Friends, this is no more a hallmark of introversion than is blue eyes.

Being an introvert is not about being scared of being in the public eye.  In fact, being afraid of public speaking is an incredibly common fear that runs across the introvert/extrovert lines and has more to do with being a human being than it does with one’s mental orientation.

What’s actually a pretty common pattern is for an introvert to be a pretty accomplished public speaker, but find that she detests noisy parties.  Being an introvert isn’t about being scared.  It’s about being drained by too much interpersonal contact.

The introversion=shyness thing tends to get to rub me the wrong way.  I think partially because there is an underlying implication that the introversion needs to be cured, but also because if someone doesn’t know me well, they’ll deny I’m an introvert and interpret my behavior from an extroverted frame of reference.

Ferinstance, if someone sees that because I am not shy that I am an extrovert, but only want to socialize with them on a limited or irregular basis, they’ll interpret that as me not liking them very much, but don’t want to say so.  If they were to see me as the introvert that I am, they recognize that I just need to be alone a whole bunch and it has nothing at all to do with my fondness or not for them as people.

I remember once teaching a class and mentioning being an introvert.  I forget why it was brought up, but since I was teaching, I was probably looking for an illustrative example of something.  One of the class members immediately said, “But you’re not shy![1]”[2]

No, I’m not.  I even enjoy public speaking.

For the last time, fear of being in the spotlight is not an introversion/extroversion thing.  It’s a not-too-unusual people thing.  ‘Kay?

[2] I am a very animated public speaker.

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You know if a guy grabs the butt of a woman he finds attractive and when she objects he’ll make the, “It’s the testosterone, I couldn’t help it” excuse?

Know how we don’t have any real sympathy for that?

Then why should we expect sympathy for flying off the handle at our hormone cycles?  Why should the menstrual cycle give us a free pass?  Don’t get me wrong, my moods are very much hormonally-driven.  I just don’t think that me being mean in the face of that is excusable.  I feel like I’m a grown up and responsible for my behavior.  If I pull the “I’m at the mercy of my hormones” card, and then expect a man not to, then what I’m really saying is that as a woman I’m not as much of a grownup.

I’m not into that.  I think expecting all the grownups to be grownups whether they’ve an innie or an outie is what makes the most sense.

And since we’re all human as well, yes, apologizing when one screws up[1] is a good idea, too.  “I’m sorry, I was wrong to do that, and I’m going to try to do better” should be in all our repertoires.

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It’s funny, because we all seem to have this idea that being a Grownup™ means perfect self-discipline, and if you don’t have it, you’re not a Grownup™. This particular blogger will try to be a Grownup™  by doing lots of housework, cooking perfect meals, and scheduling her life to hell and back.  She’ll also find herself failing miserably because she’s set the bar too high.  She’s trying to be more and more “perfect” in managing her life.

It’s not that I don’t get how it happens. I do and mostly because I do that.

It also has zip to do with being a grown-up.

I think we’re looking through out tween to teen goggles when we assess being a Grownup™. We see being a Grownup™ as being frenetically active and working all the time, never ever being slow, or late, or forgetful or…

You know, I’m older than one of my grandmothers was when I was born[1].   When my mother was my age, she had a married child.  I think that gets to count in terms of age.   In terms of where my life is and how I live daily?  My life isn’t really like either of theirs.   I made some radically different choices. Does that make me not a Grownup™?

Part of it might also be that we’re forgetting the help we were to our parents.  Keeping the house neat is easier when you have the husky teenager doing some of the work.   Do they do it as well as you want it done?  Almost certainly not.  I know for a fact I didn’t with my mom.  But the laundry still got folded, she did not clean every bathroom in the house, and Dad certainly wasn’t wrangling all the wood to heat the house by himself[2].   Why?  That’s more work than one person can do![3]

When we try to do it all ourselves, we’re actually setting the bar higher than our parents did for themselves.      If you’re not feeling like a Grownup™ because you can’t get it all done to white glove perfection all by your lonesome, cut yourself some slack.  Grownups™ have historically gotten help.

And if you have a kid, go make ‘em do a chore J

[2] In fact, my brother and I have had a bit of a chuckle at the fact that they got a gas furnace after he and I moved out of town.

[3] And while I don’t know this for certain, I’m willing to bet that in my grandmother’s case, her home was neater when she had three girls at home v. when they moved out.

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I’m not trying to sneer at hobbies, but I do find it amusing that people often attribute some sort of beneficial or character building qualities to what is essentially a hobby.

