Category: psychology

You Do What you Do

RilalyLeave a comment

“You’re basically crushing on a teenager,” Susie said to conclude her accusation that we were flirting with our teenage server. It wasn’t true, but it was funny, and all insults are not created equal. Some hit the soft spots we spend most of our time trying to hide from spectators, and some are just plain funny. Funny gets the competitive hackles up high, and if we don’t hit back, she owns the funny.

“You’re a couple of dirty old men,” she added. We spoke to this server the way we spoke to every woman who served us food and drink. This young server engaged in our playful banter, and she laughed while doing it. We laughed, everyone laughed, and we all had a good time doing it. This was our routine. If we had a server who was a homely, senior citizen with a hairy wart on the end of her nose, we would’ve engaged her in playful banter to try to make her laugh, so we can laugh, and everyone could have a great time. Unless the server happened to be male, we were consistently playful with everyone who served us food and drink. This particular waitress just happened to be a beautiful, young blonde who wore a crop top that exposed her washboard stomach, and she had a great set of teeth. 

We could’ve laid out our “completely consistent with our character” defense, but that likely would’ve devolved into a tired “Nuh uh!”/“Yes huh!” debate. We could’ve called Susie’s age into question and asked her if she was jealous that she was no longer a young, hot body that old men might want to entertain intermittently for a couple hours. Attempting to reset the parameters in this manner can fall under a petty and mean umbrella, however, and Susie’s challenge was not a confrontational, mean-spirited challenge of our character, but an entertaining way for her to belittle the men around her. If you step out of that parameter and become unnecessarily defensive, not only will you face the humiliating “I was just joshing,” but you also reveal something weird and uncomfortable about yourself. No, when someone like Susie hits you with something funny like this, you join in. 

Even if such a comment makes us angry, and especially if it makes us angry, we join in, and attempt to outdo them there, in their spot and the frame they’ve created in the moment. If you let it go, you lose; if you try to “Well, what about you?” them, you lose; and it you get too defensive, you lose. The best course of action is to play with them on the playing field they’ve created and try to beat them there. 

“We’re old, she’s young, I get it,” I said to Susie. “I agree with everything you’re saying about us and our relationship here, but she has belly exposed.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Susie asked.

“The exposed belly changes everything,” I said. “All conditions being equal, you take out the exposed belly, and she’s just another woman who is far too young for us to even engage in polite conversation. The exposed belly changes the chemistry and circuitry, or for you mystical types, the interiority, of the adult male mind. It’s science.”

“She’s probably eighteen-years-old,” Susie said to further her admonishments. “She’s young enough to be your granddaughter.”  

“Fair enough,” I said. “But that crop top she’s wearing exposes the fact that she has a washboard stomach.”

“And that she’s eighteen.”

“If you study your science, you’d know what the exposed washboard belly of a teenager does to the chemistry and circuitry of the male brain. If I reach the point where you begin to question my level of brain activity, perform all of the traditional, medical tests, but if everything else fails, walk a female washboard stomach in front of me. If I don’t respond in anyway, pull the plug.”  

***

“I’ll let you try a little bit of this drink, but if you don’t like it, you cannot make a face,” I say when I let someone try something I love. I didn’t invent the drink I want them to try, write the song, the book, or make the video I want them to watch, but for some reason, it’s so important to me that they like it too. I don’t own shares of the company or have any personal stake in the success of the product, but it’s my opinion that they made something delicious, interesting, and I want to share that temporary, nebulous bond with you. When they make that face it suggests that the drink is absolutely disgusting, it hurts in some strange way that is impossible to describe to anyone who doesn’t share my brain with me.

“I don’t care,” we say, “I still like it.” That’s a front, a BS front that we create to hide our pain. There is some element of truth in it, however, for we will continue to drink it, listen to it, or read it, and we will continue to enjoy it in all the ways we did before they made that face, but it still hurts that they don’t like it the way we do.

“How can you drink that sludge?” some say, further down the line, to compound their insult. They flip the page on us by somehow making us defend our appreciation of the product we once wanted to share with them. It’s almost as if they know we have some vulnerability on this subject, and somewhere deep in the recesses this feels like a violation of some bond that we once wanted to share with them. 

***

“Who do you think is going to win the big game?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, no one does, it hasn’t even started yet, but we all sort of play this game with one another to guess who is going to win. If you’re wrong, no one cares. No one cares if you’re right either, as a matter of fact. It’s just a little game we adults play with one another, and no one remembers who said what five seconds after the game ends.”  

***

The material in this article is not meaningful, important or germane. Was it brilliant, hilarious, or groundbreaking? No, it is what I do. Some have natural gifts for storytelling, others have talent, but the rest of us have to work through it, for it, and to it. At some point in between, we reach a point where we can only do what we do. We all have talents, limitations, and everything in between. “Explore,” I say. “Eat it, drink it, learn it, live it, love it.”  

