Intrusive Thoughts

Everyone is always making a huge deal about how germ-infested bathrooms are. And yet I've heard doctors say there's almost nothing you can catch from, like, a toilet seat.

But what about flesh-eating bacteria? That is a real thing in the world - I saw it on Mystery Diagnosis. If someone with an infection of flesh-eating bacteria sat on this toilet seat, couldn't I catch it from them? I am 100% sure I could. In fact, how else would you catch a flesh-eating bacteria? The people who do have them, they never know.

And once you catch a flesh-eating bacteria, you have to die. And all your friends have to watch your face fall off.

What is the single creepiest thing in the world? There is only one answer to that question and it is flesh-eating bacteria.

And prions. It's a tie.

Something just poked me. Probably a poisonous spider crawling into my pants and biting me. I might not die, but I'll definitely loose a chunk out of this leg.

Some people say Shylock was red-headed because Shakespeare was a racist. Actually the Bard was way ahead of his time in realizing that gingers have no soul. Also he was racist.

Please - PLEASE! - share your best intrusive thoughts in the comments below!!

Organization

Yesterday lingers in the living room - its blue leaf pendant necklace on the table, its sweater and socks on the floor, its flowers beginning to wilt in their vase. It seems to have settled here.

As far as I know, that blue leaf plastic pendant will occupy this intersection in space forever, unless I evict it, pick it up, carry it back into the dim closet and make it live in some other point, Point B, maybe.

When people say, "the past is gone," or whatever else similar thing people say, is it from ignorance or humility that they deny their powers?

Walkers Don't Talk, or why this blog is so hard to spell

As I've mentioned before, this blog is largely about what happens when I get a sandwich. Most of these posts started out as lunch break scribbles, and in fact, the whole blog started because I went out one day to get a sandwich.

As I sat alone in the food court, enjoying my spicy Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich, I overheard a young woman describing all the colleagues she didn’t like. And I heard her say about one woman, “She’s not a bad person, she just has no personality.”

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!?! If a person is quiet, or withdrawn, or hard to get to know or figure out, it’s a sure sign that person is soulless and empty on the inside.

I know because I am one of those people. I’m pretty much a zombie. I see it in my dead, dark eyes when I look in the mirror. Right now I hear the echo in my mindless skull.

We all know Walkers don't talk. The Walking Dead, Sunday nights on AMC.

I’m not a bad person. I’m just impossible to like.

There is a word for people like me, the real-life "walkers" who shamble about in your midst with their creepy blank stares and obvious lack of charisma. The word is "introverts."

Introverts are widely believed to have no personality. Plenty of people have said that about me, I’m sure. Now, you might expect me to say that introverts actually do have personality, in spite of popular opinion, but I won’t say that. Because I don’t know what a personality is.

Food Court Girl likes to gossip about coworkers. Is that personality? Comedian Guy does nothing but tease you all the time. Is that personality? Oversharing Man likes to talk about his traumatic childhood on first meeting you. Team Mom isn’t your mom but likes to talk like she is. Sweetest Lady in the World will send flowers if you’re in the hospital and OMG guys did you see the last episode of Lost???

I know, Lost was a long time ago, but you get my point.

"Do you have, like, any personality at all?"

"Do you have a brain at all?... And can I eat it?"

Personality is a bit like soul, heart or mind – we are all pretty sure we have one, but when pressured to describe it, we can’t. At all. But we sure can presume things about other people.

I love conspiracy theories involving the paranormal. Lady Gaga is my hero. I’m a passionate, liberal feminist. I’m a good listener, compassionate and patient with people. And I think, if there is such a thing as a personality, I must have one. But not much of it will shine among the cubicles - certainly not enough to inspire you to invite me out to get a sandwich.

Not everyone hates introverts. Some people pity us for the sad state of personal repression that is our every waking moment. Introverts respond to this pity with a blank stare, or perhaps an uncomfortable grin or a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Poor walkers. They have a soul, they're just afraid to
show it, because they think they'll be judged."

