and even some friendships, but most crazy people have not found a better alternative to avoid being attacked. The problem with this strategy is that they might find otherwise sympathetic souls joining in on the discussions of our unpredictability, until they reach an agreed upon characterization that we do not expect.

“You’re telling me to be nice, and smile, and say nice things to these awful people?” crazy people ask us. “Do you have any idea what these awful people have said to me? Has anyone ever accused you of being crazy before? If not, you have no idea what we go through.” 

We’re not saying this solution is foolproof, but we saw it. We were there, and we saw the accused do the worst possible thing she could’ve done. Our solution is so simple that most crazy people don’t consider it a viable solution. “Be nice and smile a lot,” we say. If Abbie Reinhold tried it, I have to think it would’ve disarmed most of her accusers.

“When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone.”

Jim Morrison and Robbie Krieger

I used to work for an online company. This company rewarded its employees with a month long sabbatical for tenured service. While I was on this sabbatical, my department hired a number of new people. One of them was a crazy person named Abbie Reinhold. One of the first things Abbie did, to introduce herself to the group, was defeat any impressions we might have about her. This preemptive attack involved a confrontation approach to anyone who might challenge the impressions she may have made. Her defense gained her a reputation, however unfair, of being a cat lady.

To this point, no one knew if Abbie Reinhold owned a cat. She simply fit the stereotype, arrow for arrow, bullet point for bullet point. We joked that Abbie could’ve been the prototype for the cat lady on the television show The Simpsons. The stereotype is an affixed staple in our culture, because there are examples of it. It’s not true that all women who own cats are crazy, of course, for we’ve all met perfectly sane women who have an inordinate number of cats as companions. We’ve also encountered women who scream at these cats, as if they’re human, and they find that they get along a lot better with cats than they do humans for all of the psychological underpinnings that are indigenous to a cat lady.

When I arrived back at work, after my sabbatical, I found that those in charge of making seating arrangements placed an Abbie Reinhold across from me, in a cubicle I faced. Did I know that Abbie Reinhold was a little crazy? How could one not sense that something was off about her, based on her preemptive attacks?

My attempts at building a psychological profile on someone, based on first impressions, had been so wrong, so often, at that point in my life that I decided to give Abbie Reinhold a chance. Mary, one of the precedents for how wrong I can be, sat right next to Abbie Reinhold. I was so wrong about Mary that I decided Abbie Reinhold might be another Mary. Mary was a woman of solitude, and a little “off”, but it turned out that Mary was a happy person who was so nice. She had an ever-present smile on her face, and she was always asking about my dad. Mary, it turned out, was such a sweet woman in all other matters that she became anecdotal evidence for how wrong the psychological profiles we build can be.

As that first day wore on, I noticed that Abbie talked to herself a lot, and while I do deem those who talk to themselves a lot a little crazy, I cut all new employees a little slack. Some of the cases we worked on for this company, could be quite difficult, overwhelming, and stressful, and I had firsthand knowledge of how difficult and overwhelming the job could be for a new person. For this reason, I paid little attention to Abbie Reinhold on that first day.

On the second day, Abbie Reinhold began talking to herself when I sat down at 8:00 A.M. up and to the point when she left at 5:30. Man, I thought, this poor woman is really struggling. Abbie’s frustrations were on display for all to see, but as I said I empathized. We all have coping mechanisms for dealing with the stress and pressure of the job, and we all know that coping mechanisms can vary, and they are often unique to the person. If this woman’s coping mechanism included talking to herself, who was I to judge? She did talk to herself a lot though.

The third day was something altogether different. The coping mechanism of talking her way through a case progressed to silent screaming. Abbie developed the habit of silently screaming at her computer. Everything about her face and mouth suggested she was screaming, except for the sound. Her head was bopping, and she bared her teeth. I glanced around to determine the source of her frustration. I couldn’t find anything. She was new though, and I continued to offer her some slack, but the progression didn’t ebb and flow in the manner it had in the past days. Abbie’s frustrations had progressed. Matters, such as these, don’t usually phase me. I’m a calm and levelheaded guy, but I had one foot pointed to the door in case her frustration reached an ultimate resolution.

I worked in various computer companies for nearly a decade at that point, and I saw so many anomalies of human behavior that her idiosyncratic behaviors were noteworthy. Nothing more and nothing less. Did those of us around her laugh when she laughed for no apparent reason, we did. Did we share raised eyebrows when some noises escaped her otherwise silent screams, we did. Those who might call us out for those judgmental reactions have to understand that it’s human nature to laugh at something we don’t understand. When we witness what we consider a confusing anomaly, our impulsive reaction is to either laugh or cry, and I wasn’t so afraid of her that I would cry. I came close the next day, when I saw her eat a cookie, as everything about that act appeared to crystallize the notions I had that she might be crazy.

I would never go so far as to say that I’m a macho man who fears nothing, but I can say without fear of rebuttal, that I’ve never experienced anything resembling fear watching another person eat a cookie. I don’t think I feared her, in the truest sense of the word, but watching her eat that cookie gave me goosebumps.

