Oh, I think I’ll have a great big bowl of MIND YOUR OWN BEESWAX
January 7, 2009 at 8:23 pm (Annoying things, Food, WTF?, Women) (Food, jerks, Law School)
Last night my husband was flabbergasted because we went out to eat and the women across from us merely nibbled at their food, not eating almost any of it. He said, “I guess they were trying to impress the one dude they were with?”
I didn’t notice this. I never notice what other people are doing. I like to mind my own business and I wish other people would mind theirs. My husband, though, is a good example of how the stereotypes that women are nosy and gossipy and women are not are just that–stereotypes.
And I replied with knowledge I had learned in law school. I prefaced what I had to say with “look, I’m saying this with NO SARCASM AT ALL. It sounds sarcastic, but it’s not.” I often say things that are sarcastic. And I continued with “women are just not supposed to let guys know that they eat. They’re probably going to go home and make microwave burritos, but most women just won’t eat in front of guys.” Ok, I guess what I said was still a little bit sarcastic.
How did I come across this information? Well, sit on my knee and I’ll tell you a story.
I guess I was always a very sheltered person–I didn’t realize just how many social norms I didn’t adhere to until I started going to law school and had it pointed out to me that I don’t adhere to them. I’m also oblivious to everything that’s around me and I feel no need to do what everyone else is doing if whatever they are doing is adverse to what I want.
I went to some social function with a bunch of law students at a restaurant that was more pricey than anniversary dinner level pricey with my husband. Apparently law students think they are making lawyer money already. Anyway, I paid a lot for what I ordered, and by gum, I was going to eat all of it it cost a fucking arm and a leg! It was also tasty and I had worked up an appetite knowing I was going out for an expensive dinner. Anyway, there I was, shoveling food into my mouth in a way which allowed for maximum speed yet sufficient time to grace my taste buds, when some of the dudes I was conversing with began commenting that I ate as much as they did. My head poked out from the billowy clouds of obliviousness which perpetually surround it, and I did notice I was pretty much the only one of the female persuasion not leaving half of my meal on the plate in a display of feminine restraint. This is not something I feel self conscious about, but I resent the attempts of others to make me self-conscious about it. That night, anyway, I was like, law school dudes. Whatever. Those women are going to scarf down a sandwich as soon as they get home and I didn’t waste my $50.
But, the same sort of thing happened again as I did decide during my education as a law student to get a law job to try my hand at the legal field. For some reason lawyers and law students have this obnoxious need to eat with each other all of the time. I mean it wouldn’t be obnoxious if the real goal was to eat and not to size each other up like a pack of fucking dogs, but as it is, it’s obnoxious.
At one lunch meeting with my mentor I was at I ordered something that, you know, wasn’t a salad with lemon juice. When it arrived, I got a “wow that is a lot of food” comment. It wasn’t more pricey than what he ordered–I always try to pay even though I know that’s not going to happen, but I don’t exactly order lobster anywhere. At that point I just thought, yeah this restaurant always has big portions whenever I go with other people we always make comments about how you leave the place stuffed. But then later, when I, you know, actually bothered eating what I had ordered, I got the big old “wow! How do you eat so much and stay so thin?”
High metabolism, I guess?
This has happened to me on one other occasion. I guess I should take the hint to leave half my plate if I’m eating in front of a guy I don’t know? Fuck it.
I don’t know why but these kinds of comments always make me feel VERY uncomfortable. I don’t like them, I don’t like people commenting on my eating habits, and I especially don’t like people commenting about my weight, even if it’s a compliment. I mean I guess it’s supposed to be a compliment? I told my husband about how annoyed it makes me and he said it’s because it’s a backhanded compliment. I guess it is, I always feel like it’s a subtle way of telling me I eat too much. Even if it’s not I just don’t see why it’s something that merits a comment. Isn’t this, you know, rude? I mean, it’s not rude to presuppose that I’m not supposed to eat much?
In all the years I’ve been with my husband the only comment I get from him about my eating is informing me when my face is covered in BBQ sauce or I have something stuck between my teeth. Maybe that’s why I learned so late in life that I’m not supposed to pretend like I partake in this ritual called eating in front of other people who might get the vapors over it. I’m just sheltered, I guess.
Do you speako the Klingoelvishsperanto?
January 7, 2009 at 10:22 am (Annoying things, Random) (I suck so hard at making tags seriously)
The whole debate over whether Spanish speaking persons who live in the U.S. need to learn English is a little bit perplexing to me. I was reminded of it recently when I learned that some Spanish-speaking cousins of mine have been attending school in the U.S. for three years and they don’t know English worth dickcheese. I am not the kind of person who goes around thinking everyone needs to speak English at all, but this floored me a little bit. I don’t know why on earth a school in the U.S. would teach kids completely in Spanish for THREE FUCKING YEARS, to the point where they learn no English because they just hang out with other Spanish speaking kids in school. At first I thought, maybe she just flunks the fuck out of her classes in English–but no, she informed me that she has all classes in Spanish. In the U.S. To me it seems this is more of a detriment to these students than anything. I don’t get offended at people who don’t speak English, but surely it would benefit them to learn a second language. They were sent to school in the U.S. to learn English, specifically. Maybe they will have to be sent to Canada or something to learn English–somewhere where there aren’t Spanish speaking teachers to mollycoddle them.
I wonder if this sort of thing is just an extension of our strange distaste for bilingualism in general. It annoys me–I would have liked to learn other languages when I was young and my mind was fresh, supple and receptive to such things. I really think kids should be taught a second language of their choosing at an early age, you know, just for the sake of knowledge? Expanded horizons? The ability to go to France and avoid being served dishwater as wine like in National Lampoons Vacation? For some reason here in the good old U.S.A. we think our brains have limited space and if we stuff it up with Chinese or Klingon we won’t have room for cocktail recipes. Well I’ll do a little experiment–knowing English and being able to get around in Spanish has not thus far compromised my ability to remember how to make a sex on the beach, but I made a new years resolution to learn like five languages and I’ll find out one day if something like knowing how to wipe my ass gets overwritten by the numbers 1-10 in Arabic.
Knowing enough of many languages to manage in them is a lot easier than becoming fluent. I’m really hoping I can accomplish this with “My French Coach,” “My Chinese Coach,” “My Japanese Coach” for the nintendo DS, and pirated language learning software programs. I think these kinds of things should be used in schools and workplaces. For example, a friend of mine told me about how she went to McDonalds in a Spanish-speaking area of the U.S. and they had to call for an English speaking person to take her order. To me this seems ridiculous–how hard is it to learn the limited contents of a McDonalds menu in English? Hamburguesa is not that different from Hamburger. . . I’m pretty sure I learned “juga de naranja” in one day. I guess the difficulty would come with “hold the pickles, add mustard?” People’s special requests? People who don’t articulate well? I know acquiring the sounds of another language so you can HEAR it when you have the vocabulary is difficult, it just seems like if you WORK somewhere learning the survival vocabulary of that industry would be a priority. Someone needs to make an English coach for the DS and pass it around that kitchen in between burger flippings.
That is something to consider, though. If people want Spanish speakers to learn English SO BADLY, they should also be willing to be patient with people who are just learning and building vocabulary and need English speakers to be slow and clear and not roll their eyes and act like jerk asses when the English-language learner’s grammar is bad and his or her accent is thick. It’s scary to speak another language when you think someone is just going to put you down for it!
This kind of thing though, wondering why on earth people *don’t* just pick up some survival English, and maybe coming to an understanding about it, is different than being like “oh I hate Mexicans for never learning English, they should be deported.” I think my thought on this can be analogized to my thoughts on political correctness–there’s a difference between saying “you can call Obama a magic negro all you like, but it makes you an ASSHOLE” and saying “you should be thrown in jail because you called Obama a magic negro.” Here it’s like, “geez it’s not that hard to learn how to say Cheeseburger, quit being an asshole” vs. “you should be deported because you don’t know the word Cheeseburger in English.” The former might be a bit of a decree from an ivory tower but I can see where it comes from and I occasionally have thoughts like that myself. The latter is just coming from an anger about something a little bit more than frustration regarding inability to communicate, I think.
Maybe people who don’t learn English because they’re stubborn about it are assholes, maybe they’re too busy trying to feed their families and escape poverty to spend time studying, maybe they’re not gifted at learning other languages, maybe they know a lot of English but they figure the racist fuckers who keep enacting hateful laws won’t find it to be sufficient anyway so they don’t bother, but whatever, it’s more of a detriment to them than me, why would I go around voting in pointless laws and whining whining whining? I think the fourth thing might happen more than people realize. I usually think “oh shit this person is going to think I’m a total MORON” when I speak Spanish. It’s hard to open up and speak a language you aren’t fluent in when you think people are going to judge you for it. A lot of people refuse to speak more slowly and clearly to someone who is just learning. I’m looking at you, Univision. Some people have zero patience for trying to decipher accents. But I digress.
What I really don’t understand is people whose monocles go popping off every time they hear people speaking languages other than English. I’m especially floored when people get all bent out of shape because friends or family are CONVERSING in Spanish in a mall or something.
What?
I mean, really, even if one moved to Mexico and spoke FLUENT Spanish I’m sure he or she and most people would probably still speak English in a mall with close friends and family members. I really don’t get the idea that people should speak the language of the land for the benefit of the eavesdropping desires of others.
I suppose the idea is that the family of 8 eating Panda Express and chattering away in Spanish are obviously talking about how they want to kill whitey, or specifically commenting about just how damn ugly the offended person is, or how said person is probably a slut filled with herpes.
You know I wait with baited breath for the day someone talks shit about me within earshot in Spanish because he or she assumes I won’t understand it. That will be the day I turn around and shout “chinga tu madre! Yo comprendo Espanol!” in a total gringo accent and shock them all.
But, you know, I always seem to miss these things, people are usually talking about stuff like their boyfriends, clothes, their own lives.
Holy shit who knew?
Seriously! How narcissistic is it to think that just because you can’t understand someone, that person must be talking about you!?
Maybe I’m just missing the gene for becoming enraged about this.