See, for non-introverts (we introverts call them "extraverts," they call themselves "normal people") talking is like a roiling white-water river of unobstructed self expression that surges robustly from their brain and gushes from their vocal cords. For introverts, talking is more like Dr. Livingstone trying to make his way through the whole African jungle with just a machete. We have to hack through a dense forest of thoughts and a thick undergrowth of feelings just to say a few words. No wonder we look lost.

When two introverts discover a common interest,
they may ask, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

For extraverts, that must sound outrageously laborious and pointless, considering you could just be more river-y and surge right over those trees like the Hoover Dam just collapsed. But for introverts, the way extraverts think is chaotic and disorganized, resulting in sweeping oversights and thoughtlessly offensive remarks. Believe me, for every introvert that has been thought boring, an extravert has been thought tasteless.

I'm disgusting? Pardon me, sir, but your manners are disgusting.

I'm not afraid to be myself. In fact, I quite enjoy myself. But for me and other introverts, talking isn't the best (and certainly isn't the only) way to enjoy ourselves. So I started this blog - a place for me to enjoy being me in ways that are more natural for me, and a place where other introverts might enjoy hearing from one of their kind, on anything that strikes her fancy. This blog is a way for me to connect more authentically with other people, a way for me to "put myself out there" to be known by people, since talking just doesn't typically do it for me.

Excuse me. I mean, since walkers don't talk.

The Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, which operates on the premise that personalities are a thing and everyone has one, identifies me as an INFJ - Introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging. (Each of these descriptors has an opposite - extraverted, sensing, thinking, perceiving - resulting in 16 different combinations.) For me, the introverted and intuitive categories are the most pronounced.

"We are Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers,
and we posit that personality is a thing."

The "intuitive" piece means I'm interested in what's abstract and theoretical, making me even less fun at parties. I see things more as patterns than unique experiences, and I put a lot of faith in those patterns. I'm more interested in what something signifies than it what it actually accomplishes. Ultimately it will accomplish what it signifies - I know this because that is the pattern. See?

Your plan is going to fail miserably. But you won't
die, because you never do.

And so, adding the intuitive to the introverted moves me further and further away from "normal" in a culture that defines positive, outspoken, go-getters as attractive. These people are ambitious, fun-loving, and have "good people skills." People who want to stop you in the middle of your plan, write an essay about that plan's implications, and then relax by Facebooking their friends about critical essays regarding Lady Gaga are considered negative, nit-picking and antisocial. Also just weird.

Well, I'm not interested in proving my value to anyone. I've spent my life smiling like a maniac to prove that I'm not brooding or scared, which is what people assume when I don't talk. But here at Introverted Intuitive, I'm just being my introverted intuitive self. And I'm not ashamed to say, my brain trumps the real world every time.

Did someone say brains?

No but seriously, y'all

Exciting news, readers! It turns out my immediate family are not the only ones reading this blog. My extended family is reading it, too! (Hi, guys!!)

So a few weeks ago my cousin mentioned having read my last post, Nonprofit Girl Gets a Sandwich, in which I chronicled two encounters between myself, the heroic Nonprofit Girl, and two villians, Clipboard Dude and Creepy Stranger Dude. My cousin asked me if I really find myself getting "accosted" much on the streets of Publicville.

What I wanted to say was, "Accosted? Me? No, of COURSE not!! Everything is fine. Everything is awesome, and the world is awesome, and I'm awesome, and the dudes on the street are awesome, and THERE IS NO BAD LEFT IN THE WORLD and my parents should not worry about me, and I should not worry about me, because bad things do not happen anymore, and I just cannot wait to jump out and show my face to the world every morning!!!!!!!!!"

THERE IS NO BAD LEFT IN THE WORLD!!!

Secret's out, I guess. I like to (read: have a neurotic compulsion to) present the most cheerful disposition I can muster when I'm in situations where I have to speak words. Damn, I'm not a very genuine person, am I?

But also, on the subject of being accosted on the streets of Publicville, (I know, back to the point, already!) I don't want to make a big deal about my experiences because they are really not that bad.

Right? They are not that bad. Looking at a list of types of street harrassment, I've never gotten "sexually explicit comments," "vulgar gestures," "groping," or been the "target of public masturbation" (Oh man. Let's pretend we didn't read that last one.). I haven't been "followed" or had my "path blocked" since high school, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going back there.