Some have theorized that goosebumps are a physiological phenomenon that we inherited from our animal ancestors. They’re useless to us now, because most of us don’t have a coat of hair, but the reason we have them, some guess, is that our ancestors either used the elevations in the skin and hair to protect themselves against the cold or to make themselves appear larger when confronted by a potential predator. I didn’t consider Abbie Reinhold’s ravenous consumption of the cookie an act of predation, but the biological phenomenon occurring on my arm suggested that my brain was telling my body that we might want to consider appearing larger just in case.

I assumed she was diabetic, as I have known many diabetics who were calmed by a cookie. I don’t know if that was the case with her, but she ate that cookie in the manner I suspect one would after starving themselves for days.

I watched every bite she took. I don’t know what I was waiting to see, but I was watching. Watching is probably the wrong word to describe what I was doing, for I was not looking at her. By the time Abbie Reinhold began eating the cookie, she established a set of rules that I was not to talk to her, refer to her in anyway, or look at her. I trained myself to pay attention to her, without looking. I was looking at my computer, but I wasn’t typing or doing anything work-related. I was staring at her without looking. When she finished that cookie without any progressions, I did not sigh, but I was relieved.

In the days that followed, I would see her progress from talking to herself, to silently screaming at her computer, to laughing. Most people, who have never been hired to work on a computer ten hours a day, four days a week, have no idea the level of solitude we experience. The employee knows they were hired to work cases in the company’s queues. They know that they are not there to socialize, and they learn to keep non-work-related, social interactions to a minimum. They learn to avoid the temptation of “So, how’s your day going?” because that can lead to a minutes long conversation that might be documented somewhere. I write this to inform the reader who has never worked in an office, with miles of cubicles, that a ten-hour day, sitting behind a computer, can lead to the mind drifting.  

Those of us who worked in the service industry dreamed of the day when we didn’t have to interact with people, because some people are bitter and angry about whatever life did to them, and they vent their frustrations on whomever happens to be standing in front of them at the time. Once we achieved that complete overhaul from too much human contact to none, we realized how much we needed it. To satisfy this need, we can accidentally drift back to the rude thing the supermarket checker said to us the other day, and we conjure up a perfect comeback while staring at our computer. We remember the hilarious thing our friend said to us at the bar over the weekend, and we think up the perfect addition to their joke. This can lead to spontaneous and embarrassing emotional outbursts such as laughter. When it happens, we stop as quick as we can, drop the expression and scan our surroundings to make sure no one saw any of it. This woman didn’t seem to care about any of that. Her conversations with no one turned into silent, uproarious laughter, her grimaces turned into silent, vehement screams, and she didn’t catch herself in the midst of these reactions, and she didn’t look around to make sure no one saw them. 

In the professional climate of office workers reading the words on their computers, the white noise of the sounds of typing, can lull employees into a safe harbor of the mind. Anything and everything is distracting. Drop a pencil on the carpet, and six people might turn to watch you pick it up. In this climate of solitude and servitude, whispers are distracting and annoying. The relatively benign sounds of soft laughter can lead the bored to roll over to see what you’re laughing at on your computer. In the early days of Abbie Reinhold’s tenure on our team, some employees would roll over to her desk to see why she was laughing. After a number of these incidents, fewer and fewer rolled over to Abbie’s desk to see what caused her emotional displays. We would laugh, but it was a laugh of empathy, for we knew how often we drifted into our own daydreams. We managed to restrain ourselves from displays of emotion, but we knew how close to that line we were. Over the course of our brief tenure together, Abbie shattered the shackles of embarrassment by reenacting scenes from her life without shame. When a non-team member would stop by our desk to ask us a question, and they would see her turning left and right with laughter or anger, they would ask us about it, and we would say, “Just ignore it.” On one such occasion, she placed a hand between her breasts and apologized to her computer screen for laughing so hard. She wasn’t speaking to me, the unfortunate witness to her activities. She wasn’t speaking to anyone.

When Abbie Reinhold talks to herself, she gesticulates in a casual manner that one uses to expound upon meaning. These gesticulations progress to a flailing of the arms, in a manner reserved for partygoers having one hell of a good time. She swirls in her computer chair, in a Julie Andrews, The Hills are Alive manner, when she appears immersed in a wonderful moment in her life, and she says mumbles responses to the fictional characters who surround her.

I wondered one day if she is talking to people in the future or the past, or is she one of those rare individuals who –like a Kurt Vonnegut character– is unstuck in time, and is living in the past, the present and the future at the same time?

I wondered what Abbie Reinhold would think of me if I started talking to myself, followed by silent screams, uproarious laughter and wild gesticulations. Would she laugh from a distance at my bizarre actions, to reveal how oblivious she is to her own? Would Abbie laugh at me with full knowledge of her actions, but by ridiculing me, she hoped to gain some distance from the things that crazy people do? Would she view my bizarre display as an opportunity in which she could define herself to others, thus lifting herself above those who engage in such activities for the purpose of either changing the minds of those around her, or vindicating her beliefs in her own sanity? The unlikely alternative, I suspect, is that she would see what I was doing and identify with in a manner that might establish some sort of solidarity between us. Even if I mimicked her without any discernible form of mockery, I doubt that she would defend me against anyone who ridiculed me for talking to myself. I doubt she would say anything along the lines of, “Hey, I talk to myself, how dare you crack on my people.” I doubt that she was that objective.