Sometimes you’ll run across articles about knitting, extolling its stress-reliving qualities.  I’ve seen articles on sewing that remark on the same.  Martial arts is notoriously smug about this one, talking about the character building qualities of getting dressed in what’s essentially underwear and throwing people around a room.

This isn’t a new thing.  At least since early Victorian times, writers often discuss the positive, productive effects of various hobbies.  One was not supposed to read because a story was fun, but one was supposed to read material that would improve one’s mind.

Fast forward to the present and video games are considered a waste of time unless you can claim some educational or character-building qualities to them.

Me?  I think it’s kind of weird.  I mean, yes yes yes, I get a nice sweater for an inexpensive price if I knit.  My family gets some really healthy lunches  because of my bento hobby, absolutely.    But I wonder, why isn’t the simple fun of a hobby given more value?

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Last year when I was talking to a friend about the 50 mile challenge and asking her if she was going to do it, she commented, “I couldn’t do that.  I’d lose count.”

I didn’t try to convince her, as I think the real reason she wasn’t doing it was a much more valid one.  She didn’t want to.  But I got to thinking about keeping count.

My pool counts a mile as 1800 yards[2].  That’s 72 lengths of a 25 yard pool, my friends, and is going to take between 40 minutes and an hour for the average lap swimmer to complete.  If you’re counting down by lap, not only are you going to lose count, you’ll probably get bored.

I don’t just hop in the pool and start counting down from 72 doing freestyle.  Forget losing count.  That would be daunting[3].

What I do is sets of laps[4].

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breastroke                        150 yards

1 X 100 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  300 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

1 X 200 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  600 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

1 X 100 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  300 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

Total Swim:                                                                                         1800 yards

What this really means is that I never count higher than eight, what with 200 yards being 8 lengths.  But it is also a lot easier to face.  By the time I’ve warmed up with the shorter sets, 200 yards of a stroke isn’t particularly intimidating.

I also had a funny thing happen in the locker room today.  Like many women in the gym, especially ones with really long hair who need to dry it, I walk from the showers to the lockers with my hair twisted in a towel, but otherwise am not wearing anything.

It really quiet, only another woman and I.  She was swathed in a towel and dressing under it.  She commented that she admired my confidence about walking naked to the lockers.  She sounded really kind of sad and wistful.

I turn around as I’m putting on my underwear.  She’s about 5’7”, and maybe a size 8.  Had I seen her first, I would have suspected condescension.  But the vocal tone combined with the careful draping of the towel made it clear enough.

I made a joke of it and asked if she had kids.  When she said no, I commented, “Eh, well, giving birth will blow away any body modesty.”

The thing is, that she felt badly about her body was hurting her.  I think it was a bit of a shock to her that the body modification you can achieve in a gym wasn’t necessarily going to cure it.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for working out and all that smack.   Obviously, what wit me being there and all.  But I’m not there to make myself acceptable to what I think outside perception is.  I wish I could have thought of something to say that would have helped her.  I wish I’d commented that her body is fine the way it is.  I wish I’d commented that you don’t have to fit a physical mold to earn the right to live.

I just hope my example said something to her, as the pain she clearly felt really bothered me.

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Oh boy…

Here’s the problem.  Do you know why men don’t feel guilty if the house looks like shit?  It’s because quite often they feel it’s the woman’s job to clean the house.  You can’t feel guilty about something you feel isn’t your responsibility!

Now, as it happens, I am the one who takes charge of how the house looks.  There are several reasons, and yes, one of the reasons is that I’m the one who cares the most about it and I’ve made some life choices that give me the time.  But you know what?  If I had something else I was doing that I considered important[1], I would consider that the important thing to do.  I will, have and do react incredibly badly to the automatic assumption that having a uterus means that I’m the one who should automagically be in charge of how the house looks.  Lack of help cleaning up after dinner would have me quite disinclined to cook another single meal.   I haven’t the slightest problem with asking people to pick up after themselves, and consistent refusal to do so is definitely a relationship-killer with me.

But the guilt thing?  Friends, that’s some sexist socialization there.  Partnerships and equitability are one thing, but you wouldn’t establish a business partnership with the relationship  and responsibilities unexamined.  Why shoot yourself in the foot with your life partners?

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The expression is y’all.  Not ya’ll.

But there’s more to it than that.  It’s also plural.

Yes, yes, I bet some of you Yankees have seen a Southerner appear to address a single person with the expression “y’all”.  But, you really didn’t.

Example:

You’re waiting in line to pay your light bill, when someone in front of you is waving a receipt angrily and is saying, “Why did you turn of my lights?  I paid y’all last week!”

The individual in question is not addressing the singular person behind the counter, but the entire company as represented by the customer service representative.   In this case, the organization is a collective group of people appropriately addressed as “you all” or “y’all.”

