You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I probably did the right thing back many years ago when I declined all the recruiters who tried to sign me up for military service.
Do NOT get me wrong here - I have the utmost respect and admiration for our military personnel, and for authority and those who wield it well.
I can and do take orders from those who outrank me, sometimes because I respect them as people who know more than I do about whatever it is and sometimes just because of rank. If they outrank me the rebuttable presumption is that they do indeed know more than I do about whatever it is and it would behoove me to pay attention and learn. Until/unless proven otherwise, that's my take on things.
I also know and respect my own limitations.
A very long time ago, back in grade school, a teacher mispronounced a word that I knew well. I tried to ignore it, really TRIED to just let it go. But my classmates would assume that was the way to say that word and eventually one or more of them would make fools of themselves over it, and THEN how would I feel? Plus it just bugged the ever-livin' heck out of me that an EDUCATOR was making a preventable mistake and passing it on to kids.
Finally she said it wrong one too many times and I raised my hand and told her the right way to say it. She told me I was wrong (when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was NOT wrong) and that just made it worse. She continued, said it wrong again, and I think I just said the right way out loud. I was not wrong and I was not going to just let it go, not after she tried to embarrass me like that. Had my dander up a little, that did. Anyway, I said it the right way a couple of times. That got me 'THE LOOK' but as I was being so insistent she told me to go get the big dictionary and look it up.
I think she was trying to prove me wrong and take me down a peg or two. Maybe even throw me all the way down to the bottom of the ladder.
I tell ya. It was a Hermione Grainger moment, which really aren't all that great when it comes down to it. But what was I supposed to do, let my friends grow up thinking that was RIGHT?
She should have looked it up her own self in the first place instead of assuming she knew what she didn't know. It would have saved both of us the hassle.
Just so you know, tortilla doesn't rhyme with Attila.
My point is that even as a little kid if I knew something was wrong and knew how to fix it or do it right, I could only let it go on for so long before I took the blasted bit in my teeth to try to correct it - and damn the torpedoes.
By the time we got to high school my classmates had long since figured out that if I was willing to argue a point it was because I was absolutely certain before I opened my mouth.
I loved geometry. You had the givens to go by, but a particular problem didn't always have only just one way to be solved correctly. One time a teacher who didn't know any better yet marked one of my problem-solving methods wrong. Before I argued, I re-checked my steps and decided it was NOT wrong. He still tried to argue with me about it, until he went all the way through it step by step and it worked just fine. I got the credit for it, and from then on if my work turned out a little different from everyone else's, he went through it himself FIRST and only marked it wrong if he could prove where I had made a mistake. It was good for him.
A new kid in school started arguing with me about something I knew I was right about. Rather than put all of us through the whole thing, my classmates told him, 'Never argue with her when she's right.' THEY knew. If I wasn't certain-sure, I wasn't about to argue in the first place. Discuss or debate maybe, but not make a flat statement of fact.
Back to the point. HAD I entered the military, what would have happened if one of my superior officers was ever significantly wrong about something I felt strongly about? I'd have been kicked out in no time flat for insubordination, that's what.
I was insubordinate (crazy and full of crap as he put it) to a man I married and I have the fractured vertebra, TBI's, and a permanently damaged eye to prove it; not to mention the PTSD which was harder to deal with than the rest put together but not as insurmountable in the long run. He took me to a marriage counselor to prove I was wrong (hmmm...he was a teacher too, come to think of it), and then to a priest, and then to a protestant clergyman, and then we went to domestic violence training together (he dropped out; I didn't), and then he tried like four different perpetrators programs. Everyone he went to was also as crazy and full of crap as I was. At least I wasn't alone in my insanity.
I don't know if he ever did find someone to agree with him. No doubt I WAS crazy and full of crap; I think it was the dominant traditionalist training in him that brought out the Quaker and Huguenot in me. He NEEDED for me to be the wrong one; the alternative was just unacceptable to him. I just couldn't manage to wrap my head around that concept enough to concede, comply, and recant. I've just stayed crazy and full of crap. As my family history research is revealing, I come from several very long lines of people who have been as crazy and full of crap as I am, so I blame it on my DNA.
For the hundreds of years that I've been able to back-track there seems to be a severe shortage of people of my lineage who have been able to snap to attention, salute, say 'Yes SIR, Ma'am, Sir!' and then just sit down and shut up in the face of a situation that is flat out wrong. From our crazy and full of crap perspective, of course.
So be it.
As I say, I can and do thoroughly respect and admire worthy people in authority. I can and do take orders well enough - right up until I'm ordered to do something I can't reconcile with my own crazy and full of crap personal integrity. That's where the trouble comes in. I can cite you any number of instances when my code of ethics has differed from that of the people who thought they could order me to do something and I would automatically comply, right or wrong, and it's landed me in the soup. So be it. I can't become other than I am. If their expectations are otherwise, I can't help that.
Anyone who honestly believes that I'm going to snap to attention, salute, say 'Yes SIR, Ma'am, Sir!', do whatever they say without question, and then sit down and shut up had maybe better re-think their position.
I'm not one to indulge in confrontational shouting matches, power struggles, or pissing matches.
Sometimes people who don't know me very well yet mistake pacifism for passivity. Their views may lead them to believe that here is a doormat who lets people walk all over her.
Up to a point they are right. There are very few things that are worth getting all bent out of shape over. People want to know how come I don't stick up for myself when someone does me wrong; they want me to fight back when someone 'attacks' me.
What they don't understand is that in almost every instance the other person's need is far greater than my own. Whatever has gotten them all riled up almost never has anything to do with me personally. Am I going to expend energy ( which would be better utilized elsewhere) swatting at flies when it's more simple and easy to point the fan at them and blow them out of my way? Insignificant issues (to me) aren't worth the bother. If whatever it is happens to be significant to the other person, what does it cost me to let them have what they need in these little things? Nothing. It's nothing to me, so what the heck. I have to prove nothing; if they have a need to prove something, that's okay by me.
Up to a point. If/when that point is reached ... well ... it doesn't get to that point very often these days.
I'm not a littel kid in grade school any more, not likely to challenge authority over the mispronunciation of a word or any other insignificant little item. My tolerance line has moved, but it is still there.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been one of those famous Quaker women who got tied to cart-tails and whipped through villages and towns to get them and their big mouths out of Puritan territory; I'm also fairly certain that I WOULD have been one who hid escaped slaves for the Underground Railroad. I've hidden and helped a number of women and children escape.
Because somewhere along the line I've gotten the distinct impression that 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'. In other words - IF you recognize a need, and you are ABLE to help, you MUST help in whatever way you can. You don't have to try to fix everything all by yourself, but if you CAN help but DON'T you're not doing the right thing and your conscience is going to smite you but good.
And some of this stuff HAS to be genetic. I swear. Well no, I don't really SWEAR, but you know what I mean. When my eldest daughter was in grade school she stood up to a teacher over a wrong that was going on. Being in the right, she didn't get into trouble; the point is that she had it in her to do that, even at such a young age.
I don't think any of my girls are going to be the 'Yes SIR, Ma'am, Sir!' kind - and I'm right glad about it to tell you the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment