Booniverse

Brought to you by stereotypes, nail polish and my AWOL brain. If anyone finds it, could youe please tell me where it has gotten off to?

I’d really like it back.

Oh yeah, and because I feel for you readers who now know how I like my eggs. Here’s a little more meat for you. Pffft, eggs.

I’ve never thought of myself as a “girl” who is blah blah whatever cakes, I’ve always thought of myself as just me. Me has a lot of different characteristics, one of which is “female” but others include “tall”, “aggressive”, “likes bugs and dirt” (for the most part), “enjoys science fiction stories”, “hates shopping” and “prefers action flicks”. On the other hand, I will occasionally geek over accessories, I love to bake and cook, I recognize more than the standard 8 pack Crayola colors, I like cats a bit more than I like dogs (but I don’t dislike dogs because animals in general are really cool), I enjoy crocheting and if I could sew I’d make quilts and clothes and stuffed guys and other cool things.

Some things that are me are typical “guy” things while others are typically “girl” things and I suppose I have more girl things characteristics and inclinations than guy things inclinations but I have never really sat down, made up the list, counted the things and said “Yup, more than 50% of everything that is me is woman based, therefore I is girl”. I would just guess that there are more things that are woman because I am one. Even if it didn’t pan out that way I don’t think it would change anything; I am who I am (without spinach).

That said, I get very annoyed with stereotypes. I hate it when someone assumes that X person knows about cars because they are male, Y person is homosexual because she has short hair and isn’t particularly feminine and Z person can’t drive because they are Asian while Q person is lazy because they are black…wait, can I say that? Do people of African ancestry who have grown up for three generations or more in the US prefer to be called African-American or is black OK? And technically, aren’t the many generation Dutch who have lived in South Africa African as well? What do they refer to themselves as…Dutch-African? When can my descendents call themselves “Native Americans”? If we aren’t native to America, where are we native to? I hate labels.

I hate worse when people reinforce these labels because I really don’t want to see people as belonging to a particular stereotyped set even when they display the characteristics of that set. I’m always thinking “Gosh, that man is an excellent conversationalist, has a lilt to the voice, makes swishy gestures and has impeccable fashion taste…I would peg this fella as gay but I’m not going to put him in that box because it’s wrong to assume he is one thing because he acts a certain way” and then it turns out that yes, he is gay. It just helps to build the boxes when people act in a way typical to that box.

I suppose to some extent a certain group of people tend to act on some base level a particular way (say Americans being “ignorant of other countries customs and language”. Well guess what, most people in the U.S. live next to other people in the U.S for a very long way in any direction. If you live in the middle of the country, it might take you a day or two drive to hit someplace that isn’t the U.S. and half of the choices of foreign neighbor destination (which are exactly two) speaks the same language nationally and has pretty similar customs so yeah, us Americans tend to be ignorant of other countries because we don’t get the opportunity to practice our other country niceties. Go figure that national characteristic) but I hate to assume that B person is going to be a loud mouth braggart just because they have a gun and work at S-Mart. Heh, well you know what I mean. I guess I am all for people acting like people instead of people from “this particular set” however, a group of similar people will all tend to have similar traits and thus create a set to which they belong. Catch 22 of stereotypes.

Yesterday, I did my own box wall reinforcing by completely girling out on TheMan. Whilst shopping, we ran across a nail polish display and since I just love me some weird and cool flavors of nail polish I tend to do a slower glance by when passing one of these things. I am always on the look out for outstanding colors of polish because there is nothing happier than looking down at stridently colored toes. I am clam happy if my toes are vibrant purple, shiny copper, bright arrest me red or goth black and occasionally I’ll mix and match if I am feeling up to it. So on the way past this display, my little eye spied CHUNKY GLITTER polish and I went totally bazoo over it. Understand that I have been looking for chunky glitter (vs the tiny speck glitter you see all the time) for about two years (off and on, not like as an obsession, I don’t girl out that much) and there it was bold as day. AND the glitter bits were little stars. How cool is that? So I bought some, plus the iridescent purple/green stuff that also caught my eye. I’m all about the shiny.

I got home and happily painted my toes purple/green shiny and then, of course, had to admire my newly painted toes plus get TheMan to admire my toe color. He puts up with me wonderfully.

The other thing I did, which fits along that building the woman stereotype, is made a complete technical ass of myself. I hate it when people question me about technical things I say or are patronizing to me about technical stuff because everyone knows women just can’t think. It doesn’t occur to us to, say, look for a paper jam. No, we have to helplessly call someone for assistance. Oh, right, the sarcasm filter. ANYWAY, I called in a printer repair yesterday for a printer that was dead certain that drawer three was opened. I spent about a half hour futzing with it; closing, opening, comparative anatomy study (we have two printers of the same model right next to each other), turning off things, turning on things and it had me stymied. No matter what I did to the bottom drawer (of three drawers) the machine was adamant that drawer three was open. OK, it needs a repair guy.

So I called it in and they wanted me to do X (did it) and Y (yup) and try this (already done) or that (check) or the other (OK, now you guys are just fucking with me. Send me out a god damned repair guy to fix the goddamned printer before I goddamned go Rokokyu on the shitty thing, Mmm’Kay?) and it took forever for them to decide, “Yes, we need to send out a repair guy.” Man, that just burns my butt. “Have you tried opening the drawers and looking for a jam?” Yeah, I’m wasting my time on the phone just to look like an ass so I can hear you suggest THAT nugget of wisdom. Oh, open the drawer. Gosh, I thought it would, you know, like fix itself or something. OFCOURSE I opened the drawers and looked for jammed paper. What am I, some sort of moron? Pffft!

So my repair guy comes out to figure out what is up with drawer three and he opens the middle of the three drawers. Whaaaaa? Hey, not the second drawer down, the error message says it’s having trouble with drawer three. Ummm…hey wait, the drawer I was futzing with has a 4 on it. Err…that would make the drawer above it drawer three. And say look at that, is that a jam of paper you are pulling out? Oh, heh, so that took care of the error message did it? Right. Yeah, so…ummm…sorry you had to come all the way out from three towns over to remove my paper jam. Boy do I have egg on my face. So, if there are only three drawers on the front and the bottom drawer is drawer 4, where is drawer 1? Ahhhh, heh, right. Off to the side. Yeah. I’m going to be in a hole somewhere if you need me for anything else.

I suppose the answer is “yes”, I am some sort of moron. What kind I have yet to determine but on the plus side the printer needed some basic maintenance that he was able to do. Otherwise I’d have to quit, change my name and move to Siberia where they only have one drawer printers.

At least I’ll have shiny toes!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2003 at 3:56 pm and is filed under General Bloggery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.