So, no. I don't get accosted much on the streets of Publicville. The occasional "leering," "whistling," and "sexist comments" doesn't really justify complaining, in the scheme of things.

It makes me feel like I am staring straight into a black hole, and it gives me that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like the mask of civility is as thin as tissue paper and in fact underneath it the world is not awesome but thoroughly awful. But that's just my sensitive mind. In reality, it's not that bad.

That's what I told myself. But on the same day I was telling myself it's not that bad, Soraya Chemaly was posting an article to HuffPost Women to validate my feelings, the feelings I was trying to invalidate.

So, my last post was humorous, but if you'll allow, I'd like to take this opportunity to put forth a very sincere "no but seriously, y'all." Soraya is right:

Street harassment is a serious issue because it's the most visible symptom of a society that uses fear to control more than half of the population ... Anywhere between 80 percent and 98 percent of women surveyed report persistent, aggressive street harassment ... 69 percent of women surveyed chose not to make eye contact for fear of harassment. When 69 percent of women regularly are thinking about avoiding eye contact, it's a serious problem.

Eye contact is an important component of freedom, civility and equality. Even my 14-year-old instinctively knows that. Her rule to assess risk is whether or not she can "look him in the eye, freely, and say thank you the way I would to a woman." ... Street harassment is the tip of a very big iceberg. As Emily May, a founder of the end harassment movement Hollaback, describes it, public harassment is a gateway behavior to domestic violence and rape. If a man feels entitled in public, what does he do in private?

...  

Street harassment is NOT about sex. It's about power. It's subtle and pervasive social control. It says to girls and women, "you can never be sure you are safe out here and I can control where you go, when you walk, whether or not you smile, what you wear and how you feel." It's not flattering. It's not fun. We aren't "asking for it." The normative public intimidation of women is a debilitating blight on equality.

(Emphasis mine)

Damn straight the normative public intimidation of women is a debilitating blight on equality. Shame on anyone who says it isn't - I will never downplay it again. I don't want to hear that I'm "purdy" any more than I want to hear that I'm ugly, because saying it insists your opinion should have some value to me. It declares that you are the Judger and I am the Judged. It says, "You didn't think you were put on this earth just to go about your own business, did you?"

My life is not a pageant, it is my life. When a stranger "compliments" me, what he is really saying is, at worst, "I'd fuck you," or at best, "You are here for my entertainment." That is objectifying (read: soul-stripping), intimidating and thoroughly malicious. Yeah, sure, a lot of the people who engage in these activities don't realize the sick ideologies they are acting out of, or the harmful consequences of their behavior. Tough shit. That doesn't change anything.

See, the thing about objects is, they are not alive. And that's kind of a big deal.

Well, now that I've embraced my anger and shared it with all you lovely people, the time has come at the end of the blog post where I am supposed to posit some "actions" you can take to combat the massive, worldwide, institutionalized ideology of women's oppression. Okay, let me see what I can come up with.

Ladies. You have probably been told you were overreacting every time you ever got angry. You were taught to be grateful for every attention that was paid to you, much of which, from the time you were an infant, was based on "how pretty you look!" and "how cute that dress is!" But now we have to recognize how those messages have taught us to distrust ourselves and become blind to our own realities.

Let's listen to ourselves, and listen to each other. Honor your anger. And pass it on. And you know what's more? Let's talk to our husbands and boyfriends about our anger. They should be our allies.

Don't set guys' beds on fire. Do make art about setting guys' beds on fire.

Guys. I'm going to assume, for argument's sake, that you are not seething with rage toward me right now, though what I've seen from commenters on other feminists' articles would suggest otherwise. I hope you will be aware of what goes on around you, even though you don't have to be, and don't assume certain things are not happening because you never noticed. I assume none of my readers are street harassers, so I will just say, even with your female friends, colleagues or relatives you really shouldn't compliment their appearance at all (your wife or girlfriend excluded). Because your opinion is irrelevent, right? Right. But mainly, please, just don't forget.

And of course, the kids. Kids today need to learn about the big bad F-word: feminism. They'll probably learn something about it in college, but widespread harassment of girls starts in middle school or earlier and becomes rampant in high school. We cannot wait until college to teach kids about feminism -  56 percent of girls and 40 percent of boys will have already been harassed and intimidated at school, and many of them will have already harassed and intimidated their peers.

