Welcome to the first in what I hope to develop into a series of horror stories from my real life. Halloween is one of my favorite celebration/event/festival things--probably a psychological conditioning of receiving massive amounts of candy on a particular night of the year for the first 15 years of my life (some of the most impressionistic years)! I don't really care for the origin stories of trick-or-treating: how people would terrorize each other and threaten vandalism or physical harm if their demands weren't met, but in these, my adult years, I don't mind other people enjoying the creating or purchasing and wearing of costumes, coming to the door with the expectation of candy. I had a lot of fun doing it as a kid, and i gotta say: there's little else, for me, that tops the cuteness factor of 3-foot tall humans wailing, "trick-or-treeeeet!!" at you and holding out a bag. I love kids. So much. Actually, in the past several years, I have designed a handful of crocheted (and one or two knitted) trinkets with Halloween themes that I have handed out either in addition to or in lieu of candy. (Choose the "Patterns" category at the bottom of the page to find them). I made a miniature knitted Michael Myers doll and attached it to a barrette that I wear in my hair as often as I remember to during October.
Anyway, to spread my enthusiasm for the enjoyment of horror stories and non-scary Halloween fun during the month of October, I've decided to start sharing Horror Stories from Real Life. I got the idea after making my last post when I said that I had plenty of horror stories from volunteering at food pantries. Without further ado, I give you the first Horror Stories from Real Life: Who's Debbie?? In my previous post, I talked about how I volunteer at food pantries and the primary reason being so that I can self-curate our groceries. It is true, though, that I very much enjoy the tasks of helping to run a food bank...organizing and sorting, cleaning, and talking to people. One summer, we spent our time outside of a very small town (population 300 or so), and thankfully there was a weekly food pantry, a monthly food pantry, and a dollar store. Between these three, we ate pretty well all summer. As you might be able to imagine, in a town of this size, it is hard to blend in as a loaded cyclist, so the folks who ran both pantries became well familiar with me, or at least, what I allowed them to know about me and whatever else they assumed beyond that. Frequently, one or another person from the weekly pantry would saunter over to me as I packed and loaded my bike with the bounty. This annoyed me a little bit because most of the time, I just wanted to get home to Adam where I was safe from prying and judgemental eyes. On the other hand, I do enjoy conversation and being able to talk about my ideals, but frankly, a lot of times, the conversant would ignore my cues of being ready to roll and force me to linger beyond what I would have wanted. It didn't bother me, but it would have been more enjoyable if I felt my contributions to the conversation were actually being heard. Alas, that's the world we currently live in: those with less money are stupid and insufficient as humans and need to be eradicated or reformed. Anyway, I got to know these people little by little, and I mostly enjoyed the conversations that I came to accept as inevitable. However, that particular summer, I decided (for the most part) to not offer my time and able body as a volunteer. This was mainly because people in a town that small, having not much to distract them, tend to spend a lot of time getting to know one another and, eventually, because of the way 21st century humans are, exerting, or at least attempting to exert, their will over one another. I just didn't feel like constantly explaining why I don't want a job or to "build greenhouses at your ranch." ...the reaction they sustained was not one of care and worry but one of manipulation and attention-seeking.
As a result of not donating my time to these charities, I had more time to dedicate to working on my fiber arts designs, and as such, I nailed out a pattern for a knitted stuffed heart that is knit in one piece without breaking the yarn. If you don't know knitting-things, that's somewhat of a feat. By the end of it, I had somewhere around 20 samples from having tested the instructions so many times combined with wanting to use up some yarn stash. As autumn set in, I decided that before we departed, I would give the hearts to the pantry volunteers (of both pantries) as a small but heartfelt token of my gratitude.
