When you're forced to hang with "that guy"

Officious, rude, condescending, judgmental, hypocritical....  These are some of the characteristics I generally try to avoid in people with whom I choose to spend time.  But we've all been forced to spend time with people we wouldn't ordinarily choose to....  We all know that experience of hanging out with a good friend when your friend has another friend there who's a pushy know-it-all or an arrogant pseudo-intellectual, or who keeps making catty remarks or thinks he's better than anyone else.  And for either professional reasons or for the sake of other relationships, we stay silent when that person says things that under other circumstances we would speak back to.  In those cases, we usually just grumble about the rude person to our close friends later and otherwise keep our mouths shut... or, alternately, and to turn what could be an oppressive experience into a humorous and enjoyable one for yourself, do what I did: While you're still hanging out with both your friend and your friend's rude friend, start sending your friend a barrage of texts with a running commentary of what you think about the rude dude so that your friend (who you know has a great sense of humor and who also, as a humorous plus for this experience, you know has his texts set to show automatically on the lock screen of his phone, which is currently out on the table) is forced to keep his iPhone face down on the table when he realizes what you're doing.  This way, while the other guy is being rude and offensive, you at least have the pleasure of seeing that while your friend listens to the other guy ranting, every time your friend's phone buzzes on the table (which is often, because you couldn't get a word in to the conversation even if you wanted to because rude dude loves nothing more than to hear himself speak, so you figure you might as well spend your time writing), your friend has to suppress the urge to laugh and every once in a while takes a peek just to see how long your most recent text is and occasionally then has to make an excuse to cover his face or turn a laugh into a cough.

This makes the experience of hanging out with an intolerably rude person much more enjoyable.  I of course don't recommend doing this if you think there's any chance your friend will be offended.  But if your friend is the kind of person who, once the two of you are alone, you can say "I'm so sorry he's your friend" to and he replies by bursting out laughing and saying, "Let me read this novel you wrote me,"  then this is probably a safe way to handle the situation to keep your blood pressure from going through the roof.

For even more satisfaction, you can ask your friend for permission to change rude dude's name and blog about him.  I'm doing that, too.

Let's call rude dude Mike.  Mike is the kind of guy who talks at lightning speed and has no interest in what other people have to say.  In fact, he talks so fast that it's impossible to understand more than 50% of what he says, but that's usually okay because it's not like he's asking questions or looking for a response, so you don't actually have to understand what he's saying anyway.  Most of what Mike talks about is other people he knows who aren't currently present.  And there's not one of them about whom he doesn't have something negative to say.  Some highlights of people Mike thought it was worthwhile to spend time criticizing:  There was the mentally slow guy at his work who Mike has proudly invented a nickname for that's spreading through the office (naming him after an athlete known for being "fat and dumb"); there was the woman who had a baby but "you wouldn't even know she was pregnant, know what I mean? I mean she's fat. She's Italian and ate all the time, right?  So fat you'd never see a baby in there;" there was the "crazy cat woman," who he said was crazy because she likes to show people photos of her cat (to which I say, not everyone is lucky enough to find their partner in life or to have close friends, and I certainly hope those people do have pets that they love like children and family members because it makes a potentially lonely life a lot richer -- I think it's a lot healthier to be a crazy cat woman than to be a crazy hermit, and I trust people who love their cat a lot easier than I trust people who make fun of people who love their cat) and because she's a Debbie Downer (how hypocritical for a guy whose conversation is dominated by complaining about and insulting people to call someone out for being a Debbie Downer); and, perhaps most infuriating, there was his mocking of Tracy.  The story as he told it goes that Tracy is a young lady who is a recent college graduate and a new hire at his work.  She works in a different department from Mike.  The office has a ping pong table, and on a day when a facility issue meant there was very little work that the office could accomplish, most people were huddled around the ping pong table as the end of the wasted day approached.  Tracy, however, stayed at her desk, despite not having much if anything to do, because she's the most junior person in her department and the entire rest of her department was still at their desks -- so she thought it would be inappropriate to go play.  Mike tried to convince her to go play with them, and she repeated that she wasn't going to leave her desk when her department was still there.  "Whatever, you're so naive and young, Tracy.  It's okay.  Whatever.  She's so young and naive.  It's cute," he said dismissively, relaying the incident.  And that made my blood boil.  How incredibly condescending and patronizing to label someone "naive and young" and "cute" for having a strong work ethic.  He would never call a man "cute" for having a strong drive to work and a strong sense of responsibility.  I don't know about his office, but in most offices and careers I'd like to think it's attitudes like Tracy's that go far and get rewarded.  I think Tracy is going to be a lot more successful than Mike.

