As in, "People are funny", and by that I mean, Funny strange (although Funny ha-ha sometimes factors into it to). These are some personal ramblings and reflections. You will find no deep political insight here, just some thoughts on encounters with people being odd. You're welcome to read along, or not, and both are fine.
Some case studies:
Scenario:
Person's finds out I'm Jewish. Person looks at me with big smile; says, "Have you heard, there's a New Testament?" No shit; it was just like that.
Now, growing up, I somehow didn't clue in to teasing or sarcasm. I took it all personally. I was miserable. There's more context, but it's for another diary some other day. But one day, I don't remember when or how or why, I suddenly "got" things like teasing and sarcasm and snark... and I've been wallowing gleefully in it ever since.
So, my usual response to someone saying something like, "You're Jewish? Have you heard there's a New Testament?" is to respond with something like, "No shit? I was standing outside the doors at the mall all goddamn day last December 25th, wondering where those lazy bastards were!?"
That's how I'd normally do it, anyway, but in this case the person outranked me considerably (Staff Sergeant vis-a-vis Major) so there was a certain "awkward" factor to consider. And while the guy normally has a great sense of humor and isn't the blustery type, I wasn't quite going to push the boundaries. Yeah, I was at Army Reserve Annual Training for a month, almost all of June in fact, which explains my absence which most of you probably didn't notice. (See!? Sarcasm! Diggin' it! ;-> )
See, here's what I don't get. I live in America. Grew up here. I live in little ol' Boise, which is a somewhat Democratic blue spot in a sea of hard-right Republican Red territory. The guy talking to me knew this. Do people really think it is possible for a Jew to grow up in the Yoo-nited States of Amurr'kah in this day and age and be oblivious to the whole Christian thing? I mean, every week I get a reminder that the Big Day is Sunday (not Saturday, as it is supposed to be). And of course, there's the flood of TV shows and shopping in December. So, no. He was being sarcastic, which a few years ago I wouldn't have "got". But why does he have to go there at all, especially knowing that it would be awkward?
(Side note: while attending Ben-Gurion University in Israel on an Overseas Student Program, we had a semester of students come in that included a hard-core Christian who wanted to spend some time in "the Holy Land" [hint: Jews don't call it this]. She was stunned --utterly poleaxed, I tell you-- to find that Sunday wasn't the Day Off there. In fact, Sunday is "Monday", in that is it "Yom Rishon", or "First Day", and it's when everyone goes to work and tries to pretend they have no hangover. Saturday is the day off. She wanted to go to Church every Sunday, and was stunned to learn that a- finding a church was going to be difficult in Beer-Sheva; and 2- she would still be responsible for her make-up assignments from class for that day. She actually sputtered in surprise [first time I'd seen someone do that] and I could not help but think, "welcome to my world".)
But. Anyhow.
So, yeah. People are weird and funny. They do weird things that are inexplicable at times. Like this next one.
Scenario:
This next one is less... um, entertaining. In fact, it's unhappy. Fair warning.
So, long ago (in my early 20's, as in, it was the first time I had a "2" in front of the follow-on number) I get a girlfriend named Gloria. Now, I had grown up and dated a lot, and did well at it, probably because I thought that you tend to date people you like, and want to be good to, and you enjoy spending time together. Apparently, not everyone got the message.
I have no idea what Gloria thought dating was. Or "relationships". Of course, my still-early and still-evolving comprehension of that world made me wide open for psychological plunder. Seriously, few people really, truly have their feces conglomerated at that age unless they were forced to grow up quickly (if you're that age and reading this, cheer up; if things are screwy, you're right on schedule and you'll be fine. Things will clear up. If you're that age and nothing screwy has happened yet, well... um... batten down the hatches, just in case. And try to get out more). So I'm in this relationship and I'm thinking that relationships are all about trust and companionship. Love, mutual support, blah blah blah. But, there I go, bringing logic into it.
All I can say now is that Gloria seems to have thought that stuff she saw in soap operas was "normal", or at least what was expected. She thrived on drama. To this day I have no idea if...
--Really unfunny stuff warning--you've been warned--
-her stepdad really did rape her at gunpoint while her mom watched
-she really was pregnant and had a miscarriage
-she really was pregnant and got an abortion just to "show me"
-her ex-husband really did beat her up
--OK, normal programming--
...and numerous other less dramatic things that infected our day-to-day lives. She screwed around and had affairs, some of which I found out about later, some of which seemed to actually be lies she told me just to goad me. To this day I truly have no idea what she told that was truthful and what wasn't. The thing is, at the time, I believed them, and acted as if they were true. I felt bad for her, because she was screwed up, and did what I could to provide and be there and yadda yadda. I hung in there until one day I realized I had nothing left to give; that I was actually weighing the merits of homelessness compared to what I was living with at that point, and homelessness was coming out ahead. For a long time after I finally left, I had no idea if I had been played by someone, or if, hell, maybe she herself really did believe the crap she was telling me. It happens.
But the long run of it is, it doesn't matter. I survived and while I was depressed for awhile, I reconciled that a lot of it was her being weird, and that was her problem to deal with when she was ready; and some of it was my problem for being a bit too naive and trusting. I moved on. And I eventually ran across the guy she ran off with, dumping me, on Facebook. I noticed with curiosity that she is nowhere to be found among his contacts, and he's married to someone else. He looks happy. I have no intention of contacting him to ask whatever happened to her; obviously we weren't "friends" really (unless mutual "blah" counts) but the real reason is because nothing is to be gained by disturbing "the grave site". No new insight will be found, so it is a waste of time and pointless self-haunting. I have better things to do. Make good art, for example. ;-)
So, anyhow, while I learned to take people with a certain benefit of the doubt, I also learned to take people with a certain level of grains of salt until I feel more like I have a handle on what kind of behavior I can expect. Shutting everyone out and trusting no one is paranoid; being accessible to all is naive.
Obviously I went on to have a happier life, a little bruised and wiser, and learned from it all and evolved to have great relationships (evolution is great, it's not survival of the fittest or strongest, it's the ones who are most adaptable and elastic, open to change without allowing themselves to be destroyed in the process. Like Plastic Man. Or a Transformer, although I loathe the Michael Bay films as a blight on mankind).
Anyhow, people are funny. They say and do weird things. They poke at you, sometimes with malice, sometimes not; sometimes what they do is just strange but you really don't feel like getting bogged down looking for meaning because really, you just want it all to go away and let you get back to being you. Sometimes people flat-out attack, and the attack makes no sense since you did everything right to this person, but they attack you anyway.
When that happens, it can be hard to move on and not take it personally, but at some point you just have to. For survival. Because a person that attacks you for no reason is probably a person with problems, and you can't use up your time worrying about them when you have to look out for yourself. Especially if you have to also look out for others who are depending on you. So you dust yourself off, take your lumps, and maybe (if you're feeling charitable) hope the other person finds some kind of peace someday.
And drive on to handle the next bundle o' weird that comes later.
Enough is enough; share your own experiences where someone just took a wild swing at you (literally or metaphorically) and how you dealt with it.