As I suspected

While RM's behavior has yet to start bugging me, it's creeping back into noteworthy territory. Like being effusively friendly the other morning. He's still trying too hard. Then, today, he came in, changed, came downstairs.

RM: Look at that! I hadn't even seen your outfit!
A.: My outfit?
RM, pointing to his shirt: I just threw this on, didn't even notice you were wearing the same color.

I'm wearing a black t-shirt. He was wearing a black t-shirt. There's a connection if I ever heard of one.

And it's bringing out the bad in me (not the worst, yet). It's hard for me to convey how anathema it is to my culture, to everything about the way I was raised, it is for me to not offer food to other people. It's second nature. It's also genuine-- I've been in situations where I've offered someone food-- for example, a granola bar to a coworker who hadn't eaten all day, when we were running to a meeting--and they've not taken it out of not so much politeness but genuine concern not to eat "my" food, but that's not the way it works. When I offer you something, it means I want you to take it. I don't see it as mine, and I always see food as something that's meant to be shared. Well, yesterday, I made moussaka. When I came downstairs to take it out of the oven, RM was eating one of his frozen meals. I wanted to offer him some, but I didn't, partly because I didn't want to imply/betray that I didn't acknowledge the frozen meal, but also because I didn't want to engage in a gesture that he would take as one of friendship. If it had been one or the other factor, I probably would have just offered him some, but amid both, I did not. I did offer him wine, since I'd opened a bottle to make the moussaka. And today I offered him flatbread--fresh out of the oven, too--because he came in and said his dinner was an apple. But then he did exactly what I didn't want him to do, i.e. make a big deal out of it. Just have a piece of flatbread, or two, and move on with your life. No, it's not impressive-- you mix flour and water, set aside, and pour in a baking dish over rosemary. No-brainer if there ever was one.

And that's really it-- I don't like to make a big deal out of anything I do-- it's other people's antics that are my fodder. I generally shy away from introspection, especially when it's out loud.

For example, yesterday, after a friend of mine left:

RM: Did I hear you speaking Spanish?
A.: You did.
RM: You were good!
A.: Do you speak Spanish?
RM: Not really. But you sounded good.
A.: Shrug.

And all things being equal, he's not doing anything wrong; someone else might appreciate what he was saying. I don't know that I didn't appreciate it, but I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

So the other thing is, he's saying my name more. Maybe because he's heard that statistic about how women overwhelmingly like hearing their name. True enough, he's not saying mine correctly, so it just grates. I suppose I could correct him, but I just noticed it-- because he didn't used to say my name as much or at all.

It's funny because I just had this conversation with my cuberhood neighbor at work. Someone had apparently walked by and said, "Hi, A." (but it was the wrong A.), but I didn't notice.

CN: Does it bother you when people get your name wrong?
A.: It used to bother me a lot, but now I hardly notice, at work anyway. It bothers me when people who should know better do it.
CN: When did it stop bothering you?
A.: When I lived in Wales after college. Brits are systematically bad at names, and even my close friends there got my name wrong, over and over again. It's like they didn't hear the difference. I'd correct people three times and then give up. A friend of mine there, who was Turkish, had the loveliest name: Isminur. Three syllables, hardly a tongue-twister; but she was told that she'd better come up with a nickname, so as not to confuse people. It was unbelievable.

I don't understand why people repeatedly get my name wrong, but they do, chronically. I've gotten good, over the years, at not noticing when it's people I hardly know, but considering that my roommate thinks of me as a sister, you'd think he'd get my name right.

Yes, he still tries. It's one of those things where he knows it academically, but it doesn't translate into reality. I'm not immune to this phenomenon of understanding something in theory, yet not being able to apply it to my own life-- portion control, for example. For him, it's introversion-- he understands that it exists, and he could describe it on paper, but it's beyond him to comprehend what it actually means in reality. He's trying, and that's probably how he ends up with the manic-sounding fakeness that came across the other day. I'm starting to wonder whether extroversion is just extreme self-centeredness, the channeling of yourself through other people. If he's so energized by other people, why does he ask questions to which he doesn't care about the answers? Why not ask about something interesting? When I do answer--say, venture a "day was fine; had a meeting," he tunes out at the second part. Also, a while ago he made a point of showing me the desktop of his laptop; it was a photo of himself, looking alpha-male, on a boat. He said that was when he was happiest. You'd think that someone with a family would maybe have his family on his desktop, rather than himself? It wouldn't occur to me to have a picture of myself on my laptop (unless it was a group picture). Currently, it's Bartholomew Island (Galapagos) that adorns my desktop.

Roommate's post-conversation antics haven't annoyed me--yet. But I do find them noteworthy, and I have a feeling I'll have more to blog about shortly (I'll be pleasantly surprised if I don't), so I figured I should set the scene.