And now for my ramble

I have a sense of when cell phones went mainstream in the U.S., because when I left for Wales, they were still rare, and when I returned, six months later, they were everywhere. It took me another six months to get one, and only then I did it because it would cost less than getting a home phone, which my roommate at the time didn't want to share. It didn't take me long, once I stepped over to the other side, to love having a cell phone--it made things so much easier. Nonetheless, something bothered me--still does--about walker-and-talkers, as well as some non-walker-but-talkers, and it's the usurpation of public space.


You can walk and talk and be fine, and you can also have a quite conversation on the train or in the store. There's nothing about talking on your phone in public that's inherently offensive. It's when you forget that you're in a public space and start screaming on your phone, or ignoring the people you're actually with, or neglecting to pay attention to where you're going, because you've mistaken your situation as a private space.

Private space is where you can go if you wish to have your head up your own @$$. If you're not in a private space, you're in a public space, and you have an obligation to pay attention to what's going on around you. You needn't be under the influence of an electronic device to neglect this obligation; you need only forget yourself and proceed as if there's no one else around you. For example, you can back up from a water fountain on a crowded part of the National Mall (which, by the way, is a bike trail), not bothering to look around, because in your world, it's not like you share that Mall with anyone else. Why people seem to think that the world is their living room is irrelevant; it's that too many of us sometimes (and some of us always) do.

There is such a thing as non-public space, where you're allowed to ignore everyone else; that's a luxury for many people in the world, but it's a reality for many others. A woman needs a room of her own. One's home is where one should be able to turn off the rest of the world, especially once she's made it clear to her roommate that that's what she wishes to do. That's not an unreasonable wish to express; expressing it doesn't make one 'not nice.'

Over dinner a couple of weeks ago, a friend told me about his daughters, the younger of whom has taken to expertly manipulating the older by appealing to her eagerness to please. You're a kind girl, you'll give me that toy. I told him he'd better fix that before there's more at stake than sisters and toys. "But, but..." he said. No, I said. Seriously. It's not cool.

He saw where I was coming from, that I wasn't just being cynical, but said that he wished we lived in a world where his daughter could be the kind girl without people taking advantage of her kind nature. I do too, but that's not the world we live in, and there's a lot of manipulation to be had against people who fall into that role.

Which brings us back to a room of one's own: a big reason that I didn't snap during my six-month roommate nightmare was that I held my own. I refused to buy into the paradigm that RM was trying to sell me: we're going to be best friends, and if you don't want that, it's because you're an unkind jerk who can't let human emotion into your life. A nice girl would drop what she was doing and pay attention to me whenever I demanded it. Hell, my father practically agreed with him: "He made the mistake of assuming you were human," he told me.

I had the confidence, sense, what have you, to say, "in that case, I'm not a nice girl. I don't care what you call me, but your needs are not more important than mine, and I'm not going to buy into this logic you're laying down. You can cry, but that doesn't mean I have to feel bad about it. I don't need to be a nice girl, and I'm not buying the rules you're trying to impose on our relationship, which is one of business.

***
So, two of my friends have the sisters-in-law from hell. It would be enough to push me to take sides in the mommy wars--neither of them works--but then, neither does one of these friends, and she certainly doesn't have time to go around yelling at people for buying non-whole-wheat pasta.

You know me--I'm all about the whole wheat pasta, and organics, and sustainable seafood, and so on. Yet, at a wedding reception just over a week ago, when a friend asked me why I didn't opt for the salmon--I replied it was Atlantic, thus unsustainable, and he and his wife asked for details--I didn't jump on the opportunity to lecture them until they insisted that they wanted more information. I would never, ever, ever go to someone's house (except my parents') and lecture them on the food they serve. I would never refuse my proverbial mother-in-law's salad on account of conventional greens. I would never lecture someone who was cooking for the whole family about what kind of pasta she should be using.

It reminds me of the stolen-shoes episode of "Sex and the City"--people will use their kids as a vehicle for displaying status (and sanctimony). So "acceptable" to lecture people when it's in the name of one's kids' health and happiness. But really, you're still just showing off.