If you are alone and are given the farewell, “Y’all come back now, y’hear?” you’re still not being addressed as “y’all” singularly.  You’re being addressed as a representative of a group of people (most likely your family) all if whom the speaker is expressing the wish to socialize with again.

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If you’re a parent, you’re not aiming for an end product of childhood, but an end product of adulthood.  You’re not raising kids, you’re raising grownups!

I’m not trying to imply that children shouldn’t have a childhood, play, be silly, and enjoy life.  On the other hand, I think it would do most grownups I know a lot of good to play, be silly and enjoy life, too. I think that particular aspect of life is less a developmental stage and more of a part of the human condition.  Hell, I’m in my 40s and I like snowball fights, baking cookies, making up games when playing in the pool, and being absurd as much as I ever did.  Doesn’t stop me from mopping the floor when it gets dirty or doing taxes.

What I do think is that we prolong childhood way too far.

I was thinking about it this weekend when I revisited one of my favorite movies, The Lost Boys. The focal characters were mostly between the ages of 16 and 19.  Even casting aside the whole idea that they were vampires, so probably even older than that, these characters were what happens when you have people whose bodies are adults, but they’re at loose ends because they’re told that they’re children, powerless and don’t have a useful or productive place in society.  All that youthful energy had nowhere to go.  Energy that has nowhere to go more often than not goes into destructive channels.

The mother character gave completely mixed messages to her oldest son that got even stronger when you get to see some of the scenes that were cut from the final release.  Now, on the whole, I think the character was quite a good mother, but merely acting as a product of our society.  On the one hand, she wanted him to look after his younger brother when she couldn’t be there – to be a parent surrogate.  That’s an adult role.  But then she discouraged him, in some cut scenes, from contributing financially to the family in a time of need.  Sure, her reasoning was understandable.  She wanted him to continue his education!   But what she was really discouraging him from doing was stepping up to the plate as an adult and contributing to the welfare of his loved ones.

Given our social and economic structure, I’m not sure how this problem is going to be solved, but we need to and soon.  It’s been going on since the 1950s and we’re going to run ourselves into the ground if we don’t stop it.

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There’s a new marketing campaign to sell more crap manufactured food called Smart Choices.

There’s been some discussion on various forums involving health, fitness and eating where one idea came up that boggled me.  A parent was expressing the idea that it’s hard to combat the marketing techniques with the children.

You have got to be kidding me.

You control what goes in the grocery cart.    You control what you pay for.  Yes, little Knucklehead might roll around on the floor screaming and crying for his treasured Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.   No, the glares awarding you the Crappy Parent of the Year award from other grocery store patrons isn’t much fun when you don’t placate the child to make him shut up so they can go back to shopping in peace.   I get that.  I’m a parent.  Been there, done that.  Dragging a kid along the floor who has gone Gandhi in protest isn’t fun.

Thing is, little Knucklehead probably isn’t that dumb.  Screaming hurts one’s throat and cold grocery store floors aren’t really all that much fun to lie on.  If you keep saying no consistently, they’ll get the point.

If you can’t handle enforcing a no when it comes to cereal and you’re the one with the checkbook, I don’t even want to think of what it’s going to look like when your kids are teenagers.

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What bothers me is that the most important way a woman is to be valued is whether or not she is considered beautiful.

Pretty is not the rent I pay on this earth for occupying the space marked “female”.  I don’t owe the world pretty.   My value in this world isn’t higher because I am pretty or not.  So I don’t need a commerical reassuring me that even though I’m fat, I’m beautiful anyway, as if it’s a pat on the head to reassure me I’m still valuable.   Damn right I’m valuable.  I’m smart.  I have good insights.  I’ve learned things I can teach people.  Hell, when I was a teenager, and frankly considerably better looking than Susan Boyle, if offered the chance to take her looks if it meant her voice went with it, I’d've taken it in a red-hot minute.  The fact I don’t sing well has always bothered me more than the fact I’m not movie-star material.

Whether or not I am beautiful is immaterial in the face of what kind of parent I am, how I treat my fellow human beings, whether or not anyone’s lives are going to be enriched from knowing me or not — not how goddamned decorative I am.  I am a living, breathing human being.  The idea that because I’m female I should somehow be ornamental if I want to be valued drives me up a wall.

The message that it’s okay to be fat because you’re still pretty is totally getting it wrong (and yes, there are plenty of fat people who are very attractve, indeed!).  The message should be:  Pretty is a value (and c’mon, pretty is nice to look at), but it’s hardly the only value and certainly not the most important one!

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