05-17-05  13:12, Ardith Hinton told James Bradley about People...  1A.

 How do, Ardith?


 JB>  Sure, there are friends and relatives that you can tell
 JB>  how you feel, but mostly decorum has one keeping it to
 JB>  ones self.

 AH> Uh-huh.  And one of the purposes of this echo is
 AH> to be a place where you can let it all hang out, if that's 
 AH> what you need to do....  :-)
 


I forget who I was mentioning to, about how spring makes me straighten my
gate whenever a cutie passes, and then I pay for my bravado with the
repercussions. When walking, I have to crook my back, so my nerve doesn't
fire on every step. Akin to a middle-aged man sucking his diaphragm into
his lung cavity, I tend to straighten up the back, kick up my bad leg, and
fall into a mass when the appealing member of the opposite sex has
disappeared from sight.

 JB>  If a friend is one of the later, they can be bad for
 JB>  your own blood pressure, so you have to evaluate the
 JB>  worth of their friendship.


 AH> I hear what you're saying, but I'd put it a bit 
 AH> differently.  That's because my reasoning style is 
 AH> different... not because I think you should do it my way!  
 AH> Please bear with me if I engage in "psychobabble" here....  
 AH> :-))

Why do you think I keep typing to you, Ardith? If someone can enlighten a
situation with an opposing - well, let's say different - point of view, I'm
all ears! Your points are not always the easiest to for me to wrap my head
around, and that is what I find challenging, and equally rewarding.

 AH> I'm an only child & a divergent thinker.  This means I've
 AH> learned  to look inward for guidance.  I often find myself having to 
 AH> "translate" when other people say things like "Only
children are
 AH> spoiled  brats," for example.  I don't think I'm a spoiled brat.  By 
 AH> the time I was in grade five & one of my teachers said this 
 AH> in front of the whole class, I was able to say to myself 

What a defamatory thing for a teacher, let alone a person to say!
Generalizations like this would never be allowed today.

 AH> "Oh, I guess you come from a large family!"  Later on I
 AH> noticed that a lot of people seem to believe others have 
 AH> easier lives than they do.  And several weeks ago I finally 

(sic.)

 AH> managed to get a certain individual to show me that...
 AH> although she repeats the same sentence in knee-jerk 
 AH> fashion, as others do with verses memorized from the 
 AH> Bible... what she means is that she still feels resentful 
 AH> about something which happened in her home town thirty 
 AH> years ago & which has *nothing to do with me*. I can 
 AH> usually figure out what's really going on in such 
 AH> situations when I'm not under too much stress, but when I'm 
 AH> struggling just to keep my head above water I can't deal 
 AH> with it & it's not my nature to grade things unless I have 
 AH> to.  So I'd be more inclined to say "This relationship 
 AH> isn't working for me right now."

 AH> The advantage of saying the relationship isn't working for
 AH> you  right now is twofold.  First, you're acknowledging & 
 AH> accepting responsibility for the way you feel & recognizing 
 AH> that it's trying to tell you something.  Second, you don't 
 AH> have to make any irrevocable decisions at the present time. 
 AH> These people must be able to relate to you in some ways & 
 AH> vice versa, otherwise you wouldn't have been friends in the first
 AH> place!  I  see that the above individual tends to look outward where I 
 AH> would look inward, for example, but she also seems to have 
 AH> difficulty putting her feelings into words at times.  The 
 AH> latter is something I can relate to.  One way & another 
 AH> I've been feeling I'm constantly under attack from her... 
 AH> with some justification, I believe.  I don't think she's 
 AH> seeing me. OTOH, she's just begun to tell me what's really 
 AH> bugging her & I missed a chance to be supportive because I 
 AH> was upset about her inability to clue in to what I'd been 
 AH> trying to say earlier.  Perhaps we both have some changes 
 AH> to make....  :-)
 
Hmmm... I suppose I should have *something* revolutionary to say, but it
sounds like a healthy *evolution* to me. She has to grasp that her hurt has
nothing to do with you, and it *did* happen thirty years ago. You have to
somehow get across that you're not always available to fix her, when you
have your hands full of your own trials.

Realistically, how to lift the needle on a broken record can be tricky,
can't it? I have a family full of broken records, so I can relate. O-8

Maybe that teacher that inadvertently called you spoiled, needs to see some
divergent examples?  I have a good case of "Prodigal
son" going here that would turn her head 180^. 
 
 JB>  Shoot... Nobody wants to walk on egg shells, just
 JB>  because some sorry sod can't take a hint.


 AH> I'm very interested in your choice of metaphor there
 AH> because some  of our other friends have used it too.  Looking at the 
 AH> situation from the point of view of the eggshell, I'm tired 

ROTF!!! Ya, I'd never seen it from that POV!

 AH> of being stomped on!  I guess they've made some progress if
 AH> they can say "I don't like walking on eggshells" instead of 
 AH> telling me I (should) feel a certain way.  Maybe what 
 AH> they're trying to tell me is that I take offence easily, 
 AH> but they don't seem to realize I feel the same way about 
 AH> them.  I don't like having to weigh every word any more 
 AH> than they do... (sigh).
 
Sometimes you're the bug, and sometimes you're the windshield?

Maybe you hit a nerve here, that everyone complains about walking on
eggshells, because nobody wants to *be* the eggshells?

 JB>  I can be a handful too, so I don't expect everyone to
 JB>  have a halo, just an openness to their own failings.


 AH> Same here!  Your comments about egg shells & about the
 AH> importance  of what a person does following Another D*mn Learning 
 AH> Experience reminded me of an incident from my teens.  Our 
 AH> next door neighbour had hired somebody to bulldoze the area 
 AH> where he wanted to put a septic tank, and my father was fit 
 AH> to be tied because the man had taken out a surveyor's bench 
 AH> mark.  I wasn't present during the ensuing conversation.  
 AH> However, the thought strikes me that all of us screw up 
 AH> sometimes & the bulldozer operator could have reacted in 
 AH> either of two ways:

 AH> 1)  He could have asked what a surveyor's bench mark was, 
 AH> if he didn't already
 AH> know, and why it was important to my father.  He could 
 AH> have apologized for his
 AH> ignorance and/or carelessness & resolved not to make the 
 AH> same error again.  He
 AH> could have offered to make amends as best he could.  Or...

 AH> 2)  He could have pooled his own ignorance with that of 
 AH> his buddies, who would
 AH> no doubt agree with him that the old geezer who got so 
 AH> uptight over a piece of
 AH> rusty iron must be totally off his rocker, and then he 
 AH> needn't learn anything.

LOL! Instead of a type "A", "B", or whatever
personality, you've clouded the issue with a type "1" and type
"2". I've heard a synopsis that a "Dumb Newfie" is
perpetuated because if a Newfie commissions a boat to be built, the builder
will point out the faults he encountered while building it, the buyer will
insist the boat is worth the original quote, and an outsider will call the
both "Dumb Newfies." "Only in Canada, eh? ...Pity!"


 AH> I can forgive a lot when I don't have to be
 AH> "wrong" so that somebody else can be "right", and when 
 AH> other folks show me they care how I feel....  :-)

Ya, that one-upmanship is taxing.



... Those who sling mud, lose ground.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20

--- Maximus 3.01