On one of the days that followed, Abbie Reinhold stood. She was not looking at a fellow employee named Natalie, but she wasn’t looking away either. She was just standing. She did stand near enough to Natalie that Natalie thought Abby had a work-related question that she couldn’t figure out a way to articulate. Natalie was a senior agent on the team, assigned to answering agent questions.

“What’s up?” Natalie asked her.

“Just stretching,” the crazy lady said.

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked when Natalie informed me of that brief conversation.

“She was standing still,” Natalie informed me. “I don’t think she moved a muscle.”

“Did you ask her what muscles she was stretching?”

Abbie Reinhold also eats her earwax. She pulls it out, examines it, and she eats it on occasion. Some of the times, Abbie Reinhold looks at it and discards it. I often wonder what her selection process involves. What’s the difference between a good pull, and a bad one?

I wondered if I cracked a joke about people who eat their own earwax, what Abbie’s reaction would be. Would she laugh from a distance at such foolish people, or would she defend her fellow earwax eaters? “Hey, I eat my ear wax, how dare you crack on my people.”

“When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name.”

Jim Morrison & Robbie Krieger

Some readers might find this piece mean-spirited, as we should never discuss (much less laugh at) those who have vulnerabilities. To those charges, I submit to the court of public opinion, exhibit A: Abbie Reinhold.

As much as we might want to defend Abbie Reinhold, she was not a sympathetic figure, and witnesses to Abbie Reinhold’s demeanor would testify to the fact that Abbie Reinhold could often be witnessed laughing as hard, if not harder, at the idiosyncrasies of those around her as anyone else. (This raucous laughter might have been born of the relief of being on the other side of that laughter.) We understood that she was defensive by nature when we met, but she began leveling attacks against us before we knew her last name. We have no knowledge of the frustrations that drove her to attack us, and we empathize with anyone who has been attacked for their characteristics, for we have all experienced such attacks throughout our lives.  

When it comes to using past grievances to fuel nastiness, anything can provide an impetus. Perhaps she made unfair associations that led her to unfair conclusions about us, but we were ambivalent to her presence, until she attacked us with her shield. Abbie Reinhold brought her past grievances to the table not us. We did not seek to chastise, or ostracize, Abbie Reinhold. We viewed her as nothing more than another employee in a large company, until she made her presence known.

For those in the court of public opinion who are not willing to take some anonymous author’s word for it, we submit exhibit B: Sheila Jones. Sheila Jones was what we might consider the prototype for a nice, sweet, woman who has lived long enough, and experienced just enough, to know the best and worst of humanity. Sheila is the type of person who chooses to view humanity from the magnanimous position of believing that her waste matter stinks too. 99 times out of 100, Sheila was uncomfortable talking about other people, and conversations about another’s vulnerabilities made her so uncomfortable that she tried to end them as patiently and politely as she could. She knew this is what we all do, but they made her uncomfortable. Not only was Sheila an audience to the stories we told about Abbie Reinhold, she broke the mold we had for her by contributing to them.

I make no claim to being as nice and understanding as Sheila was, is, and always will be. She is one of those rare individuals who are nice, understanding, and empathetic to the plight of the 99.9 percent of the population. When the subject of Abbie Reinhold arose, not only did Sheila join the pack of hyenas, ripping at the carcass, she laughed as hard as any of us did, even if it was behind a hand.

The question I have, now that I have achieved enough distance from this story to have some objectivity on it, is would anyone like Sheila want to trade such stories about Abbie Reinhold if Abbie was a genuinely nice person who wore a hearty smile on her face, regardless what she’d experienced? Would anyone as nice as Sheila laugh as hard as she did, if Abbie Reinhold was a sweet person who just happened to have been afflicted with some noteworthy eccentricities? The males might have, for males are predisposed to enjoying stories that pertain to the weaknesses and frailties of another, a trait that we can trace to their king of the hill mentalities. Mean girls might have too, for many of the same reasons. We’ve all heard of people raised with Midwest values and Southern hospitality. Sheila had all that, plus a personal level of sympathy for others that those of us who knew her considered unmatched. Thus, those of us who know Sheila know that if Abbie was anything from ambivalent-to-nice to Sheila Jones, she would have shut down any discussions about the woman’s eccentricities with a simple word about decorum and being nice. If Abbie was a nice person who just happened to do odd things, the nice women in our group would’ve followed Sheila’s lead in shaming us against engaging in such discussions. “She’s a nice person,” is something she and all the nice women in our group would have said, and they would’ve dismissed every characterization of Abbie Reinhold on that basis. The fact that these women not only laughed uproariously at the stories of Abbie Reinhold’s idiosyncrasies, but shared their own experiences with her, and drove the discussion in many cases, should suggest to any people seeking to proactively diffuse any attempts at characterizing them in an unfair and exaggerated manner, that the best way to ingratiate themselves to those who might end up defending them, is to simply be nice and smile a lot.