Not Entirely Heroic

I've been thinking about super powers in real life. I call mine compassion, but I'm sure that like all powers, super powers cannot be reduced to a single cause or use. Within compassion is the ability to protect one's self by withstanding the pressure of experience on the emotional heart. Depending upon how well you know me, you'll figure out that I don't fall down too easy.

For such a long time, people could hurt me deeply with words. I don't know why I didn't fit in, I don't know what made me feel like a flamingo in a crowd of penguins, it just was that way for me. Fortunately, I didn't realize I was such an odd bird until right before I realized I was thrilled not to be the same. I had the usual couple of years in my teens where shit was just wrong and awful most of the time inside my little body. Every day was another day that another friend might decide that I was just too (weird odd pale poor smart ugly skinny uncool) whatever and would announce that we were not friends. It's pretty cute in retrospect. It was another wave of darkness back in the day full of rampant darkness. Ohhhh, the drama. Yes, sounds about like every other teen in North America.

Around the same time I realized I liked to be so different, I learned a little bit about my powers of compassion. They came with a nifty set of intuitive skills, body language reader included. Let me show you how it worked...

I took classes pretty seriously in school. Class was the place I dominated without competing. There were people with better grades and better test scores than me. Cool and kudos! I was amused by the occasional individual who really wanted to make it a "You and Me. On the playground by the swing after school. I'm gonna kick your ass." sort of battle of the numbers. A typical exchange could go like this:

"I got a bazillion on my blah-blah test," says Whoever J. Hoover.
"Awesome. That's a perfect score, right," says Me.
"Yeah."

This is when Whoever J will show me everything a person doesn't want anyone to know.  As I have learned since, this is the typical stance of the Professional Academian* as well. For all you learning and learned folks out there, I am about to show you how to never be ashamed of your intellect and how obvious it is when you bullshit with intent to create a submissive of another person.

Whoever  J. Hoover starts on the slow, self-satisfied smile.

Even if  people actually communicated with word bubbles floating in air above them, they couldn't be more readable than Whoever J.

Whoever then does the Pause and Gloat. It's simply a "let me give you a moment to feel the pain of not being me" look.

Here's what I was/am supposed to do: either return a look of bitter grief, one of seething envy, or just a show of my subordinate stature. It's so expected that I will do one of these things that Whoever J waits just a bit longer than is theatrically appropriate. It becomes an awkward pause with the weight on them for the wait on me. I do nothing but maintain a neutral gaze. (that neutral bit is important... it makes Whoever have to assume things)

Pause and Gloat becomes pause, gloat, pause. You can't follow gloat with pause, it takes the authority and pomp right out of it. In fact, it transforms it into what looks exactly like lack of confidence. It looks exactly like it because that's exactly what it is. The reason Whoever needs to lord whatever over non-competitive Me is they really must be feeling small and afraid. Whoever has just showed how desperately in need of approval they are; I just got a naked look at Whoever's biggest fear.

For my part, I choose to not follow the script. I keep pissing people off with this attitude, it seems. Not only do I realize that everyone deep down is afraid, therefore none of us have to feel small, I take it a step further and let Whoever see that I know. This seems to be incredibly uncomfortable for Whoever. Best part of it all? If Whoever hadn't come over to make Me feel small, they wouldn't be walking away feeling even smaller.

It worked when I was the smallest, most frightened, most in need of gentleness... So I know you can bluff it until your real confidence (the kind you get from experience) kicks in.

The world doesn't need any more arrogance, but it surely would be a good thing if people had more confidence. Whoever, wherever you are, when you stop trying to make people feel smaller than you feel, things are going to be okay. For those of you who are tired of feeling small, look for  those awkward pauses and see if they aren't a good place to see Whoever's soft spot. Try not to exploit it in anything but self defense, please. If you do use it improperly, it's not a super power any more. It's just assholishness.

Don't make me show you your weak points. That's my least favourite part of the super powers gig. The cape? The cape is my favourite.




*Professional Academians as defined by Me: Those jerks that somehow scraped by in school despite having a serious lack of heart and managed to get a professorship in a dusty corner somewhere... wherein they make you buy all their books (six per damned semester) at god-awful prices and can ruin your life by misdirecting your advisor, sleeping with your boyfriend/girlfriend, endlessly quoting Neitzsche or Kant or friggin' Charles Dickens, and generally being sleazy. Pickup truck covered in cow horns (mirrored!) included. This definition may or may not be one hell of an amalgamation of people I once knew.