Once we dig past that crusty superficial layer, it’s easier to dig, but if we dig too far, we hit that which is pleasing to the eye and ear. It’s a purposeless depth with an artificial feel to it, and it feels fine to write it, but when we read it, we know it ruins the article. When we learn to avoid such depths, the reader might say, “This is great and all, but what do you want me to do with it?” There’s a beginning, an arc, and a conclusion, but to the reader it’s not everything it could be. To which we the author responds with the tired but true, “It is what it is.”

What is our definition of success? How do we know when we’ve achieved completion? Next question, what do we do when we don’t? We develop excuses for failing to achieve the maximum, but another point follows that point where we realize that we probably weren’t D) all of the above. We may have been A) and C), but we were lazy, scared, intimidated, or not ambitious enough to put a foot on the next rung up on the ladder. It might be one of those things, all of them or none, but I wonder how many suffer from the ‘I just never thought of myself as one of those guys’ mindset. We’ve all heard about the definition of success, and we love the general discussions of one guy succeeding over another, but how many of us know that we’re going to succeed within a structured format, regardless the obstacles they place before us? This concept struck me when Jackie and Jody informed me that they were both anchors for competing local news networks.

“How do you even think you’re capable of such a thing?” I asked them. I knew Jackie on an intimate, friendship level, and I spoke with Jody on an almost-daily basis. They were my people, and I couldn’t believe that any one of my people could go beyond dreaming of such things. 

“It’s a low-rent, very local network,” Jackie said. “You’ve seen it. The production value of my broadcast is zilch. It’s about two notches above what some guy filming himself in his mom’s basement. It’s nothing to write home to mom about.” It was to me. It was a stratosphere I never even considered before, and I didn’t think I’d ever even meet someone who thought like they did. I don’t know if Jackie and Jody had a better support system growing up, or if some people just believe in themselves more than others. I don’t know, but I’ve met a number of people I life who succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and they never thought as much of it as I did. They dreamed higher. We could grow frustrated by it, develop excuses for our inability to succeed, or just keep doing what we do.   

Youth is Wasted on the Young

RilalyLeave a comment

“Youth is wasted on the young,” a famous old person, who is now dead, once said. If they have the opportunity to see us now, I wonder if they say, “Life is wasted on the living.”

We can do just about anything and everything we want, but we don’t because everything is “SO BORING!” When we’re younger, we have the health and energy to do more, but we don’t because there is this “Is that all There Is?” mentality to doing extraordinary things. There are some exciting people to meet, places to go, and things to encounter, but most of what we experience in life could be characterized as mundane, trivial and meaningless to those with experience in such characterizations. To those who no longer have the energy of youth or the health necessary to do a number of things, they view youth as wasted on the young.  

Remember brooding in the corner, because that comically weak chin strap on your birthday hat snapped, while everyone else was running around laughing, screaming with joy, and just having a whale of a good time. Wouldn’t you love to redo that day and all of the other fun and frivolity that you missed because you thought life was “SO BORING!”   

I used to look forward to birthdays. I used to count the days until a bunch of people screamed “Happy Birthday!” to me with hats on, kazoos in their mouths, and party favors all around. I remember Batman-themed birthday parties, Scooby Doo parties, and a Shazaam! birthday party. My seventh birthday stands out, because I played my best friend, and biggest rival, in the most popular football video game of the era, and I beat him! It was such a great birthday party that it set a precedent that no future birthday could match. Every birthday after that “Sucked!” because they were “SO BORING!” Not even the “Welcome to the roads!” 16th birthday, the “Happy Bigenoughtobarday!” 21st, the dirty thirty, or the still-fun@40 birthday party could match that seventh birthday party. At some point, we all stop looking forward to birthdays, and we start to look back. No one knows what specific age this starts happening, but we lose our jubilant “This is my day!” smiles as our odometer clicks by.

The older I get, the colder I get. I’m freezing all the time now.

The older I get, the bolder I get. I used to pretend to love things they told me to love, “You don’t love The Lone Ranger?” they asked. I pretended I did, because I was a kid, and a boy, and they expected every boy to love their brand new, The Lone Ranger toys. Now that I’m old and bold, I want to go back in time and tell everyone I knew that I never loved The Lone Ranger. I was told to love it, and I was taught to like it, because every good boy does. I tried to like his horse Silver and his buddy Tonto, but everything they did was “SO BORING!” to me. I pretended to love Cheech and Chong later, because everyone expected me to love their risque, naughty brand of humor. Now that I’m old and bold, I can finally say they only had one joke that they did over and over in as many ways as they could think up, but it was one joke, and I never considered that joke that funny. Everyone expected me to love Animal House when I was in college, because laughing at that movie is what college-aged students do. Now that I’m older and bolder, I no longer have to pretend to like the guitar-smashing, the zit-popping mashed potato joke, or the uncomfortable in the blues bar joke that I’m expected to remember so fondly that I still get a tear of laughter whenever I think of it. I didn’t dare say any of that before, because everyone expected me to coat my love all over of it. I pretended that I did, because I wanted to fit in.   

One of the few joys of getting old is that we no longer have to play pretend. We don’t have to say we love things to fit in, to spare someone’s feelings, and we no longer feel that need to constantly prove ourselves. I no longer feel the need to enter into that crucial, seminal argument on the issue of the day, because I want everyone to know how well informed I am. I no longer consider it my mission in life to change minds. I now see it as pointless. “You think you’re going to change her mind today at lunch?” I ask. “You’re going to battle against thirty-five years of conditioning. She’s been dying to prove her bona fides on this issue, and so have you. You’re not going to get anywhere if you sincerely hope to change her mind.” 

They no longer expect us to love inconsequential matters now. They expect us to grumble about food portions, the cost of living, how much better things were in “my day”, and something about kids getting off my lawn. 

I never thought I’d reach an age when I cherished life, but I never expected to be this old either. I didn’t expect to die young of course, but I didn’t expect I’d get this old either. I never thought I’d actually be grateful for decent health, because I thought that’s what old people did. I never thought I’d be happy to be alive, and greet each morning with a new-day smile. I never thought I’d try to make today better than yesterday, but I never expected to be this old either. “Youth is wasted on the young,” because they have the energy to live life and love it, they just don’t. 

We watch clocks when we’re young, because we can’t wait to get out of one place to get to another. We watch clocks to escape the great “youth-thief” we call school, and then we watch clocks until it’s time to get off work. When we finally get out of those places, we go to other places with the same faces, because everything is overrated, overhyped, and eventually, “SO BORING!” Do clocks move slower in youth and faster in our senior years? I don’t know, but I was never happier in life than I was when complaining about it. 

I remember when an old person told me that “We should be grateful for our health.” I was polite, and I said something like, “We do take good health for granted,” but I didn’t mean it. I thought good health was “SO BORING!” Now that my body is no longer the incredible, recuperative machine it once was, I appreciate moments of good health. 

Some moronic celebrity was going on and on about a late-in-life career choice they made, and I didn’t hear most of what they said. The late-in-life characterization stuck with me though, so I looked the idiot up and learned we were the same age? I’m late-age now? I’m over-the-hill? What’s the hill? What age is the crest of that hill? My boss confessed, “My better years are behind me now, I know that.” He was 40 at the time. If my better years are behind me, why do I enjoy life now more than I ever did? Why didn’t I enjoy my better years more? You don’t. We don’t. No one does. It’s natural, human nature, and the way of life. “Youth is wasted on the young.” You can mourn the lost years, regret that you didn’t do more, or you can try to live the best life you can live now to try to make up for it. 

“Life is what you make it,” an old stranger once told me. 

“Uh huh! Now, could you move aside!” I wanted to say. “I’m not going to appreciate my life or my good health, stranded outside Walgreens like this, where the weather is suboptimal. I can’t make it better, until my dad finally picks me up, and he’s already forty-five minutes late!” When I finally get to the place where I’m supposed to be I’m probably going to say, “This is SO BORING.”

The Hearty Handshake Handbook

RilalyLeave a comment

A stranger I’ve never seen before, and I’ll probably never see again, wouldn’t shake my hand, ‘Because COVID!’ I can only assume it was COVID, because he never said or gave me any hints that it was related. He just wouldn’t shake my hand. Fine, it meant anything to me, but what does it say about you? As Jack, the bellman, said, “COVID is over, and we have to get back to shaking hands again.” We’re men and this is what we do. I don’t like this any more than you men, but this is what we do. We look men in the eye and offer them a firm handshake, and firm does not mean that we drop them. “That’s for tough guys,” Bill, the waiter, told me one time in the break room, “and when I say tough guys, I’m talking about the rah-rah fellas in locker rooms, who don’t know nothing about what to do in the ring.” Even when I went through my most confident period in life, I wasn’t a big handshaker, and I didn’t really grasp the whole theatrical production of the hallowed first impression. First impressions, to my mind, are largely phony. I’m huge on second impressions and third impressions. I prefer to let the game come to me, and I can do some great, unforgettable when I’m immersed in the shadow of lowered expectations, but they taught me that that’s not the world men live in.  

