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am I really extinct
Down in the Dirt (v122) (the Mar./Apr. 2014 Issue)




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I Pull the Srings

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the Beaten Path
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Jan. - June 2014
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The Importance Of Thread Count

Victoria Smith

    Actors “in character” have always creeped me out. Encounters with the Easter Bunny or Santa at the mall, clowns, sports mascots, and costumed characters at theme parks always felt deeply wrong, shameful, even perverted to me. As a toddler, I was suspicious of anyone baby-talking at me and, even then, made a conscious effort to appear unresponsive. One of my earliest games was repeating “You cant see me” while hiding my head, my palms suctioned to my eye sockets. That got a lot of laughs from the grown-ups, both in the demonstration and in the re-telling. My first nauseating twinge of cognitive dissonance came from watching my parents argue from the backseat of the car. I absorbed their anger and anxiety; the air in the car became oppressively heavy. I must’ve started crying or asking questions, when my Mother turned, leaned into the backseat wearing a Joker-like smile, and assured me that “adult conversations” were normal, nothing for me to worry about until I was older. In that moment, I lost a little trust in my Mom and, by extension, the Adult World. Even today, I suffocate a little when observing or participating in every-day, social falsities.
    My sensitivities are likely shaped by a touch of Aspergers Syndrome, certainly by extreme introversion. If you’re familiar with Meyers-Briggs, Im an INTP (Introverted Intuitive Thinking Perceiver) which is a rare, societally challenging type for a female. My daughter, my husband, and I have had great laughs watching ‘Survivor’ and imagining me on the island. We take turns mimicking my surprise at getting voted off after innocently making any number of social gaffes. This, unfortunately, is right on-the-mark for how the last 25 years of my professional career has gone. I’ve been voted off the islandâ sometimes blind-sided, several times. Consider this advice for career-women with Aspergers (AS):
    “Whats the one social activity that you must participate in? The Morning Greeting. When you first see a coworker, it’s very important to say, “Good morning.” Try to smile, and look directly at her for just a moment. That’s all. It’s quick, scripted, and buys you a great deal of goodwill if done on a regular basis.” - Patricia J. Robinson from ‘The Social Side of Work - Tips For Women With Aspergers’
    I find it interesting that what I had imagined to be a sincere interaction amongst peers is described as “scripted”. Maybe I’m super naive, but this advice sets me up to start my workdays with an act of duplicity. The Morning Greeting makes me feel insincere, anxious; a Stepford WannaBe. And, if we’ve all tacitly agreed its nothing more than a ritualistic bit of word vomit, what’s the big deal if I don’t play-along? I don’t talk much as it is, but when I do, I want it to be meaningful. The workplace offers us many opportunities to degrade sentiment and authenticity throughout the day; cant we be just a little real before we caffeine up and have at it?
    The automatic regurgitation of “God Bless You” when anyone in earshot sneezes is another mandatory act in Cubeland theatre. I was raised in a household where such social politesse was not only not taught, but viewed with suspicion, so I didn’t even realize God Bless You was “a thing” until I’d been out on my own for years. Being busy inside my head all the time, I barely hear people that actually stop by to talk, so I’m not naturally scanning my environment for every little bodily eruption. It feels a little stalkeresque; the whole idea that the people “working” next to me are also on some sort of permanent, intrusive vigil for my sneeze. Besides, once you’ve blessed me, am I not now obliged, not only to say “Thank you”, but to add your name to my own God Bless You dance-card? You know I am. To prove this out, I ran my own anthropological experiment. At the time, I sat in an aisle where God Bless You was expected to follow every sneeze, even sneezes in series, with Pavlovian timing. Since learning its a nice thing to do, sometimes I blessed a sneezer, sometimes not; either way it was random, not consciously doled out. One day, I decided to withhold my blessings altogether, sort of like a strike. Luckily, it was allergy season, so I continued to sneeze. Weeks later, to my delight, I was the only one who sneezed and was never, ever blessed. In the seconds that followed my sneezes, I could feel the chilly Group-Think undercurrent reinforcing my exclusion from the blessing. The disconnect to me is that even if you’re blessed in the aisle, its apparently still cool to have your character utterly, and daily, trashed by The Blessers in “secret” conversations over IM, in the bathroom, or at lunch.
    “AS girls are generally recognized as superior mimics, says Tony Attwood, a pioneering Asperger’s researcher. Those with AS hold back and observe until they learn the “rules,” then imitate their way through social situations. [This] strategy amounts to remembering and rehearsing scripts. But as Attwood points out, such playacting is not intuitive, and is therefore exhausting.” - from Psychology Today, An Aspie in the City
    The one act in which I am still, at best, an understudy is The Chat Up. At the beginning of my career in the 90s, I was encouraged to chat people up more, to ask them about their kids and their weekends, feigning interest before launching into my work requests. With very few exceptions, I feel this is akin to lying and it makes me feel phony and anxious, especially when I’m the recipient. In my head, I’m at work to play The Efficient Worker, not to pave the path to an infinite number of casual “friendships”. Its hard for me to smile, come up with something suitably bland to ask, fake interest, offer appropriate comment or follow-up, and then to remember what I came over for in the first place. Similarly, it bums me out that, when you come over to talk to me, I see you scanning around my desk for something to comment on when I know what you eventually ask about serves merely as disposable transition material to the matter at hand. Its sad to me that you don’t really want to learn about the award I won for mead making or the oil painting my friend Mark made. I’ve seen you get uncomfortable hearing about how my in-laws bored me to tears over the weekend, how I made my own ricotta, or how my older dog’s hips are failing. So, I’d rather dispense with the heart-to-heart and just get on with it. Don’t get me wrong, I do have some close friends that I met at work, but I’m talking like a dozen over 25 years and none of them were hatched into being by The Chat Up. My friends were made where I always give my most honest, soul baring, convincing performance - in the starring role at Happy Hour.
    Yes, yes, I realize that these acts should be small, easy niceties we all participate in to keep the “fabric of society” together. I just want my society’s fabric to be precious, 1000 thread-count, luxury cotton, not some crappy, omni-available, discounted polyester blend.



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