Mike's behavior outside of the bar didn't win me over either.  When he crossed against a walk sign, forcing a bike with a green light to slow, I stayed behind on the sidewalk, electing not to risk getting hit by a bike that night.  Of course, Mike (who had to wait at the island in the center of the intersection anyway since he didn't feel like battling the cars to cross the rest of the way) turned around and waved me forward, saying, "Come on, are you with us? Don't want to get left behind, right?"  I let out a sigh and calmly told him, "Didn't have a walk sign, didn't want to get run over," but he had of course already turned around and wasn't listening.  Later, as I elected not to shove my way through a crowd of people just to stay right on the heels of Mike and my friend, Mike again waved me on with a "Are you with us?  Let's go, right?  Don't get lost.  Stay with us."  (I should note that we were in no rush whatsoever, nor was I walking slowly.) That one made me stop and shake my head and sigh, and aside from "have a good night," I didn't speak to Mike again.  But my friend's phone lit up like a firecracker after that.

 

Variety makes the world go round.  I try to look at people like Mike as opportunities to spend time with characters I wouldn't otherwise.  Mike can now wind up in a story of mine.  I know people act differently around different people, and different people react differently to aspects of someone's personality.   There are three assistants I love using when I stage manage, and one of my frequent bosses can't stand two of them personally, finding them to be arrogant, prone to overstepping boundaries, and possessing an unflattering overabundance of confidence.  I have spent much more time with them than he has and see them as strong, capable, loyal, confident women.  Perhaps Mike is like that.  Perhaps if I spent more time with Mike I'd see a different side of him.  But I really, truly, very much hope I'll never spend enough time with Mike to find out.

When authority becomes power abuse

For some reason, I assume through catalog orders or bills throughout the years, my parents get a few random magazines addressed to me that I never subscribed to.  These have included Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and currently, Cosmopolitan.  My mom puts them in my room, and when I visit, I tear out the smelly perfume strips to sniff and throw away the rest because I have to admit Cosmo isn't really my kind of reading material.  But in the last issue I flipped through while smelling lovely flowery fragrances, there was an article that caught my eye about sex abuse in the gymnastics world.  I did gymnastics when I was a kid for a few years before I chose ballet over it, and I have on-and-off stayed up to date with its competitive world -- so I was surprised to find that the article mentioned an exposé I'd never heard of a few years ago by my home-town paper, the Indianapolis Star, about all the sex abuse occurring in the sport.  Male coaches, trainers, physical therapists and the like were taking advantage of their absolute power (made so absolute by a highly competitive and dangerous discipline where parents tend to push their kids, and those kids are taught that the coach always knows best because winning is what's most important) to molest the young girls, who often were highly isolated, spending hours in the gym after school and rarely having close friends outside of their sport.  I was stunned to read about how prolific the abuse was and how infrequently the young gymnasts were even aware they were being abused or mentioned the odd "training techniques" or "physical therapy treatments" to their parents.

I thought back to my own gymnastics experience, which, unlike in ballet where I had women instructors until high school, was made up entirely of male coaches.  There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about any of those coaches' behaviors.  The only betrayal of trust any of them committed was a substitute coach one day when I was six or seven telling me he'd give me an assist on an element I told him I needed assistance on, and he didn't, resulting in me nearly landing on my head, because, he told me, "I knew you had it."  I refused ever to do any element with him on which I needed spotting again.  But though it was a potentially deadly mistake on his part, I never mentioned it to an adult as being wrong.  That was just how gymnastics was, which was not a small part of why I chose ballet over it.  Still, had an adult in any other job told another adult at work that he would do something and then purposely didn't because he was lying all along, he'd be in trouble.  It's just wrong.  But not when done to a kid.  And kids know that. Adults have the authority to do what they want.