Naturally, they were well received, and when I handed them out on my final visit to the weekly pantry, there was much enthusiasm and gratitude from both sides of the table, and, not wanting to make a big deal out of saying goodbye to the people who tried to manipulate me into abandoning my good sense, moral ideals, and beliefs over the summer, I allowed the hearts to act as a farewell. The connection was not made, however. Despite having given them Adam's web address and thereby, a way to contact me, they did not know what happened to me and, apparently, worried to varying degrees about my well-being. If it was just that, I would not be writing this blog post. The plot thickens. When I bumped into a handful of the weekly-pantry volunteers several months later at a larger food bank 30 miles away that supplies several smaller pantries (including the one from the aforementioned small town) as well as performing its own distribution services, I was greeted with a hug and smiles and "It's great to see you! We were so worried about you! We didn't know what happened to you!" There was also "(Name redacted) was so worried about you! Don't do that again!" With genuine scold in the voice behind a thin veil of smile and gladness. Mind you, they know explicitly from our lengthy conversations over the summer that I am nomadic and move as the seasons change. In our conversations, they struck me as people intelligent enough to make the connection between the changing of a season and someone's absence who has stated that they move when the seasons change. So I am forced to any of a number of conclusions, not the least of which is that the reaction they sustained was not one of care and worry but one of manipulation and attention-seeking. A few more months pass. I see (name redacted) at the big food bank. She is standing facing me with her back to the open garage door. The contrast of the dimness inside and the brightness outside obscures her face into darkness. "Jenny." she says in an ominous tone that perfectly matches the lighting. Taking just a moment to process where I know the voice from, because I can't see the face too well, I say cheerfully, "ohhh! (Name redacted)! How are you??" My attempts at a normal, "how-are-things-haven't-seen-ya-in-awhile" conversation were rebuffed. She came with a loaded gun, aimed, and fired. In the same grave tone with which she originally addressed me, she informed me of that which I was already aware: that she was, and now I paraphrase, sick with worry over what happened to me. My stock response from the previous interaction with the others was that I didn't want to make a big deal about saying goodbye. She proceeded to explain that she has a hard time with goodbyes too which, by the way, is not what I meant by "not wanting to make a big deal out of saying goodbye." What I meant was more like, "I didn't want to give you assholes the opportunity to try and suck the life out of me and attempt to 'welcome' me into your homes under the guise of protecting me from winter's threats only to spin back 4 days after we move in and attempt to enslave us. It's just annoying, and I don't have time for that shit. I'd really just rather take my chances biking down a dark 2-lane country road with little to no shoulder on a fully loaded bicycle so that I can just fend off skunks at night, sleep in when I want to, and eat what I want, listen to music when I want, and space-out when I want, for however long I want than continuously explain to you why I won't do your ranch chores and clean your house while you berate me for not contributing enough to society; or worse: do the chores anyway, at your beck and call, against my will and develop heartburn, and weak joints from the stress until I just fall over dead in the middle of your field from an embolism." See how just not saying goodbye might be a little easier for us both? She came with a loaded gun, aimed, and fired.
I didn't say any of that, of course, but now that you've read it, you can see how "I just didn't want to make a big deal out of saying goodbye" sorta captures it as far as brief sentences go. She went on to try and hold me responsible for how she chooses to use (or not use) her mind: "Worrying about you occupied so much of my brain space." ...with some exaggerated phrase like, "it made me so sick." As if it was me who was controlling her brain space. If you ask me, she's the one who owes me an apology for continually trying to suck me into her lifestyle. Over that summer there were constant invitations for me to come over to so and so's house to teach them how to spin yarn or "we'd really like to get to know you better, so we thought we could all meet up at such and such diner sometime." I politely avoided committing every time an invitation was extended because I've been around the block enough times to know that "getting to know you" means "acting interested in your point of view while subtly trying to get you to do things our way for us." If you want to get to know someone, you just get to know them.
I would have thought that my constant replies like, "well, I don't like to disclose my location," or "no, I'd rather ride my bike home myself, but thank you for the offer," and more directly, "well I associate having a job with slavery--helping the rich get richer while the poor stay poor" or even "well, I tend not to socialize with people because I have found that in many cases, people tend to have their own agenda that doesn't generally include genuine interest in your well being" would have been glaringly obvious clues that I wanted nothing to do with them or their lifestyles, that I'll come to your little food pantry where I am simply one of perhaps 70 people who comes for food, and I'll participate in your stupid little conversations where you're not listening to anything I have to say and using flattery to try and gain my favor, but I'm not giving up my principles to live in your hell. I guess people really are just that stupid. And I don't mean stupid derogatorily. I mean stupid as in when you purposely ignore a great many obvious social cues of refusal in order to pursue your agenda of trying to convert someone who is genuinely happy with their lifestyle. The problem for them, see, is that my lifestyle shines a great big bright light on how awful and unfulfilling their lifestyle is, and they can't stand it, so they try to pull me into their darkness and extinguish my light. And I'm not saying I'm special or anything. It's happening to you to. You maybe just don't realize it, accept it, ignore it, have become complacent to it...whatever. But it's all around us in advertising and social status: conform and outperform to be worthy, and I just don't see it that way. It's more like: conform and outperform to be unhappy and die sooner. So that's our first horror story of real-life: I visited a weekly pantry one summer where I was constantly bombarded with manipulation to try and get me to abandon my freedom, I gave them my handmade and personally designed tokens of appreciation, and my thanks in return was a scolding about how I should have behaved in a way that was acceptable to them and catered to their insecurities. Sound familiar to anyone? |
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