BigT it is not attacking your mental health to point out that a particular line of your (and some others’) thinking is very disturbed and distorted. As is your complete last post. Seriously, knocking on someone’s door, even if you know they are asleep and that you are bothering them, is not “trespassing”. The woman did not force her way onto our op’s property. Very very seriously I think you probably should not play in the Pit if even that mild line is experienced as so hurtful by you.
FWIW I would never claim that I do not get angry … or as annoyed as fuck. There have been times interacting on these boards that I have gotten both, briefly, and more in real life. This thread’s interactions? Zero anger at all or even annoyance. No insult to you or anyone intended by that; there’s just nothing here that ranks. Angry for more than a few minutes at a time, sustained anger? In my most important relationships that has happened (and I believe I am not alone in recognizing that that sort of anger usually has its origins in hurt first, with the hurt being what keeps feeding the anger, and is dysfunctional anger) and on occasion as a tool to functionally drive me to accomplish some goal. Putting it most simplistically I believe that dysfunctional anger can be controlled - by identifying the reason for the hurt that feeds it and addressing the hurt’s root causes. And that functional anger is a tool we choose to use making a decision that its cost is worth its benefits.
I am fine with a continued discussion about anger and whether or not we have any choice over how we feel (ignoring the Free Will debate aspects!) and your contention that people “have to learn to accept their feelings, and not try to control them” but it really belongs outside of The Pit and was not something I meant to take over as the focus of this thread. If you want to open up a different thread please tell me where you put it. If you want to open up a Pit thread to Pit me, please also do the same. Also despite your belief that your having been in therapy makes you an expert, not all therapeutic, inclusive of CBT ones, approaches are as you’ve experienced your therapy.
In any case I am sorry that what I said has apparently hurt you. I will try to be more mindful that some who play in the Pit are still very sensitive in various ways.
You do realize that Green Eggs and Ham was a children’s book, usually read together with the parent. Most of us who have dealt with kids, even if we have not been parents, are very familiar with preschoolers and early school aged kids going through phases of refusing to even try anything other than a very limited variety of foods, and parents being driven crazy by the kid’s refusal to even give it a taste to see if they’d like it. Biggest group to be refused of course is anything that is green (which in the real world generally means it’s a vegetable).
Have you really never got that it was these inane battles over trying to get their children to at least taste a vegetable that was being played with, both making gentle fun of the parents’ persistence and encouraging the kid to give a chance and maybe just maybe they might like it after all even though it is green and/or looks funny?
I really don’t think #metoo (or food allergy awareness) is well served by hitting on Green Eggs and Ham!
Yeah, I can be hard to read sometimes. Sorry about that.
But I’m serious about Green Eggs and Ham. And reading it as a child (no one read it to me, I was already reading on my own before it came out), I absorbed the intended message: you really might like that disgusting-looking food.
But then a few decades passed before I read it to the Firebug for the first time, and my instant reaction was, “how often does this kid need to be told ‘No’?” He runs through all the stop signs, over and over again, refusing to take ‘No’ for an answer, just because he thinks the grumpy guy should try green eggs and ham. Which is exactly the sort of bad behavior that the OP has been experiencing as a problem.
(Between The Cat in the Hat and Sam-I-Am, you’ve got two of Dr. Seuss’ most beloved characters who are, quite frankly, assholes. But I digress.)
Perhaps–PERHAPS–my use of “attempted murder” was hyperbolic, but that’s how I’d play it. Shouting, “I told you I’m deathly allergic to more foods than I can list, so why are forcing this shit on me? ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME???” loudly enough that the whole complex can hear would be effective. And I’m loving knocking on her door at 4:30AM.
Your neighbor sounds like an asshole for multiple reasons. What’s curious to me is that she seems to be going out of her way to inconvenience herself when following your wishes would be so much easier.
I’m sorry you were “blessed” with a douchebag like her. It doesn’t help any, but I feel obligated to offer an anecdote. It’s entitled, “How to get out of eating meat the hard way,” by overly.
We’re mostly vegetarian in my household. I don’t make a huge effort not to eat meat, but by preference we don’t eat much of it. I don’t make a thing of it, though, since it’s not a lifestyle choice or medical condition, but I do tell people who ask that we prefer not to eat it. Anyway, my mom was visiting and offered to cook dinner. I let her know we don’t eat much meat, which I think she took for, “OMG, I really need some meat” (which would’ve come out wrong, and that’s one reason I’m glad I didn’t say that).
So I get home to find that mom had made the most fucking enormous meatloaf I’ve ever encountered. I mean, it was monstrous. Like, “holy shit, how many cows went into this damn thing?” large.
Anyway, we all had some. Fast forward to the middle of the night when we’re all awakened by super loud vomiting noises. I run down the hall and find my daughter standing around, looking completely flummoxed, glancing back & forth between the vomit she’d accidentally gotten on the wall and that she had cupped in her hands as she tried to get to the bathroom to be sick. It looked a hell of a lot like meatloaf. It was probably a virus rather than allergy since she had a fever. But it did get us out of ever having to eat loaves of meat again.
So maybe the OP can just barf on her doorstep? Or have someone else safely regurgitate the food and return it at 4:30 a.m.?