Thinking about my squeaky clean gymnastics experience, however, made me think about another adult teacher who was both inappropriate (with the "cool girls," of which I was certainly not one) and a bully (to me).  Let's call him Mr. West.  Mr. West was the only teacher I've ever had whom I would call deliberately cruel.  He was the subject of a rather vicious indictment tangent in a post about bullying that I never posted.  But I figured it's time for him to get his moment on this page now.  Because there might be other Mr. Wests out there, and I really hope that if there are, they get held to the same standard any child bully would.  Because being an adult doesn't make it okay.  Being an adult makes it worse.

 

Mr. West was my fifth grade gym teacher.  I think he was in his mid 20s when he was my teacher.  And he flirted with all the popular girls (we're talking about ten-year-olds).  Gym class would start late after we changed into our uniforms because he'd be sitting on the benches flirting with them and teasing them.  He was a swimmer and shaved his legs, and he'd stretch them out and show his smooth legs to his gaggle of ten-year-old favorites, running his hands down his legs and then letting the girls run their hands down his legs too as they giggled and teased him for shaving.  Give you the creeps reading this?  Yeah, me too.  He also bullied the nerdy kids, assuming we couldn't be athletic because we were academic.  He was the reason that when we did timed sprints to place us in competitive heats for field day, I had to go in a slower heat than the one I tested into because he assumed it was a mistake (On field day, I outran the rest of my heat by about a second).  He always singled the "nerds" out in gym class, making the distinction clear between us and the rest of the kids, so if there was any chance that the cool kids might have passed us the ball, that was quickly squashed by his automatically grouping us like we were athletic dunces.  His mother was a ballet teacher and had a small ballet ensemble, and when they came to perform at our school, he used his daily flirt time with the popular girls by making fun of dancers.  He put his hands up in the classic "mocking ballerinas" pose and twirled and said, "Can you believe my mom thinks they're actually athletes?!" while cracking up at his antics mocking them.  "She says it takes strength to do what they do.  She says it's as hard as any sport!" he exclaimed, in stitches now at how funny that thought was and how silly ballerinas are. 

 

Mr. West didn't limit his mocking to groups of students or disciplines, either.  Despite being extremely athletic (aside from ballet, gymnastics, ice skating, roller blading, and regular bike rides, I was also the girl who played soccer with my mom on the sidelines during my brother's practices and used my dad's Huskies basketball with our hoop regularly), I hated gym class at school, especially in the fifth grade.  I never got to do anything, and it was essentially forty minutes of teacher-sanctioned-and-encouraged bullying.  So I got nervous changing into my uniform before gym every day and one day in the middle of the school year simply forgot my locker combination.  It went up in mid air.  I racked my brain trying to remember the combination I'd been using twice a day since the school year started, but I couldn't come up with it.  Eventually I had to go tell Mr. West.  I'd like to think that most teachers would respond by quietly going to the office to look it up without making a big deal about it.  Not Mr. West.  No, Mr. West had to exclaim loudly in front of everyone with a a laugh, "You forgot your locker combination?!  How does that happen?!  How does someone do that?!  Haven't you been putting it in every day?  You must know it," making me repeat that I couldn't remember it.  By now everyone was looking, encouraged to smile and laugh by his own laughing at me.  He made a few more laughing exclamations of disbelief to ensure my face was beet red before making a show of going to the office to look it up.

 

That school encouraged a bullying culture in general, especially against the "nerdy" kids, and my brother and I left at the end of that year, but there was no individual teacher I thought was intentionally worse than Mr. West.  He was a disgrace to the teaching profession and to the authority and leadership of adults.  He's now teaching Advanced English at a respected high school.  Makes sense for a teacher who bullies the academically-focused kids, right? 

