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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2dDGc1i:
tardygrading
replied to your post
“I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
Miss Manners says that you answer invasive personal questions with “How kind of you to be concerned.” And nothing more. Possibly with a Mona Lisa smile, since you don’t want to permanently offend her. Repeat as needed.
Well. #1, I didn’t understand what the hell she was asking me for a while because what. (The conversation started because someone had brought a bag full of hand-me-downs for Farmbaby, and her grandmother was holding a tiny pair of jeans and said “won’t you need these” and I was sincerely baffled as to why I’d need a pair of 4T girls’ blue jeans that were seriously like eighteen inches long. Like, I wear a 32 inseam, and also my hips are fifty inches around, I can’t even…. ohhh you mean… wait what do you mean??? What are we talking about? Why on earth would I want tiny jeans? What good would they do me? Am I making coin purses out of the denim or something? I don’t tend to refashion kids’ clothing because it gets handed down, they have like a circuit of moms who all just — what are we talking about?) (ALSO if you’re asking someone if they’re having babies soon why would you open with toddler clothes? like? even if i were imminently starting a family why would I need 4T jeans?) (And did I mention this? SHe followed up with oh, how old are you WHO ASKS A WOMAN QUESTIONS LIKE THAT! That was when I figured it out. #1 your son has been married to this woman for seven years and you don’t know she’s the youngest of a big family which means I’m old? and #2 LOOK AT ME I am CLEARLY a woman in my late thirties isn’t it generally rude to say how old are you in that context??? I would NEVER! I might volunteer my age and wait for a response, that’s as far as I’d go. Christ on a cracker. Especially when it’s EXPLICITLY oh wait are your eggs too old to be viable. Are you an ALIEN. Even for someone like me who doesn’t really care that’s still a hell of a thing to say. I was so flustered I literally said how– what? I’m old! That’s how old. I’m old.)
And #2, given all of this woman’s other behavior, “repeat as needed” would just have meant she’d have asked me the same question five or ten more times, and then she just would have made up an answer for me, and started telling people I had some kind of Problem, and would have just made up whatever she felt like believing about my answer. It would eventually have gotten back to me that I had some sort of psychological issue about childbirth, and nobody would ever have been sure where that rumor started. Either that or she’d’ve taken a mysterious smile to mean “I am currently pregnant” and wouldn’t THAT have been wild.
You can’t actually use politeness on people who are too obtuse to notice. It requires them at some point acknowledging that their question was inappropriate. She has no capacity to appreciate this. She wanted to know so she asked, so why is that wrong?
torrilin replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
But I’m awful and will happily discuss all the ways I should have died at birth in public, and it gets fairly gruesome.
In retrospect I sort of wished I’d said something like that. “Oh, actually, I was born with a rare genetic disorder that means that if I ever get pregnant I’ll actually explode.” I mean, no disrespect to people for whom something along those lines is actually true, but that’s my point, there are a lot of reasons like that. I guess I’m just glad that I don’t have any Horrible Reasons why I Can’t/Mustn’t/Shouldn’t/Won’t breed, I just figured out that I sort of didn’t need to and while I’d probably survive it, I’d be happier in my life in general if I didn’t. But like. Man oh man. If I did have some Tragic Backstory there– if I’d reacted with a How Dare You, I guarantee she wouldn’t have been sorry she asked.
sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
I am occasionally stuck mediating or at least moderating some in-law drama, and once in a while one side or the other says something that’s personally maddening to me – so, solidarity, sister.
And that’s my main regret, that I wasn’t really able to make anything less bad while I was there. I do okay at Mother-In-Law deflection for my BFF, but her MIL mostly just repeats herself a lot and is sort of oblivious about things. SHe asks intrusive questions too but not as invasively. And she isn’t so aggressive about buying offensive foods and noise-making toys for the grandkids. Farmsister’s MIL…. I didn’t even tell y’all about the singing dancing not-actually-intended-for-kids obnoxious toy rooster. Or the Redundant Care Bears. Or the chocolate-candy-at-breakfast-instead-of-oatmeal Incident.
My sister is an organic farmer who, like, exquisitely crafts these humanely-raised, personally-slaughtered chickens, they raise them from chicks and they’re fed organic grains and last slaughter day they were trying to come up with gentler ways to corral them into the little coops to bring them down for processing because we’ve had too many with bruises after processing, you know? that kind of shit. I’m not even making that up, that’s genuinely what was going on. and her mother in law shows up with flats of BJ’s or Tyson chicken in freezer trays to give her. Like, how fundamentally can you misunderstand someone before it’s just trolling.
s-leary replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
Great googly moogly, what an irritating human being!
