People say stupid shit to me lately and I pretend to
overlook it because each time it has been someone who means well deep down.
I had to go out to the post office a little while back to
drop off a package and an elderly man yelled at me in the parking lot, “You
getting radiation?” (I was only wearing a skinny skull cap, no pretend hair). “No,
chemotherapy” and quickly escaped into air conditioning in car. The old man is
not the person I’m talking about when I say “people say stupid shit to me.”
When I saw this man (couldn’t have been a day under 90) look over at me, I
could sense a question or comment along those lines was coming at me. It was
almost as though I could read his mind. Although no stranger has made any
comments like that to me up to that point, it did not bother me in the least. I’ve
come to expect people his age to say exactly what’s on their mind (which can be
refreshing or obnoxious) and he clearly had no malicious intent. I also found
that it did not bother me for a stranger to assume I have cancer when I look
like I have cancer. The comment that got under my skin came later when I was
retelling the uninteresting story of the elderly man just to fill a
conversation void with someone I see maybe once or twice a year. “Yeah, you’re
not just some bald-headed freak.” Bite your tongue, Mary. Tongue chewed off and
swallowed. No words. Lumped in the category of people I would never spend time
with if I was not socially obligated. I feel terrible saying that though. I
guess I’m an adult now. What’s the proper procedure for handling people who
mean well but who look at the world so differently that you? I really do try to
be open-minded and try to understand why a person looks at something very differently
than I do, but it’s so damn hard when it seems that other person is not willing
to do the same. I see so many things in varying shades of gray that it’s hard
for me not to be frustrated with people who only seem to see the world as black
or white. I won’t go to war over most issues because I’m intensely aware that I
could be wrong or I could be arguing over something that really doesn’t have a
right or wrong answer. I still don’t know much about what I want out of life
but I hope I live my life unafraid of questioning my own assumptions and never
fall into the trap of viewing everything in extremes.
I suppose I went further with that than I intended to. That
one comment taken out of the context of all the other offensive comments made
by this person may not seem like a big deal to some people. But it’s a shit
thing to say to someone going through chemotherapy and I don’t think that a
person who is bald by choice is a freak. In fact, I don’t think I really
realized before that moment how ugly and hateful that word is.
Now I’m way too tired to even figure out how I arrived where
I did or where I was going to begin with. I need to go to sleep. If I read this
tomorrow, I will cringe as though I’m rereading an awkward text I sent after
one too many drinks.