 

Talking with my mom about Mr. West after I read the Cosmo article a couple weeks ago, I realized I had never mentioned the whole flirting/leg-caressing thing to her.  My mom was of course appalled, and I suspect that if I'd told her about Mr. West at the time, he might now be washing cars or delivering pizzas someplace.

It's a tricky line to walk teaching a child the discipline and respect they need to learn (of which I have seen far too little in my work in NYC public schools) while also teaching them to respect that queasy, questioning feeling they get in the pit of their stomach when they feel something isn't right -- even if that something is an adult they've been taught to respect.  I was in a ballet class last week where there was a young, adult woman who had no business being in that class.  She didn't know proper ballet etiquette, couldn't remember the combinations, and was not only putting herself at risk for injury but also getting in the way of others.  The teacher came down quite hard on her in class in front of the other students, and the young woman clearly thought it was undeserved, that she had a right to be there, and that it was the teacher who was out of line -- though the teacher was totally in the right.   Several months ago I was in a different ballet class where a different teacher was berating an adult woman, giving no attention or corrections to any other student.  The corrections he gave to the young woman were in no way constructive -- they were emotionally abusive and designed to make her feel small.  She took them like it was just par for the course, though he was completely and totally out of line and inappropriate.  How can we teach children to distinguish correct use of authority from abusive use of authority when even adults have trouble with it sometimes?  I know there is no simple solution to this problem -- but hopefully there is, with a lot of care, a right one.

 

Lost and found

What happens when I try to do nice things like vacuum my parents' house when I'm home there but in the process break the vacuum so my dad has to add it to his worklist and he gets to it once I'm back in NYC...:

The Curious Case of the Alien Lake Mystery, part two

Part 1: http://www.behindtheseen.me/2017/07/the-curious-case-of-alien-lake-mystery.html


I’ve been back to the beach of the glowing orb several times since that curious incident, and I’d almost decided that whatever strangeness had infected the beach had disappeared... until my most recent visit.  One morning as my parents and I walked along the beach boardwalk, we noticed what looked like a wet spot in the middle of dry sand, almost like an oasis, far enough in that the tide never came close to it.  Curious, we walked over to the spot and saw there was water bubbling up, like a tiny natural fountain or a small geyser shooting up to create a tiny pond.  Where was the water coming from?  Perhaps there was an underground stream?  But wouldn't that simply create a small inlet from the nearby lake?  So what was going on under the sand?  More curious than ever, I kicked sand into the bubbling hole... and all of a sudden not only did the bubbling water stop but in a matter of seconds the water was sucked back underground and the entire hole was now just a spot of slightly moist sand.  I suddenly felt like I'd destroyed something in the sand without even understanding what it was.  I looked at the drying sand with some concern.  I looked at my parents, who seemed equally amazed.  It was like it had never happened.  We silently stood over the now normal-looking sand, stunned, wondering what we had just seen.

As we debated the possibilities, suddenly my mom said, "Wait -- do you hear that?"  We stopped talking, and sure enough, there was a faint gurgling sound coming from under the sand... and then a belching sound... and then the water abruptly burst out again and started bubbling.  It was as if whatever was under there had just been reborn....

My parents and I backed away from the eerie site.  Discussing it, we came up with no good explanation for the disappearing/ reappearing water oasis in the middle of a sandy beach next to a huge lake. 

The next day on our beach walk, we were sure the spot would have disappeared.  Yet over the next week, we visited the hole numerous times, and it was always there, as we watched it spontaneously start to gurgle and fill up, then just as quickly empty and dry out.  The sequence never stopped; the hole would always bubble for a couple minutes, then stop and empty out within seconds, then stay silent for a couple minutes... and then bubble up again.  It was fascinating to watch... but also bizarre and a bit disturbing. 

