My dad had his own business for most of my life, but self-employment is dangerous: there’s no one to rally against your crazy. Without a voice of reason, it’s a short road from “eccentric” to “diagnosable.” To wit: my mother’s friend was looking for a receptionist job, just something temporary, and Dad offered to interview her. However, he decided it would be amusing to conduct the interview while WEARING A TOP HAT. Top hat. Are you reading this? Not a fedora, not a bowler. A Merrie Melodies “hello my baby, hello my honey,” cane-wielding, dancing-singing frog-in-a-top-hat kind of top hat. And, because the interviewee did not acknowledge the hat, she was not hired.
This is the environment I grew up in, and it wasn’t until age 36 and two months that I realized….OH, actually, yeah, that is kind of crazy. Truly, until that moment (so noteworthy that I wrote down my age), I always viewed that story (and all the others) like wacky a TV show, never considering that the interviewee was a real person, used as a pawn for the purpose of telling a good story in the future.
Okay, that brings us here:
- I’m often disappointed that my life does not mirror those of people on TV. Is it any wonder?
- Am I willing to get all Erin-Brockovich and do whatever it takes to get the story? And, is it fair to compare my father to Erin Brockovich? (Yes)
- Sometimes I also can’t find that line between eccentric and diagnosable.
Not too long ago, my work department hosted a training for our contractors. In my mind, I was attending the training as a student, not as a representative of The Government, the funders for these contractors.. I dragged my co-worker along with me to act as my social shield, but in fact, I didn’t need to as there were several other people from The Government in the audience. Like all crappy trainings, the facilitator had several get-to-know-you questions written on the whiteboard, and was randomly selecting people in the room so that we could all learn who they were, where they worked, what their favorite color was, and if they had pets. I did my best to look legitimately busy shuffling the copy of PowerPoint slides that were on the table in front of me in hopes that I wouldn’t be noticed. And, like everyone else in the room, I focused none of my attention on those speaking and all of my attention on crafting responses to the questions, specifically focusing on a hilarious pet-joke that I would tell, if called on.
Okay, so I’m going to pause here because I want to acknowledge that I know that what follows is entirely me and not the facilitator, but sometimes I’m just so mortified by my own stupidity that I have to believe that it is someone else’s fault.
Naturally the facilitator called on me, no doubt drawn to my red hair, like a moth to the flame, and most definitely not by the aggressive and distracting paper-shuffling. Yes, I should have sat up when I was pointed out, but I was still determined to not be the “hostess,” so I remained in a gunshot-wounded/ slumped-over posture.
“My name is Lee, I work for The Government….”
The facilitator, without regard to the intro I worked out in my head, interrupts: “OH! We have an expert! You can tell us what your department is thinking!” Which only made me panic. I didn’t want to 1. be acknowledged/noticed in anyway by any person, or 2. be an expert on anything, ever.
“Oh, no no no no…. I like to stay above the fray.”
And then this is what starts going through my head:
The fray? Who is the fray? The other attendees? Their clients?
I suppose I meant the job, the staff. Or maybe I just liked that phrase and wanted to hear myself say it.
Shit, did I say riff-raff, too? I can’t remember.
It is also possible I said all of this out loud.
Still, there was a way out, a crazy way. My genetics kicked in (and I know this retrospectively because there was zero thinking going on at the time, so it must have been instinct taking over): Keep talking! I was trying to shape the crazy into something normal, making it seem like maybe this was all just a wacky talk show with two hosts… yes, two, because at this point I was talking over Sandy who was introducing herself. I just thought that if we were in this together (the “mentally ill” routine made famous by Abbot and Costello), that people would find us refreshingly fun. So, not only did I derail myself, but I took Sandy down with me. And had this somehow gotten bigger, crazier, maybe a cup of coffee knocked over because of wild gesturing or maybe a chair tipping too far back, maybe if there had been some sort of climax, all would have been right in my head. But instead, the crazy just petered out, like a ball rolling down a grassy hill, bouncing against crabgrass and weeds, slowly losing steam, and finally bumping to an anticlimactic stop.
And then the facilitator moved on to Frank, another co-worker. (Don’t you feel right about here that there’s something missing? That there must be more that was said? More that was done? Me too. And had someone only coughed and farted while laughing so hard at me during the introductions, then I wouldn’t even be here right now, writing this).
Frank. Clearly, he was not rehearsing a pet-joke in his head but instead prepared something that sounded like a soundbite from our website, conveying his passion, knowledge, and experience. Like a real asshole.
The biggest problem I have with Frank mostly has to do with his clothing. He had taken to wearing this shiny, black, boxy shirt on Fridays (could he be confusing “casual Friday” with “gay disco circa 1978”?), and this shirt has a giant metal zipper up the front. When I say giant, I mean that the teeth of the zipper are visible and have, oh, about a one-inch spread. The pull tab of the zipper is also about an inch in both length and girth. I’m trying to think of an article of clothing to compare it to, but all I can come up with is industrial zipper examples, like maybe the zipper on a tent, except I have NEVER seen a zipper that big on a tent. Every time he wears this shirt, I can’t even look at him because I have a visceral, gut-churning reaction to people who are hideous when they don’t need to be. I know he’s married; why didn’t his wife tell him to change?
At one point, not that day, but much later, I asked Sandy to please tell him to stop wearing the shirt, especially with the black pants (because he isn’t Johnny Cash).
Good news: he stopped wearing the shirt. Bad news: the wife is clearly not invested in their relationship because it was quickly replaced with something possibly more offensive. I walked up to ask him a question, and when he turned around, I was assaulted by a faux suede shirt with Native American themed embellishments. Something between “hip” and “Indian/moccasin summer shoe that my mom would buy for me at Payless when I was eight.” Flop sweat broke out as I stared into those embroidered tribal motifs. I had to walk away, I couldn’t even stay to ask my question (question? what question? there was no question. Surely he was mistaken. I must be going now). I told this to another coworker and she said, “I think you might be overreacting.” And then she saw it.
“You didn’t tell me about the embroidery!” I swear I did.
“Could he have been wearing it ironically?” I really don’t think so.
And that is the asshole who further made me look bad by making himself look good at this training. And although maybe I only said all of 50 words, I spend the rest of the day obsessing about this public interaction. When I get home, my now-ex Chad was napping. I go into the bedroom and wake him up.
“Am I mentally ill?” I whisper.
The hall light is on, so the bedroom is partly lit. Chad puts his hand to eyes to block out the light, turning his head away, clearly exhausted, and clearly exasperated. By me. And as I give him the facts of the situation, as I’m talking through the crazy, I see how much like my father I really am. And I feel AWESOME. Because I did whatever was necessary to get the good story, just like Erin Brokavich.