Scrub at work trying to get on my good side, without actually having to do her job properly, tries to engage me in chit-chat. As you can probably imagine, this does not fool me much at all. Little social butterfly cum drama queen, entitled as hell, everyone is her "friend" or snubbed, no inbetween.
"Soooo, what are you doing this weekend?!"
Me, trying to chart, "Nothing."
"Ohhh, just spending time with your hubby!"
"I never think of him as a 'hubby.'"
"It means 'husband.'"†
"Yes, ... I know." I say this very neutrally. I stay silent after, as anything else I could say would not be kind, nor kindly taken. I really dislike that word. It goes in the same bin as wifey and ball & chain, with all the old mother-in-law jokes. Some words just get tainted. Or coined to be vaguely insulting. Hubby indeed. Not a word I would ever associate with my dear D.
Another discussion this week, as I called the new color for Coban that Dr. Hurryhurry likes- teal*. Anesthesiologist laughed that only women would know that. I countered that there are a lot of male painters, designers, and other artists who are very fluent in the language of colors, it's not a female thing. He had to concede the point. When I added that I just love the many words, and the words for colors are rather wonderful, he had to admit that he also loved words. I do love getting around the sides of people's assumptive attitudes.
And I remembered how I used to be able to get my mother to occasionally slip on her ironclad assumptions and attitudes with tacking arguments meant to zig zag gradually around the granite beliefs. Very tiring, but it did teach me how to get inside prejudiced thinking and find the weak sides. Most bigots only fortify the front.
Trying a non-fiction book. So far, so good. I'll let you know.
Been meaning to mention for weeks, with good white tea, always make several brewings. The second is always very good, the third and sometimes forth have a charm of their own.
It's been 83 days since I smashed my thumb, down near the quick, and I still have purple under the nail to grow out. Another week or so yet.
*We have red, cobalt blue, pale blue, neon pink, violet, dark green, yellow with bumble bees, blue with cars, and now - teal.
†Amazing, isn't it, that people who aren't as bright as they think they are, cannot imagine anyone brighter than themselves?
8 comments:
The fact that a Teal is a waterfowl and, as such, can be the prey of the hunters amongst us might have also slid you past the mouth of the cave.
I too love words. Paint departments please me as much for the names behind the sample cards as for the colors themselves. I would love to have the career of "paint-namer".
ER,
RE: teal. Familiar, but I could not honestly say I knew that. Cool. Will find a link and add above.
my mother used to shorten my name to "Winnie".....AAARGH!!!!
There are some things that shouldn't be shortened, and some ways not to shorten!
gz,
Absolutely, adding -y or -ie to a name to smallify gets right up my nose. I also put my foot down about that done to my name when I was about six. Very few people in my life could call me 'joanie' and I wouldn't go librarian poo on them.
Loved how you got around the color bigot at work. Ha!
Clicked on the teal link, expecting color swatches (don't have a clue as to why), and was amused, bemused by the expression "nuptial plummage." Don't know why that caught my fancy, but it did.
Teal as a colour descriptor has always stood out because it's one of the pretty limited selection of colours for text on the computer, and also because, as someone who does know birds a bit, it's always struck me as funny because it's such a small part of the duck in question that is anything like that colour (a stripe round its eye, maybe a wing bar).
Now I'm quite ready to be told I'm talking bollocks here, but I have heard that it's in part down to rods and cones, that women really do tend to have more of the ones that do colour, and men more of the one's that help you see clearly in the dark (hence they are sometimes more comfortable night driving). From my own observation, (again, anecdotal and possibly wrong) I, and other women, seem to have a greater ability to make fine distinctions between colours, to have a better memory for it (a little bit like musical pitch) and to use colour as an identifying factor for things, than many men I've known. And of course many more men are colourblind than women.
However, that's only a question of tendency, not absolute, and I also saw a science programme the other day about colour, which suggested that our awareness of and discernment of colour is much more a product of culture and language than we realise anyway.
I've always found 'hubby' a hilariously awful word, though I have known one or two people I liked who use it and it hasn't stopped me liking them. I quite like the word 'husband' though.
Crow,
Nuptial is a great word.
Lucy,
I noticed that about the amount of color on the duck as well.
I know that colorblind people, which are largely men, are used in the military to read recon maps, because they are much better at noticing anomalies, and at pattern recognition, because the color doesn't confuse them. Useful for hunters, too.
You have several valid points - women are generally better at color. I merely object to the naming and interest in color being *exclusively* a girly thing - which was what this guy was insisting on. Imagining his wife saying "Honey, should we paint the bedroom celery or pale teal?" and him shaking his head in condescending confusion. And I countered with, the the equivalent of - well, Rembrandt and Picasso could answer easily.
(o)
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