I am following Stop Street Harassment and Hollaback on Facebook, to help me remember, and to help spread awareness and to keep an eye on their movements in case any opportunities come up that I might want to get involved in. That's the least I can do for myself and for my hurting society.

I believe I should be free to smile on the street without suffering unwanted advances. I believe I should be free not to smile when I'm displeased, and so should you. Shouldn't it go without saying?

Nonprofit Girl Gets a Sandwich

This is the first of (maybe) a series of blog posts I plan to think of as "Adventures of Nonprofit Girl." Unfortunately, they may all end up called "Nonprofit Girl Gets a Sandwich" because that is often the most exciting/dangerous part of Nonprofit Girl's day. Also when she rides the train.


Episode 1

The scene: Nonprofit Girl is seriously hungry. She planned to dash out a little before noon to get a sandwich ahead of the lunch crowds, but she got distracted and missed her window. Then she tried to wait for the lunch rush to pass as her hunger escalated to unbearable levels. Now, she sets off down the crowded sidewalk for the Chick-fil-a, donning her best don't-talk-to-me scowl. She's got one thing on her mind: a sandwich.

She darts over crosswalks and squeezes past meandering businessmen walking four across on the sidewalk. She is on a mission. But there's trouble ahead! People with clipboards just waiting to come between her and her sandwich. Her stomach growls a warning.

Long-haired clipboard-dude: HEY NICE LADY! Do you wanna...

Nonprofit Girl: NO THANKS!

Long-haired clipboard-dude: (from behind her, as she speed-walks away) ...end child sex slavery?

Nonprofit Girl: (to herself) Damn.

--

Episode 2

It's a good day for Nonprofit Girl. She held a meeting, figured some stuff out, and realized things are not nearly as desperate as they seemed. And all before lunch! Plus, she has run out of leftovers and now has an excuse to go buy her favorite sandwich! Feeling good about the world in general, Nonprofit Girl sets off to get that sandwich. As she approaches the park, she remembers to put her happy feelings aside and summon up her best don't-talk-to-me scowl, lest the shady people dawdling around the park try to talk to her.

But what is that up ahead? A squirrel is holding something in its tiny little hands. (Yes, squirrels have "hands." You think Nonprofit Girl would make that up?) A squirrel holding anything is completely adorable, but this squirrel is holding a stick twice the length of its own body.

What does that squirrel think it is going to do with that stick? Nonprofit Girl wonders. It's holding the stick in the middle and waving it, almost twirling it, like a kung fu fighter with a bamboo pole.

Nonprofit Girl thinks the kung fu squirrel is the cutest and most hilarious thing ever. She watches it with glee until she gets too close and the squirrel drops the stick. Suddenly Nonprofit Girl hears an excited voice say, "Hey!"

Nonprofit Girl looks up with a big, silly grin on her face. She thinks she knows what is about to happen. Someone else saw the kung fu squirrel and also thought it was hilarious! He will say, "Did you see that squirrel?" And she will say, "Yeah, that was awesome!" And he will say, "Yeah!" And they will chuckle, thinking as they walk away how it was even more awesome because they got the chance to say so.

But this is not what happens. Instead, Nonprofit Girl is face-to-face with her shape-shifting mortal enemy, Creepy Stranger Dude, smiling up at him like a kid on Christmas morning.

"That is a purdy smile you got there!"

Nonprofit Girl thinks to herself, Damn.


Now, there is not always a lesson to be learned from the Adventures of Nonprofit Girl, but this time, there is. The minute you drop your don't-talk-to-me scowl on the streets of Atlanta, someone will talk to you. And there's a good chance it'll be Creepy Stranger Dude. Remember, it takes a lot more muscles to frown than to smile, so don't forget to practice!!

A is for Academia

The following conversations took place on Sunday, as I helped my husband revise his term paper.

Trust, Justice, and the American Way

Me: Take out this comma.

Husband (with sudden vehemence): I like the Oxford comma!

Me (startled): Oh. Okay. Well, are your professors okay with it? If they don’t mind then leave it in.

