Confrontation Avoidance

Right or wrong, I’m a person who typically avoids confrontations. For example, if somebody were to walk up to me and slap me upside the head, my response would most likely be: “My bad, my head got in the way of your hand. Sorry ‘bout that. Hey, you wanna help me look for my ear?”

Not that I’m a complete pushover, mind you. Every man has his limit. For example, after twenty or so slaps, I might just have to do something about it. So beware.

Still, in general I tend to take the path of least resistance. For example, I was recently checking out at the grocery store, and the cashier asked me, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” Automatically, I told her that I had. However, that wasn’t the case. They were out of the lunch meat that I usually buy.

So, why didn’t I tell the cashier this? She’d asked me explicitly if I’d found everything I was looking for, and I, in fact, hadn’t. It was my right, nay my duty, to inform her of the item I hadn’t been able to find.

But instead I chose to say nothing, to keep this potentially vital piece of information to myself. Why? I guess because I knew that if I said everything was okay, then life would go on as normal. However, if I said that I didn’t find what I was looking for, I’d be entering into unknown territory, and I wouldn't know what would happen then. I can, however, picture several scenarios:

Scenario One: They note the missing item and do their best to restock it quickly.

Scenario Two: They respond politely and promise to do their best to not let it happen again, even though as soon as I leave, they disregard all that I said, all while complaining of how arrogant I was to actually have the nerve to criticize their operation.

Scenario Three: They ban me from the store, sending me on my way with a hearty, “If you don’t like it, then shop somewhere else, you ungrateful buffoon!”

Scenario Four: A secret button under the register is pressed. Two burly men, both named Hugo, materialize on the scene and drag me to a dingy back room. There they rough me up (or, in technical terms, give me the business) until I suddenly remember that there was never a problem, that the store has everything I could possibly ever need, that my complaint was a result of a major lapse of judgment on my part, and that I love the store and will frequent it until the day I die, all while making certain that any offspring of mine will be taught from birth that shopping there is the only viable option in terms of obtaining foodstuffs to sustain oneself.

Talk about fear of the unknown! I don’t know about you, but Scenario Three scares me! I mean, then where would I get my groceries?

The point is, I purposely avoided a confrontation that, despite my paranoia, was such a minor issue it’d be almost foolish to even consider a confrontation.

And that is why I’ll never not like any gift I’ll ever receive, even if it’s dirt or used gym socks, I’ll agree that every song anybody ever plays for me is “pretty good”, and I’ll always swear on my life that Santa Claus is a real person who’s diligently running his workshop at the North Pole, albeit the fact that he's most likely currently looking into outsourcing his labor to China.

This begs the following question: Should I become more assertive? Should I not shy away from confrontations, and instead even welcome them? My first instinct is to say ‘no’. I am who I am, and I’m too far into my life to change now. But if you think different, I can probably change my mind. I mean, there’s no use in getting into a thing over it.

To Kick A Rock

There are times when I feel like I’ve lost touch with my inner child, completely taken over by maturity. Sure, maturity is good for some things, like owning a car, or being able to tell kids to stay off your lawn or you’ll slap them with one humdinger of a lawsuit, but in general, it just seems to make things more complicated.

Luckily, there are times when I flash back to being a kid, and when I do, I find it to be incredibly refreshing.

Take today for example, during my usual noontime walk.

I go for a walk every day at lunch not for the exercise, but to escape my cubicle for a short while, since we don’t get along very well. It seems to tolerate me, and I tolerate it, but there’s still some serious tension between us. This is probably because I don’t want to be there, and it’d rather be alone. Sometimes, I think it’s plotting against me, trying to determine, for example, the best time to collapse on top of me.

Anyway, I was walking along the side of the road when I saw a rock. This wasn’t just any rock, however, it was a perfect kicking rock. It was big enough to make a good target, but not so big that it’d hurt your toe. It was also slightly rectangular, which would make it easier to hit squarely with good power, which is a very fulfilling endeavor.

Unsurprisingly, moments later I was completely absorbed in kicking the rock down the street.

The key to rock kicking is timing. After you kick the rock, you then have to try to measure your steps correctly, so that when you catch up to it, your kicking foot is already at its furthest point back, ready to be unleashed. If you do it right, you can kick the rock without breaking stride, which makes you feel very smooth and cool. If you don’t, you end up having to awkwardly stutter-step to set yourself up, which is very embarrassing.

Unfortunately, my timing was a little rusty. It’d been a long time since I’d rock-kicked.

Anybody watching me out of an office window would have seen a guy staring intently at the street in front of him, meandering back and forth, not paying very much attention to his surroundings, and all-too-often stutter-stepping violently for no apparent reason. If it wasn’t known that I was rock-kicking, the most obvious conclusion would have been complete inebriation.

At one point, I wandered out into the middle of the road to chase down an errant kick. Luckily, this was a side street, and the traffic was light.

Eventually, I had to turn a corner. As I did, I tried to kick with my opposite foot – as the rock was lined up better for that – and I whiffed completely. Feeling my face turning red with failure, I kept on going, leaving the rock behind.

However, for a glorious minute or two, I'd been a kid again, without a care in the world, my biggest priority seeing just how long I could kick a rock down the street. Ahhhhhh. You just need that every once in a while.

Then I got back to the office, and I wasn’t a kid any longer.

But I suppose it’s for the best. A kid wouldn’t know how to deal with a cubicle that seems to be plotting his ultimate demise.

Expanding The Empire

Having not yet recouped the operating expenses from the self-publishing of my book earlier this year, along with having this blog, which boasts upwards of six or seven hits per day, I’ve decided that the next logical thing for me to do with the FromTheDeskOfCurly brand is expand it into Twitter, in order to grow the number of media outlets in which it’s currently irrelevant.

You heard me right, Twitter – the microblogging site that I’ve made fun of in previous postings, stating that its only use is to watch celebrities self-destruct via tweets that would have gotten caught in the brain-filters of most sane people who don’t believe the world revolves around them.

But before you call my a hypocrite – even though I’ll admit that I am one – hear me out: How better to make fun of Twitter than from deep within the belly of the beast? It’s like going undercover to take down a shady organization from the inside, just like you see in movies, except with less bad CGI.

I’ll also admit that there are a few advantages to tweeting over blogging. For example, when you blog, you need an actual idea, which you then need to flesh out and turn into multiple paragraphs that flow together coherently and justify the main theme. These paragraphs, then, need to be examined for spelling and grammar mistakes, less you look like a fool with barely a third-grade education after you spell the word “nincompoop” incorrectly.

With Twitter, however, that’s all out the window! You don’t need anything to wield it effectively, not even a thought! You can just blather nonsensically! It’s the new American way!

In addition, blogging can be somewhat time-consuming. With Twitter, it’s a much more efficient way for me to waste my waking hours.

Not that I’m done blogging, mind you. It has been, and always will be, the best median for me to express myself. In fact, I strongly suspect that this foray into Twitter won’t last very long. However, one never knows where the tides of fate will take them, so I’m just going to keep an open mind and see how it all plays out.

Now, on the off-chance that Twitter begins to consume most of my writing time due to unexplained massive popularity, I may be forced to hire a ghostwriter to continue the work on this blog. This would be a great way for an aspiring writer to get some real-world experience – on an unpaid basis, of course. If it ever comes to that, I’ll hire the writer through a detailed application process, most likely announced via Twitter, provided, of course, that I’m not currently too busy embroiled in a bitter tweeting feud with some celebrity.

From The Desk Of Curly on Twitter