OK. That's Your Problem, Right There

I'm not sure how long ago I wrote this, but I make reference to having a preschooler in the house. My youngest is going to be 13 on her next birthday, though, so it's been a while.

I'm at least reaching the age at which no one expects me to suddenly change my mind and, say, become a 3 pack a day smoker. That's nice. When I say that I don't drink or otherwise indulge, there's usually enough 12-steppers around me to say, "Me either!" and just accept it as a matter of course. When we were all teenagers or twenty-somethings, the responses were often quite different.

I like to think that my cluelessness factor has diminished. I'm sure it has, by infinitisimal degrees.

You'd think that, as a very solitary and introspective person, I would have loved being single. I didn't. I am not in any way suited to a life of dating. If my husband keels over tomorrow, I won't be as truly pathologically clueless as I was as a teenager, but it still wouldn't be pretty.

Or maybe my form of tunnel vision is a blessing.

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I've spent a good portion of my life being told that I think differently than most people. I didn't believe it. Although I try not to, I make the same mistake most people do. I base my suppositions about other people and their behavior on the way I behave. Surely, I thought, most, or at least many, people think the way I do. Psychologically speaking, this is called "projection." It means projecting our thoughts and feelings onto others.

I still believe that many people think the way I do. I'm just starting to come to terms with the fact that I won't meet these people during my natural lifetime.

I was discussing the T.V. show "Blue's Clues" with a friend, who also has pre-schoolers in her house. For the uninitiated, "Blue's Clues" has one live action actor. The rest of the show, virtually everything and everyone he interacts with, is animated.

We were both in agreement that he probably spends most of his time in front of a "green screen," a wall that allows the animators to isolate his image from the background he was filmed on, and place his image on the animated background. We were not in agreement about how this affected him. "This guy must do some heavy duty drugs," my friend said. As a person who has never even experimented with drugs, legal or otherwise, I am tired of hearing this about entertainers who gear work toward children – Mister Rogers, Walt Disney, even Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.

"What makes you say that? Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't think these things?" I demanded.

Her response was a resounding, "Yes!" "Think about it," she went on. "He spends all day in a bare room, talking to tennis balls on the end of broomsticks, so his eyes will be going the right direction."

"Yeah? So?" I wanted to know.

"That wouldn't creep you out? You wouldn't go crazy, having to do that every day, and be perky?" she wanted to know.

"No."

"OK," she said, "that's your problem, right there."

And here I thought it was her problem.

For the record, I was also told by a freely experimental friend, when we were both about seventeen, "You know why you don't take drugs? It's because you think that way anyway." Since this friend was effusive about the mind expanding, knowledge gathering "benefits" of drug use, the speaker meant it to be a compliment, and I took it as such.

Even as a teenager, I was simply never interested in drug experimentation. I felt no need to see what the big deal was, see what everyone else found so appealing, or try it just to say I'd tried it. I feel the same way about alcohol. It's a depressant – like we all need THAT - it makes you act ways you normally wouldn't, and overindulgence will make you sick and perhaps cause memory loss. Oh, and it's expensive and calorie laden. If that didn't make up my mind, the fact that it was illegal for someone of my age to drink it would have. Smoking? Expensive, smelly and deadly. And, have you ever watched an addict of any kind be cut off, even temporarily? "I'm sorry, sir, there's no smoking on this flight." They're miserable! I don't want to hear how relaxed they feel when they have their fix. I've seen how they feel when they don't.

I am not particularly proud of the fact that I've never tried these things, because it's taken no willpower at all. Zero. It's like my eye color, something I was born with. An alcoholic friend of mine used to tell me, "You must be the strongest person I know. You don't need any help to get through the day." I tried to explain, "It's not like I'm thinking, 'Gee, I'd love a beer' and denying myself one. I just don't want it," but he couldn't relate.

I have a friend who is convinced that if he keeps offering me booze, I'll eventually drink it, maybe just to shut him up. We look like a stale song and dance routine. One day I decided to shake him up. He'd offered me a can of beer. I exclaimed, "DAVE! You have been an instrument of enlightenment! That's what's been missing from my empty, meaningless existence! Beer! Thank you for saving me!" He stared at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look. His best friend, sitting next to him said, with beautiful comic timing, "So that would be sarcasm, then?"

I also discovered that in my perception of sexual matters, I'm usually on a different page than anyone else. This, frankly, is the same naivete that so often does me in.

When I was thirteen, the carnival came to town, like it did every year. My sister was 16, had a car, and we were old enough to go on our own, so we went.

We had very little "discretionary income" in the family I grew up in, so we didn't have a lot to spend on rides, and even less on games. I soon discovered that it didn't matter. Most of the carnival workers started giving us extra time on the rides, then extra rides, and finally we could just walk up, say "Hi," and get a free ride. A couple of the guys at the games started doing the same thing, letting us throw the darts for free. "It's a slow night," they'd tell us. "You're keeping us from getting bored. Plus, if you look like you're having fun, more people might stop." Aside from being frightfully naïve, I'm very literal, so I took it all at face value.

By the time we left, we were on a first name basis with several of the "carnies," and we'd been invited back "anytime," money or no money.

This was great! The next night, I brought one of my best friends. We had a ball. The two of us came back the next day, as several of the guys made it clear that they wanted us to.

The third night, I was standing in line for a ride I'd been on probably a dozen times already. The operator, while he made conversation, asked, "How old are you?"

I replied, "Thirteen."

He looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach. When we got off the ride, he wouldn't look at me. Suddenly, nobody seemed able to give free rides or free games. There were mumbled excuses that they were too busy, or that the boss, whoever that was, would get mad. They didn't look any busier to me, but nobody "had time" to make conversation, even when there was nobody in their line. Nobody even wanted to make eye contact. I left puzzled and hurt.

When I got home I asked my sister what she thought the problem was. She looked at me like I had the I.Q. of a carrot, a look she used on me often, and said, "Have you ever heard the term 'jailbait?'" I either hadn't or hadn't made the connection, because I remember her explaining to me, "It means they'll go to jail if they have sex with you."

I was absolutely appalled. "They didn't want to have sex with me!" I was already a veteran of schoolgirl crushes, and had had my first boyfriend, my best friend's brother, from whom I received my first experience hand holding, and my first kiss, but the idea of sex was absolutely alien. And with adults? How gross! What was she thinking?

She continued The Look. "Why do you think you got all those free rides?"

"Because they like me!"

"And why do you think they like you?"

"Because I'm nice!"

We continued this circular discussion until we both went away in a huff, each convinced that the other was delusional.

I was quite literally well into adulthood before I conceded that she'd been right.

I would watch movies or T.V., or read books, and wonder how in the world the characters could figure out the unspoken sexual codes and messages. What if, "Would you like to come in for a drink?" really meant come in for a drink? When did "You look lovely" change from a compliment to an invitation? Most importantly, how did everyone seem to know? I decided it was because they were characters. They did, said and thought whatever the writers decided. The writer knew when people were pursuing a relationship, so the characters did too.

I wasn't much better in real life. Once, in my sophomore year of high school, I was at a restaurant with a group of friends. Two of them were dating, and they were "playing footsies" under the table. Mid-way through the meal, I felt a foot sliding up and down my leg. I was wearing a dress at the time. So was the girlfriend at the table, who was sitting next to me. I assumed her boyfriend had the wrong leg. "Frank, that's me, not Donna," I said.

"What?"

"That leg. You've got mine, not Donna's."

"No, he doesn't," Donna said.

"Yes, he does!"

Now Donna was amused. "No, he doesn't."

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Donna couldn't mistake my leg for Frank's, not with me in a dress. I ducked down and looked under the table to find who owned the phantom foot still caressing me. It belonged to the guy across the table. I looked up at him in wide eyed astonishment. He grinned, clearly enjoying himself.

I had no idea what to do. Was I supposed to rub back? Slap him? What did he want, anyway? He was a friend, but not a close enough friend that I could say, "What exactly are you doing?" Everyone else at the table now seemed clear on what was happening. Why was I the only one lost, when I had to decide? I was miserable.

I chose to stare down at my plate with complete concentration. In a few minutes, the foot stopped rubbing. He said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him, for the rest of the night, even after I stopped staring at my food. I thought he was angry at me, but I didn't know why or what to do about it.

Poor guy, he was fairly distant for a while after that, confusing me even more. Did he like me, or not? And, how much? Eventually, we started talking to one another fairly comfortably again, but he never repeated the mistake of touching me.

Years later – and I mean, YEARS later; I was probably already married - I decided that it had been "a pass," and he felt incredibly rejected – and publicly embarrassed – by my reaction. I had no idea at the time.

I got used to kissing hello and good-bye rather casually, and only rarely romantically. It was hard for me to figure that out, too. Once, a male friend, (who'd shown a bit of romantic interest in the past,) ended up in the classic movie situation of being over, almost laying on, me while I was lying on my back. He said nothing, I said nothing; he just sort of paused for a very long time. I thought very seriously about kissing him, but I figured either he'd be offended that I was so presumptuous, or I'd do something really awful like kiss his nose, or I'd have such terrible smelling breath that he'd be grossed out, or some other unimaginable horror, so I did nothing. He probably thought the same thing the kid with the restless foot thought – "Geez, she either hates me or she's really dense."

Really dense. Sorry, guys.

I didn't date until after I'd graduated from high school. Don't be amazed that I started late. Be amazed that I ever got the message. My date and I worked together, and he'd say vague, cryptic (to me) things like, "Food?" or "What do you like to eat?" It took weeks to figure out that he was asking me on a date.

I married him. The proposal is an entirely separate story. The point here is that even though we dated for two years after I figured out that he wanted a date, I've only dated one person, so I'm still kind of clueless as to how it all works. For the sake of everyone involved, I don't ever want to be single again. I don't "get it."