I had my game all figured out at one point, until Ken dropped a big old, “I never trusted a man who wouldn’t shake your hand, and look you in the eyes while doing it,” on me. I’m not up to something, I wanted to tell Ken, and I never have been. I’m not shady, and I’ll prove that to you over the long haul, but you cannot say that to a man like Ken. Ken is a serious man, a man’s man if you will, and you don’t try to realign a man like Ken to suit your needs in his home. You shake Ken’s hand, and you look him in the eye, because that’s what he considers a respectful greeting from another man. To a man like Ken, handshakes build a connection between men, and as he says, it forms a level of trust that you cannot build with him in any other way in the initial greeting. A man like Ken sees through you when you don’t shake his hand and look him in the eye while doing it, and you won’t like what he sees.  

That stranger I’ll probably never meet again had his whole routine down though. Before your hand is unholstered, he flips out a quick “Hello, how are you?” and it’s very warm, polite, and standoffish at the same time. ‘I need distance,’ that quick greeting said. ‘Because COVID, because have you read the literature on communicable diseases? Even if it’s not COVID, you could have something crawling all over you that will get on me with the proximity, and touch, required in a handshake.’ Hey, I wasn’t raised to shake a man’s hand either, but I learned, stranger I’ll never see again. They taught me over time that this is just what we men do to one another, and we learned this tradition from the Ancient Greeks, it’s in their art, so it’s just too late to go back now. And I don’t care about COVID, or the literature.

Another kid’s parent shot me a condescending ‘Haven’t you read the literature?’ smile when I went to shake his hand, but my hand was already out. He wasn’t as quick as the stranger I’ll never see again. He dropped his name in that space, and my hand instinctively went out. I apologized with my hand out, and I withdrew it in the shadow of his condescending smile. “No, it’s ok,” he said putting a hand out to shake it. He didn’t look me in the eye when he did it. His handshake was fastidious and obligatory. ‘I’ll let it go,’ I wanted to say, ‘but that would not have impressed a man like Ken.’

I’ve heard about power handshakes that involve the lefthand cupping the handshake, a power move. I’ve never experienced a cupper before, but I have to imagine that that would completely 360 Ken’s notion that the cupper was up-to-something shady, and yes, I meant 360 as opposed to 180, as Ken’s suspicions would return tenfold after a cupping. I’ve heard some handshakers move that left hand up to the elbow, and one famous/infamous handshaker went all the way to the shoulder. The higher the lefthand moves up, I’ve heard, the greater the power play. I don’t know how I would address such a handshake, but I can’t imagine a situation in which I didn’t consider that unnecessarily intimate.

No, when you meet a man who is not distracted or rushing off, you press palms with them for no longer than three seconds, you look him in the eye, and you drop an interested smile on them. When you’re in another man’s home, or in some other relatively subservient position, you wait for him to extend his hand first. If he doesn’t, that’s on him. If you’re seated, you stand, and there’s no reason to get too close, because no one likes a nose-to-nose handshake. If you’re sweaty, you just coughed, or you just wiped your nose, you discreetly wipe it off before extending the hand. There are rules, laws, and by-laws in this whole handshaking world, and you learn them as you go. Even if you think some of these rules are silly, as I do, you learn them and follow them, because it’s not about you. These things mean something really important to some men, and if you refuse to take part, you’ll mean nothing to them.    

You shake a man’s hand, because it says you’re glad to be here, and you’re interested in meeting them, and you look them in the eye to say, “Yes, I mean you!” The non-shakers accidentally send a message that reads, “I kind of dismiss you.” Even if your transgression involves health-related concerns, based on literature, it still sends that message that you’ll never be able to properly address. The old saying on gifts, ‘Tis better to give than receive,’ does not apply in the handshake world, for if you do not give respect, in a respectful handshake, you’ll never receive.

The three exceptions to the rule are age, gender, and culture. If you’re in a culture in which the handshake is not the proper greeting, then you respect and follow the rules and traditions of that culture. If the person you meet is female, then you follow her lead. If she’s a hugger, you hug, but most women are big on smiles and eye contact, and some of them flash a wave. Kids aren’t big handshakers either, but I often make a production out of shaking the hand of a young male, because I deem it a sign of respect. “Welcome to the club!” my handshake says. I try to attach some element of silly to it, because I know how uncomfortable those first few steps into this world can be, but I maintain that my handshake is serious. I usually follow their lead on how much seriousness or silliness I attach to it, but I think I’m doing my part to welcome them into this world of respectful first-impressions among men.  

So, Mr. Stranger I’ll probably never see again, you ain’t Joe Cool, Mr. Snoopy with sunglasses on, and you never will be, with your COVID, learn-the-literature non-shaking hand codes of conduct, because shaking hands is just what men do. The respect you give will be the respect you receive.