Husband: Well I’ve never been corrected before.

Me (with gathering courage): Fine. Use the Oxford comma. If you want to be un-American.

UPDATE: Today I am pleased to reassure you all that my husband is patriotic, after all. In researching for this post, I discovered that I was gravely misinformed about the Oxford comma!!! (It's because I'm a communications professional.) It turns out Americans love the Oxford comma. In fact, it's the non-Oxford Brits who disdain the Oxford comma, and journalism/communications professionals everywhere.

Well, the point is the Oxford comma is a big deal, people. Everyone is talking about it. It has a Wikipedia page, a recent NPR article, and even a song.

Isn't she lovely?

Me: I think what you're saying is, the fact that these societies created female icons didn't mean that they started to respect women.

Husband: Yes.

Me: The men still treated the women any way they wanted, but they sort of justified it by making these glorified female images, to give the impression that they respected women.

Husband: Yes.

Me: So the men could say, "See? We love women!... That's why we... make them scrub the floor naked."

Husband: ...more or less.

--

My friend Alysha is a seminary student, and this semester she studied ancient Greek. (Learning ancient Greek is just like learning any other language, with lots of flashcards, only a billion times harder.) Alysha is seriously awesome, but we are pretty sure she is not so awesome that she will grow up to be a missionary to ancient Greeks. Which is why we ended up emailing back and forth about this survey she had to take. (Alysha's comments are blue, mine are red.)

In relation to this class, I made significant progress in:

1) Critical thinking  Before, I sucked at thinking. Now I am awesome!!!

7) Cultivating sensitivities and skills needed for cross-cultural relationships Uhhh.... what? Now I realize I used to be racist against ancient Greeks. 

10) Enriching my creative capacities Really? Since when do they care about this?

11) Reflecting theologically on the implications of this course for my practice of ministry This would make more sense for almost any other class I've taken

12) Integrating the study of scripture, theology, and ethics at a personal level  Verb conjugation is like an out of body experience.

13) Shaping my personal values, standards, or disciplines Yes. I now value biblical Greek less, because it is annoying 

14) Functioning well in interpersonal relationships Im gr8t @ txt ancients

15) Responding to emotional, spiritual, or interpersonal problems I know exactly what you're going through. You know what helped me? This textbook of ancient Greek.

16) Responding to organizational, community, and societal problems Teach ancient Greek in schools!!!!!

How I ruin my whole outlook on life before getting out of bed on Sunday morning

It starts with a dream, as you might have guessed. If you're like my husband, dreams are wonderful opportunities to star in your very own superhero movie, but if you're like me, dreams are like hovering dementors just waiting to suck all the happiness out of you.

I'm at work, only "work" takes place in something like a middle school computer lab, with computers all along the walls and a TV in the corner. My coworkers are two girls from my group of friends in high school (which was a long time ago now, so I'd appreciate it if my dreams would stop bringing it up! But they can't because they're dementor dreams, and dementors and high school go together like ice cream and sprinkles).

My coworkers/friends are apparently done with all their work and just waiting for 5:00 to roll around, so they are watching a movie on the tv, which is right above the computer I am working at. I stop for a minute to watch the movie and joke with them about it, then I go back to work. All of a sudden I realize I haven't checked my second email account all day! I don't even have a second work email in real life, but sure enough it's full of neglected responsibilities.

Not only that, but by some bizarre twist of technology that only happens in dreams, when I open it, it appears on the tv monitor instead of my computer monitor. I'm like, good grief, and I'm straining to read it because it's over my head, and I completely forget that my coworker-friends were watching a movie up there. When I remember, I turn around and they have left, probably in an angry huff. The only one left is some random guy on the other side of the room. "I completely spaced out..." I try to explain. "I don't know why my email is on the tv, but I didn't mean to and I just forgot they were watching something..." He comes over, annoyed, and points to a button I can press to make sure my emails stay on the computer and not the tv.

I wake up. Nice try, Brain. Trying to make me feel insecure about work on a Sunday morning, and trying to make me believe my coworkers probably hate me. Well, I'm on to you and your dementor ways!

