Yesterday, I put up another birth announcement on my cork board.
I have come to the conclusion that a.) there are far too many useless social conventions, and b.) that Hallmark might be a great stock to buy into. To make room for the new birth announcement, I had to throw away an old one. What’s the sell-by date for birth announcements? How long do I need to have a card with date and weight to herald a new arrival? I have determined that a year is enough; one year, then out they go. Forgive me if that is not the way it ought to be done; I’m sure Emily Post covered this in some etiquette book or other, but perhaps I have simply failed to reach that chapter.
I am beginning to be bewildered by simple things such as greeting cards, as well. I actually hate receiving them, because afterward, well, there they are. I have opened them, read their sentiment, and then — ? Someone commented that the back of our front door is still lined with photo holiday cards; well, I assume that the people who sent me photographs of themselves might like me to keep them… thus I need to cut them out and put them into an album or frame… thus I need to purchase said albums or frames… thus the cards are just fine sticking on the back of the door until I get that far.
Social conventions. Bewildering politenesses that we are all meant to exchange.
I am told that I am unspeakably rude at times, because I don’t talk. Sometimes, there is simply nothing to say. For instance, I was recently told, “I told your husband to hurry up and make you pregnant!” followed by much eye rolling and giggling. Oh, how I longed for a quick tongue with which to deliver a subtle riposte with damning accuracy. The woman who plagued me about my reproduction, I longed to impale her air-headed, bubbly good humor with a long silver pin, delivering a shattering, conversation-stopping POP! to her ego… Alas, I was firmly taught and scolded into the belief that not having anything nice to say means that one examines the ceiling tiles until one’s co-conversant has changed the topic. That has saved the skin from being flayed from quite a few people, and an incoherence of ill-temper, which is always unfortunate. Unfortunately, it does not save me from saying the wrong thing anyway…
Dame Edna visited this weekend and with her typical histrionic levels of enthusiasm entered the house and warbled, “What beee-yuuu-tiful floors!” to which I replied, “Yes, aren’t they.” Because… well, yes, they are.
I neither grew the bamboo nor planed it on a machine. I neither sanded it, nor glued it together nor installed it on my floor. I chose it because it is beautiful, and I could not take credit for Dame Edna’s overly effusive praise of them. But I am finding now that I have been cheeky and impertinent, and am meant to have ducked modestly and said, “Oh, thank you,” as if I – in lieu of the floor – were gratified by her notice. Social conventions. And people wonder that I don’t often choose to speak…
I still struggle to wrap my mind around the biggest social convention of all, the act of pretense. There doesn’t seem to be a single-word definition for ‘acting as if all is well;’ though it does have shades of studied non-observance, except that it isn’t emotionally balanced enough to be deliberate non-observance for the greater good. Instead, pretense is for the sake of shoving things under the carpet. It is the pretense that says ‘Since I don’t want to deal with it, it never happened.’ The ‘Bumpy Carpet’ is the consistent pretense I encounter with Dame Edna and Her Landed Lord.
Ours is not a friendly history. Dame Edna once saw herself and Her Landed Lord as Quality, and myself as Other Than Quality, and to her mind, never the twain should have had to meet. Though much of her attitude is only rarely vocalized, a submerged passive aggressive manipulation continues on just beneath the surface of conversation. Yet it is another social convention that some of the most pitched battles people wage against one another are unspoken. Cloaked in good taste and manners, people sit down to invisible tea parties, offer each other one lump or two, extend pinky fingers and sip while snubbing each other all the while. Many of these same people still manage to send holiday cards.
I find this incomprehensible.
Maybe the thing I understand the least, which sends me into this restless introspection, is that I am not yet doing things which require announcements, make Lifelong Enemies, or necessitate falsely cordial interaction. Do not mistake my meaning; I do not wish to post banns nor birth announcements nor invite meaningless witty socialization! There is just a part of me which realizes that I am steadily collecting the detritus of the lives of others which they feel impelled to share, and sending out no signal flares of my own. Have I now achieved all my victories, finished all of my struggles? Or is it simply that I no longer feel compelled to share, to take part in this invisible tea party of polite exclamations, hearty congratulations, and silent competition? Is it more preferable or unforgivable somehow that I prefer to stare into my mirror and try to figure out how to get out of the game?
The lovely picture herein displayed is courtesy of Artista, the work of a cartoonist living in Budapest, Hungary. Her evocative little works of art are beautifully emotional in spite of their simplicity. Visit often!
Down with useless social conventions! I am so with you on the greeting card thing, especially. Except for a rare few cards whose artwork or sentiments I particularly cherish, I mostly end up with piles of cards I no longer need, probably should recycle, but just FEEL GUILTY about tossing. I think that as long as a card was read and appreciated, the recipient should be under no obligation to display it, file it away, or otherwise keep it around. I mean, come on. I think that even a year is pushing it with cards you don’t plan to keep forever. (At least I try to tell myself that so that my office is less cluttered by random bits of paper…)
And you know? I think your response to Dame Edna was perfectly reasonable…I can just see you beaming proudly and admiring your beautiful floor! Which I can’t wait to see!
The Truth is such an awkward thing, sometimes. People don’t like to hear it, they don’t want to know it, and they expect you to bend it, at times.
For example: people you work with do not expect to know that you make it a practice to never form “friendships” with people at work. It makes them upset. They’d like to pretend that everybody at work can be best friends forever, and that their lives mean something to you. They like for you to tell them things – intimate things – and to actually care that they’ve spawned, that their unfortunate progeny has ended up in Juvenile Hall, and things of the like.
What Do You Do?
Yes, this IS a game: one of those unfortunate 1980’s computer games which consisted of long paragraphs of narrative, usually involving a Parrot, followed by the question, “What Do You Do?”
The answer? LIE. Pretend like hell that you give a damn. Go home and write nasty (but true) things about them in a book which they will never read (except to find their own name, attached to some character which bares no resemblance to them).
Lies: they’re what makes society go ’round. ‘Round the bend, maybe, but somewhere … away from you, which is the goal, after all.