As we checked the beach hole each day, things got a bit more unsettling.  One morning while taking a walk, I noticed that there were seagull feathers scattered around the water hole and on a nearby giant stick.  Imagining the worst for the seagull whose feathers I was looking at, I plunged the stick down into the hole to see what I could feel.  When the hole was not bubbling full of water, the sand felt the same as moist sand anywhere -- if you pushed a stick into it, the stick wouldn't go too far down without significant force.  But as soon as the bubbling started, there seemed to be a distinct sucking force, and the stick plunged four or five inches down before hitting a bottom.  Experimenting, we dropped numerous rocks in -- the biggest we could find -- and they were all sucked down, disappearing completely without leaving a trace.  There was no little mound building in the sand -- no evidence at all that there were numerous rocks buried under the surface.   When we tried to dig them out again during the dry minutes... we couldn't find them.  And we never found any clues to the whereabouts of the seagull who had once been attached to all those feathers.

Over the course of the week, several people saw us watching the water spout hole and throwing in rocks.  Almost everyone was fascinated by the strange sight, and no one offered any explanation.  In fact, one young woman became more fascinated than we were, and as we walked away, we could see her taking videos on her iPhone for as long as she was still within view -- so long, in fact, that her boyfriend wandered off and left her to herself.  She didn't seem to mind (or notice).  She had fallen down the rabbit hole and was wrapped up in the mystery of the beach alien creature beneath the sand....

 What exactly is under that gurgling pond?  Is there a river?  Is there a monster?  Is there a pile of seagulls?  Is there a passage to the center of the earth?  Is there a glowing orb?  Is there an alien from said glowing orb who breathes a mixture of air, sand, and water?  One thing is certain: Neither we nor any of the many other beach people who were entranced by the sight of the endlessly appearing and disappearing spring in the sand ventured hands, feet, or (in the case of any more seagulls) feathers anywhere near that eerie mystery hole.

So here's some video of the gurgling, belching beach monster.  Maybe next time I visit that beach I'll take my shovel to dig deeper into both the very strange beach hole and this horror/ alien/ mystery story.  After all, not very distant from this Great Lakes beach, there is a small inland lake supposedly inhabited by a sea monster where decades-old stories tell of children mysteriously disappearing, never to be seen again....  Perhaps the monster relocated?

Video of the complete cycle:

The beach monster sucking up an offering of rocks:

The Curious Case of the Alien Lake Mystery.... chapter one

From my journal archives.  Every detail of this is completely true... 

 

~~~

 

Huddle around the campfire and shine your flashlight, because this one might get a bit creepy....

 

There's a scene in The Sixth Sense where [trailer-level spoiler alert] after the kid tells his mom that he sees ghosts (which she of course refuses to believe), she looks at an old photo of him and sees a white misty thing behind him in the photo.  Stunned and perplexed, she proceeds to look at more photos and realizes that every photo of her son has a white misty thing around him that she's somehow missed until this moment.

 

I felt a bit like that today when, while organizing my photos in iPhoto into albums, I came across one that had something I'd never noticed....  I stared at it for a few beats trying to decide if I was seeing it incorrectly and realized there was something there that definitely doesn't make any sense.  It's a photo of a sunset on a beach, facing west.  The sun is clearly visible above the horizon.  But also clearly visible is a bright green glowing globe sitting right on the horizon.  My first reaction was, "Oh, it's the moon in an optical illusion."  But if a moon, it's nearly a full moon, and a full moon always rises in the east.  It's physically impossible for a full moon to rise right under a setting sun in the west.

Here is the photo (zoomed in and cropped and with sun and globe circled and labeled, but otherwise unedited):

I looked at the other photos I'd taken within the same few minutes.  The next photo also had a green globe... except the globe was higher in the sky and appeared further south from where it had been in the first photo.  I of course could tell the order in which I'd taken the photos, but iPhoto wasn't displaying their time stamps, and every time I tried to get the info for them to determine exactly how close together they were taken, iPhoto crashed.  When I finally was able to see the photo information long enough to realize the first two photos were taken a mere 24 seconds apart -- meaning the globe had moved very quickly both up and to the south -- I e-mailed the photos to my parents. 

(24 seconds after 1st photo. Zoomed in, cropped, and labeled -- otherwise unedited.  Difference in coloring and light from first photo is due to different camera settings)

And then about ten minutes later, I got a phone call from my dad.

 

"I got your e-mail about the glowing globe, and I read it," he told me.  "But then it disappeared.  And it's really weird.  It's not in my inbox anymore.  So I looked in my trash.  Not only is it not in my trash, but my trash is completely empty.  I never emptied it."

 

So, convinced I had stumbled my way into a horror film, I tried to resend him the photos.  Meanwhile, I had discovered that another photo from that evening -- taken exactly 24 seconds after the second photo that showed the globe -- also had the globe... but this time it appeared on the north side of the sun:

 I e-mailed that photo to my dad, too, and after a while he called me back.

 

"I'm completely flummoxed," he said.  "It can't be the moon.  It doesn't look like any plane I've ever seen.  It moves too much to be some sort of weird reflection.  It's not a sun spot on your camera.  You can see the clouds in front of it.  I have no idea."

 

"And that third photo!  It went all the way to the right of the sun!" I exclaimed.

 

"What third photo?" he asked.

 

"The third photo.  The most recent one I sent you.  Isn't that why you called?"

 

"I never got a third.  I got the original two that you resent.  But that was it.  I'll check now."

 

I waited while he checked his e-mail, and then I heard him inhale sharply.

 

"Well, this is really crazy.  Not only is your third e-mail not here, but the second one has disappeared, too.  I don't have any of these anymore.  Wait, let me check something....  The response I sent you about it isn't even in my sent folder."

 

"Wait, what response?" I asked.  "I never got an e-mail response from you."

 

"..... Yeah... I e-mailed you back in response to the one you resent."

 

"Nuh-unh.  I don't have anything from you about this."

 

Silence.

 

And then he swore.

 

"My screen just turned black!..... Jessica, my computer just shut off!  WHAT DID YOU SEND ME?!"

 

We laughed, but it was kind of the way you laugh at a horror film.... Like if you don't laugh, you might just scream in terror instead.....

 

And then as I tried to resend him the second e-mail that had disappeared, along with the third photo.... my e-mail app on my phone crashed.

 

When his computer rebooted... he had one e-mail in his inbox. [I realize as I'm re-reading this now that this is where it should say that that one e-mail was from a ghost or something with a warning, but the story's not that good.  He never told me what the one e-mail was, so I assume it was insignificant......or was it....??] 

 

So we decided the globe is the mothership from Independence Day.  Seems like that's as logical a conclusion as any.

 

The three photos, without any zooming, cropping, or editing of any kind:

8:46:13 PM

8:46:37 PM

8:47:01 PM

In the time since then, I've not seen any more glowing globes.... but last week, I did encounter another strange, unexplained oddity on the same beach.... stay tuned for chapter two in the Curious Case of the Alien Lake Mystery.

Horror hotel addendum

As an addendum to my last blog post.... If, after a week on a lovely vacation, you don't heed the advice in Observation #3 of that post and instead on the way back stop at the same seedy hotel with the dead-body smell and possible bullet hole (because you made prior reservations for a busy holiday weekend and have no place else to stay and you originally thought a name brand hotel would be fine), don't be surprised if upon check-in you find this in your shower:

Also don't be surprised if you stand on the couch to kill a bug on the wall and upon getting it in the paper towel you realize it is instead a tiny pebble that appears to be growing a single long golden hair.

And of course it will be dark because you discover when you get back to the room after dinner that most of the lights don't work.

The upside to all this is that the hotel is so horrifying you can't sleep as you imagine black slime creeping out of the shower and the wall growing hair, and so instead you find yourself writing a horror short story at 1:30 am.  I've been wanting to write a horror short story for a while now but never actually have before....  I even came up with the tag line for the movie poster.  So... Thanks, nightmare hotel?

So then, Observation/ Rule #3B: If you don't follow the advice in Observation #3, use your extra awake time in the dark wisely.  And look out for black mold slime.