I look at the clock, which says seven-something. I think, Great. Now if I go back to sleep, I'll have even weirder dre-

But I am asleep again already. Seriously, I don't know how it happened.

My friends are back, only we're sort of kids now, and we're hanging out in my current apartment with the middle-school-aged boys from my favorite web comic, Bad Machinery. We start kicking a ball around. No big deal, right? Except that I have never been able to kick a ball in my life. Before I know it it's girls against boys and they've figured out my weakness and the boys are just kicking it straight at me as hard they can every time. I try for a while, until I finally say, "Really, I don't think this is how soccer goes," and I turn around to talk to my friends only they have abandoned me, which only makes sense considering how awful I was playing. But I'm really mad at the boys now.

"Really, Linton? My friends quit and you didn't even tell me? You kept on playing, three against one?"

Linton laughs (he is kind of the mean one, in the comic). "Haha, yeah we're hardcore!"

Well I turn on the eyes of fire and back them all into a corner and start yelling. "You're mean and you're cruel and you'll deserve what you get." Whatever that means.

Only then I see that I have made Sonny cry. He is kind of the sweet one, in the comic. And I feel awful.

Then I'm in my room, putting away jewelry that I had left on the dresser. It's big and gaudy and hideous, but in my dream it's beautiful and belonged to my grandmother. Suddenly she appears behind me as I'm holding a brooch. "Have you worn it?" she asks. I can't bear to tell her that there are not many opportunities for girls to wear brooches anymore, so I just say yes.

And I wake up crying, guilty over a crying boy and an unworn heirloom, neither of which exist. Damn you, dementor brain!! How do you do it?

Then the dementor brain quickly sets about reassuring me that there is plenty to actually cry about, and that's why these dreams were dredged up in the first place. Like, my grandmother never would have cared that my emails opened on the tv, but I never would have told her anyway. And I remember that those girlfriends of mine from high school were the real bullies, and that's probably why I dreamed about kids being mean. I remember the girl they teased all the time, and how I thought it was just a bunch of silly quarreling, and I never did anything about it because I didn't realize how mean it really was until long after we had all graduated. Which basically makes me the dumb one from Mean Girls, and I don't know how you are supposed to live with yourself if you are her.

My husband roles over and puts his arm around me in his sleep, which makes me feel a little better. Until my back starts to hurt from being in kind of an odd position and I start to feel trapped. I wiggle my way out of his unconscious embrace, and he sticks his knee out, pushing me to the edge of the bed. I lie there for a few more minutes until he clocks me in the temple and I realize this is not going to get better.

As I'm making my tea I wonder how this always happens to me. And I decide to blog about it, so people will know what I mean when I say that I can dread getting out of bed anytime. Even a sunny Sunday morning.

Well, chocolate is supposed to help you recover from a dementor attack, but if it's dementor dreams troubling you, an adorable dog goes a long way in repairing the damage. Dogs live in the real world. They don't wake up desperate to make up for all the mistakes of their past, desperate to be the most wonderful, most successful, most likable dog in the world. They wake up wanting to pee and eat and play with their toys.

So I put some clothes on and took the dog out, where it really is beautiful and toasty, which I love (how anybody hates a hot summer in the South, I don't know. Well, if they are trekking all over a campus with a load of books, then I get it. Or if they work in construction or agriculture. But if I think about this too long I'll start feeling bad for wishing for hot, sunny days without considering all the people who might suffer). I poured out some dog food, which made her eyes wide with excitement, and then we played with her ratty, slobbery toys, which to her delight, look almost like real dead animals by now!

So I'm feeling better, if not a little jealous of the dog, for waking up just wanting to pee and eat and play. For now I'll just fix some breakfast and tinker with my blog until my husband gets up. Then I'll help him revise his term paper and we'll visit my parents and it will turn out to be a pretty decent day like it usually does.

Well, the blog is called introverted intuitive, and that basically means my brain trumps the real world every time. It's not always a dementor brain. Sometimes it's a Gaga scholar or a feminist essayist or a social commentator, like a snarky Jane Austen. Sometimes it's even funny, it hopes. And it really wants you to like it. But you'll almost never encounter it in the real world. You can only find it here, at Introverted Intuitive! The exclusivity is supposed to make you want it even more... is it working?