Oh where to begin...
So I've been chatting up that lady they brought in to replace the temp. who went off to become a stay-at-home dad, right? Yes, the lady who STILL CAN NOT put together a banker's box. (Which really irks me as we have to make and fill 50 or so of them in the next 3 days.)
I'd like to say that once you get to know her she's super with-it and uber intelligent and really good at being an AP assistant. I really, really would. Instead, after hearing about her kids and her other jobs and such, it is now my mission to scare the beejeebus out of her by simply being that which she hopes her 1st generation daughters NEVER become: An independent woman. People, I am a conservative immigrant mother's worst nightmare, just ask my mom.
It's not that I'm mean or anything, really it's not. Honest. I know I can be a right witch, or worse, you know, with the other spelling, but I'm hoping to save this woman from herself. I'm hoping that she will OPEN HER EYES and realize that if she continues down the road she's decided to travel that her daughters and I will have much more in common than she will be happy with. LET MY LIFE BE A CAUTIONARY TALE!!!
It's simple really. All I do is make sure she's listening as I talk "over the cube wall" to another AP Coordinator and chat about life, movies, what I'm doing this weekend, how we blame our mothers for all the awkwardnesses of adulthood because our rearing was so convoluted, and especially about the horrible double-life you have to lead when you are one person at home and a completely different person everywhere else. No, I wasn't a covert agent, or a "bad" girl here, well, depending on your culture and point of view I suppose. I'm seriously talking about "knowing my place" in the house and keeping a low profile, not snipping or talking back, doing as I was told, etc. You know, being a good subservient messican girl. Now, if you want to get ANYWHERE in life, you CAN NOT adopt those same loving, meaningful qualities in the real world in the United States. Really. They will eat you alive.
As fun as it was to live at home like that, is it a wonder I decided I needed SPACE to do some growing up? About 400 miles is a good radius marker. Not so far that you can't drive home in a day, not so close that your folks can just "pop" on over. Those were troubling years for everyone.
This lady? One of her daughters is going to school in LA. She doesn't like coming "home" anymore. Lady is frustrated that her daughter keeps calling L.A. "home." Lady calls her almost nightly to make sure she's eaten and that she's going to bed at a reasonable hour. She even tried to gain our sympathies by telling us, "can you believe she won't answer the phone sometimes?" Hooo boy. I looked her in the eye and told her how, over the course of about a year I weaned my mom off of the whole "phoning" thing. "You have to let your daughter do her own thing or she will stop talking to you, believe me."
I'm not making fast friends here, can you tell? I'm also not quite getting through to her. After telling her of how happy I finally was living the life I am, she busts out with, "you'd be happier married, with children."
It's a wonder I don't smack her upside the head with one of those banker's boxes.
1 comment:
You go, woman! It might be a bit like tormenting a retarded monkey, but sometimes it is fun and the monkey does need training. It's so sad that so many people just can't understand happiness in terms other than their own.
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