This afternoon I was asked to think up a list of words beginning with the letter ‘I’ for kids from Elementary to High School. “You’re an English Major, Incubus, I’m sure you’re good with words” The object was to find words to use in a sentence- if the child did not know the word, they could look it up in the dictionary. It is a nice little game to help kids learn new words, and I’m rather fond of it, so I always love to help. As such, I came up with about 60 words beginning with the letter ‘I’ that could be used. The response?
“No, none of those are any good.” was the reply I got.
I was kind of miffed. If I was thought to be some kind of wordsmith about this, why disregard so many words? They needed eight words. I gave sixty words…words that I believed were not so obscure as to be impossible to make sentences out of with a quick look through the dictionary. I thought of a broad assortment of words, I mean, how many words begin with the letter I?! Couldn’t they find something useful out of the sixty I gave?! Is this some passive-aggressive behavior, to try to make me feel dumb? I don’t get it!
Ooh, this is a serious pet peeve of mine. I had an ex-girlfriend who did this all the time.
“Which skirt should I wear tonight?”
“Uh, the gray one.”
“Mmmm, no, I’m gonna go with the green…”
Drove me bonkers. I can see doing it now and then, because having another’s opinion can sometimes help throw one’s own preference into relief, but this happened constantly; eventually I began to suspect I was being tested.
I’ve had a couple of friends who, when they asked my advice, and I gave a serious answer, would seem to give the matter some thought. They never actually took any of the advice I gave them, though. After a while this got to be so annoying that I stopped giving serious answers and started giving ridiculous answers:
“What should you do with your backyard? Well, I would tear up all the grass and plants and stuff and fill it with sand. Yeah! Make it a giant sandpit! And put up a big tent over it to keep it shaded! And put up a volleyball net! That would be awesome!”
For some reason, they don’t ask my advice anymore. Hmmmmm.
See, that wouldn’t bother me much. But when this happens to me, I’m barely finish my sentence when they’re saying, “Nah, I’ll go with the redhead” or whatever.
It’s one thing to disagree, but if you ask me and then can’t be asked to even consider my answer, then you’re being a jackass.
This just happened to me with the landlord of my building. We began experiencing a rainwater leak in our office yesterday, and he came today to look at it.
He said where he thought the leak developed, and I had a slightly different idea as I had seen where the leak came from. The conversation went something like this:
LandLord: I think blah blah blah…
Me: I saw water dripping from here, so maybe blah blah…
LL: Oh, you think it’s leaking from blah blah?
Me: Ya it kinda looked that way
LL: Oh, well it’s not…
Me: ok
Anyhow, it is just so natural for him to dismiss anybody else’s thoughts that he didn’t even put any effort into it. It’s like a second nature to him, and I know this from past dismissals.
Anyways, I just thought it was a funny exchange and on-topic, too.
Perhaps they meant ‘l’ not ‘I’? But otherwise, weird. Did they say why not? Did they have words already? Or think yours were too obscure or too obvious? Or did you include a lot of Iuliuss and IXs? Or unable to decide between your choices?
For that matter, why didn’t they just find a 200 page dictionary and open it at random in the 'I’s rather than insulting helpful people?
Just now, he came in and asked me if I knew who Susan Sondheim was. I said no, the only Sondheim I knew of was the playwright. No, no, no, he says, she was some sort of feminist and wrote a lot of essays in the 60s, and she died today, so they’re talking about her on the TV, and her name’s Susan Sontag.
Like most Dopers, I am the go-to guy when someone is wondering about some obscure piece of trivia. Some of these people make me nuts. They’ll ask me because “Haj knows everything”, I’ll tell them and then they don’t fucking believe me. WTF? Why did you even ask me?
The wife asking what she should wear and not taking the advice is a totally different animal. That’s just some weird part of the decision making process but after over a decade of marriage I’ve sort of figured out the rules:
If you don’t answer, you’re screwed.
If you say “I don’t care” or even “you’ll look great no matter what you wear,” you’re screwed.
If you answer too quickly thereby indicating that you didn’t put any thought into it, you’re screwed.
If you give a reasonable answer, you’re most likely not screwed.
Personally, I’m so happy not to be screwed that I don’t give a crap if my advice is taken or not.