Precisely.
tardygrading
replied to your post
“I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
Miss Manners says that you answer invasive personal questions with “How kind of you to be concerned.” And nothing more. Possibly with a Mona Lisa smile, since you don’t want to permanently offend her. Repeat as needed.
Well. #1, I didn’t understand what the hell she was asking me for a while because what. (The conversation started because someone had brought a bag full of hand-me-downs for Farmbaby, and her grandmother was holding a tiny pair of jeans and said “won’t you need these” and I was sincerely baffled as to why I’d need a pair of 4T girls’ blue jeans that were seriously like eighteen inches long. Like, I wear a 32 inseam, and also my hips are fifty inches around, I can’t even…. ohhh you mean… wait what do you mean??? What are we talking about? Why on earth would I want tiny jeans? What good would they do me? Am I making coin purses out of the denim or something? I don’t tend to refashion kids’ clothing because it gets handed down, they have like a circuit of moms who all just — what are we talking about?) (ALSO if you’re asking someone if they’re having babies soon why would you open with toddler clothes? like? even if i were imminently starting a family why would I need 4T jeans?) (And did I mention this? SHe followed up with oh, how old are you WHO ASKS A WOMAN QUESTIONS LIKE THAT! That was when I figured it out. #1 your son has been married to this woman for seven years and you don’t know she’s the youngest of a big family which means I’m old? and #2 LOOK AT ME I am CLEARLY a woman in my late thirties isn’t it generally rude to say how old are you in that context??? I would NEVER! I might volunteer my age and wait for a response, that’s as far as I’d go. Christ on a cracker. Especially when it’s EXPLICITLY oh wait are your eggs too old to be viable. Are you an ALIEN. Even for someone like me who doesn’t really care that’s still a hell of a thing to say. I was so flustered I literally said how– what? I’m old! That’s how old. I’m old.)
And #2, given all of this woman’s other behavior, “repeat as needed” would just have meant she’d have asked me the same question five or ten more times, and then she just would have made up an answer for me, and started telling people I had some kind of Problem, and would have just made up whatever she felt like believing about my answer. It would eventually have gotten back to me that I had some sort of psychological issue about childbirth, and nobody would ever have been sure where that rumor started. Either that or she’d’ve taken a mysterious smile to mean “I am currently pregnant” and wouldn’t THAT have been wild.
You can’t actually use politeness on people who are too obtuse to notice. It requires them at some point acknowledging that their question was inappropriate. She has no capacity to appreciate this. She wanted to know so she asked, so why is that wrong?
torrilin replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
But I’m awful and will happily discuss all the ways I should have died at birth in public, and it gets fairly gruesome.
In retrospect I sort of wished I’d said something like that. “Oh, actually, I was born with a rare genetic disorder that means that if I ever get pregnant I’ll actually explode.” I mean, no disrespect to people for whom something along those lines is actually true, but that’s my point, there are a lot of reasons like that. I guess I’m just glad that I don’t have any Horrible Reasons why I Can’t/Mustn’t/Shouldn’t/Won’t breed, I just figured out that I sort of didn’t need to and while I’d probably survive it, I’d be happier in my life in general if I didn’t. But like. Man oh man. If I did have some Tragic Backstory there– if I’d reacted with a How Dare You, I guarantee she wouldn’t have been sorry she asked.
sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
I am occasionally stuck mediating or at least moderating some in-law drama, and once in a while one side or the other says something that’s personally maddening to me – so, solidarity, sister.
And that’s my main regret, that I wasn’t really able to make anything less bad while I was there. I do okay at Mother-In-Law deflection for my BFF, but her MIL mostly just repeats herself a lot and is sort of oblivious about things. SHe asks intrusive questions too but not as invasively. And she isn’t so aggressive about buying offensive foods and noise-making toys for the grandkids. Farmsister’s MIL…. I didn’t even tell y’all about the singing dancing not-actually-intended-for-kids obnoxious toy rooster. Or the Redundant Care Bears. Or the chocolate-candy-at-breakfast-instead-of-oatmeal Incident.
My sister is an organic farmer who, like, exquisitely crafts these humanely-raised, personally-slaughtered chickens, they raise them from chicks and they’re fed organic grains and last slaughter day they were trying to come up with gentler ways to corral them into the little coops to bring them down for processing because we’ve had too many with bruises after processing, you know? that kind of shit. I’m not even making that up, that’s genuinely what was going on. and her mother in law shows up with flats of BJ’s or Tyson chicken in freezer trays to give her. Like, how fundamentally can you misunderstand someone before it’s just trolling.
s-leary replied to your post “I feel like I’ve been gone a long time and have missed many things….”
Great googly moogly, what an irritating human being!
Precisely.