This might be partly a gendered thing–women experience more boundary transgressions than men do, on average, and after a lifetime of it we get pretty fucking sick of people who won’t take a plain old “no” for an answer. Pardon us if we occasionally feel like punching the next person who urges us to do something we’ve stated we’re not going to do right in their stupid face and occasionally dare to express our frustration with them.
FWIW I would count myself as among those who rudely break that apparent rule of etiquette with neighbors. Mind you I’m not so neighborly but when someone moved in on the block I would knock on their door with a welcome bottle of wine or plate of brownies. (Could have been doubly rude - they could have been recovering alcoholics or allergic to chocolate!)
Maybe partly gendered as a thing but I don’t think completely. My guess though is also that it has something to do with what sets off or does not set off buttons of hurt based on other past experiences, on personal histories, some of which might be gender related. I get that I am in the minority in this thread that would not experience this elderly woman’s behavior, at least the part of insisting on giving a plate of food over objections, as horrific. And that some find my expressed lack of horror at it to be very jerkish and assholeish.
If the new neighbors had told you they were allergic/alcoholic, would you have come back the next day with more brownies and wine? Broomstick wasn’t rude the first X times her neighbor offered her food.
I don’t think Broomstick was ever rude. And personally after a second time of waking me up I would have no problem being rude myself. It sounds like she remained more polite through continued interactions than I would have remained.
I in no way defend the neighbor’s behaviors as appropriate; they clearly are not. I read the op at least as the woman being a well intentioned idiot doing an idiotic thing. I just read it as a thing that was maybe sigh or eye-roll worthy but did not get why it, the initial op description, was grit your teeth annoying as fuck Pit-worthy.
Obviously others’ MM and do V but the extreme reaction in response to that POV struck me as very wacky. And I think we are beating a dead horse here … I hope no one is allergic to horses!
Problem is, that completely contradicts what you said before. You said that you would just accept the gift graciously and throw it away later. It was “bizarre” that anyone would get angry about this situation. It takes energy to get angry, and you’re just a cool cucumber who doesn’t waste time doing that.
Now you claim you would get angry enough to be rude to her. No more nonsense about accepting the gift with a smile. Instead of Broomstick being too angry, you think she’s being more patient than you would be.
If you’d started with this second position instead of the first, I (and I suspect everyone else) would not have gotten upset at you.
I’m sorry that you’re having to deal with this Broomstick
If it were me, sometime after the second time, I’d be asking if she was willing to take me to the hospital and pay my medical bills. Or, write “neighbor is a pushy bitch” on my arm with her offering and shove it in her face.
Ok, probably not, I just tend to fantasize about how to deal with assholes.
That’s pretty much what SmartAleq said, except you’re ignoring the part about women getting their boundaries ignored more often than men: that bit is the gendered part, with everything else being the non-gendered part. The past experiences bit is “boundaries being ignored” (again); in the case of Broomstick, specifically, “boundaries about food which can get me killed”. Why anybody would be sensitive about behavior which might kill them and which has happened many times is apparently incomprehensible to you.
And if they’d mentioned they work until midnight, I bet you wouldn’t be pounding on their door at 6 am so that you can watch them wash down the allergic-to triple chocolate brownies with a big mouthful of dollar-store merlot.
To end on a happier note (even if this is the BBQ Pit)…
The Passover Seder was marvelous. The host was very conscientious, and was even careful to reserve some homemade soup to the side before she added tomato to it and made sure I knew which items had tomato and which didn’t. No problems, no fuss, wonderful time had by all.
I have zero food allergies or intolerances and I normally eat a lot of meat, but I have definitely had the problem where after long periods with not much meat, a meat-heavy meal (particularly a high-fat meat-heavy meal), my stomach just rebels. It goes away again within a couple meals. I think that when you’re eating mostly veggies, your body just produces less of the meat and fat digesting enzymes and then freaks out when overloaded.
The Downstairs Neighbor was back today, trying to foist a container of food on me. I told her I appreciated the thought but really, please don’t do this. I have too many food allergies.
Oh, she said, I have problems with MSG, I understand.
No, I said, I really can’t. Please don’t do this anymore. Too many allergies…
It’s just chicken and vegetables she says. No tomatoes.
It’s not just tomatoes I say, it’s a lot of things. Please don’t do this anymore. No tomatoes, lentils, peas -
It doesn’t have any of that. Take it! Take it!
No, really, stop doing this. I do appreciate the thought, but no more food. Please stop doing this.
Eventually she went away. She did look offended, but at this point I don’t care. I am tired of this game. I really can NOT risk getting sick, or worse. I am tired of the containers of Mystery Food. I don’t trust her in this regard. I am not going to take it and throw it out and lie, I shouldn’t have to do that to salve her ego.
Sounds like you handled it well (or as well as she was letting you…). A little “being miffed” now is better than either of you exploding in anger later.
Ah, but will there BE a later? Or has Nutritionally Narcissistic Neighbor learned her lesson?
Feel free to let us in on any little interaction you have with her.
Broomie, ever read David Sedaris’ book When you are engulfed in flames? In there, he describes a crazy neighbor (Helen) who insists on foisting food on people, him in particular. I think you’d appreciate that particular vignette, along with the rest of the book.
