Man I get so tired of this way of talking. We have a couple of regular customers–middle-aged artsy chicks, patchouli and scarves, long gray hair and dangly filligree earrings, great big beads and little tiny beads but no medium sized beads, homespun shawls tossed diagonally across their shoulder, silver ring on the the thumb–you know, right?
And they do that extreeemly annoying thing where they try to make everything they say sound like the most important, most emotionally engaged moment of their entire life: they tilt their head, make aggressive eye contact, and contort their face into a look of monumental concern, while drawing out every vowel into a breathy moan of universal awareness: “How aaaaaaaaaaare yoooooooou?”
“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, it’s Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish,” on the phone, like I’m gonna know who the hell Trish is.
Fine, I get it that you want to lead a concerned, engaged, aware life. But do you have to be so fucking insincere about it?
And how do they all sound like this? What’s the model for this specific behavior? Can it really have emerged, parallel evolutionlike, identically in so many different women?
My… er, I don’t want to say anything that will get me into trouble, but suffice to say I have a relative like this. She’s a middle aged woman who makes her money renting properties other people maintain, so she doesn’t work. You may as well have just described her; seriously, if she ever goes missing I can use your post as a description to give the cops. The only thing I’d change is that she’s a bit less hippiesh in dress. A bit. She does have the silver toe ring, the Birkenstocks, and the shit jewelry.
In personal interactions she is precisely as you describe; every word out of her mouth is telling you that she is concerned and feels your pain and wants to give you a big ol’ hug and yet not a word of it, not a syllable, is sincere. It’s all veneer. She puts on a show of being friendly to everyone, of being the ultimate earth goddess kindly woman of power who;ll use your power to make the world a better place, but she is in fact conniving, ferociously elitist, and a world class skinflint.
What do you call them? I’m not sure, which means you get first dibs on coming up with a name. What I find more curious is how they’re produced. The one I know is a born member of the unimportant part of the upper class, married and divorced very poorly, and is now a social butterfly in a small town. She does no real work - she has never held a real job I am aware of, and to be honest, I think that robs a person of a fundamentally important part of their character. Perhaps that is what she is trying to fill in with all phony friendliness and the new age bullshit she spouts. A person who never has to work always ends up weird. Perhaps she is hiding anger or fury, burying it deep within herself, I don’t know.
Are these things common to your customers? Perhaps. Maybe drugs are involved. I know the woman I’m talking about is perpetually drunk. I’ve seen her 50 times and I bet she was loaded on 45 of them.
She’s really, really weird. I’m very good IRL (believe it or not from my being an asshole on this board) at connecting with people - it’a a necessary part of my job and has always been my ticket in life. But I can’t really connect with this woman. I can play her, because she’s not the brightest light in the Christmas display, but how her brain works I can’t fathom.
But that voice. Oh, I know that voice, dude. I’m hearing it now, thanks to you. What do you call that? I call it the voice of hell.
Real story: Once, when my wife was maybe four months pregnant, she came over for some occasion and said to me, head tilted just as you describe, in that faux-sincereity voice, “Soooooooooooooo, do you put your head on her belly every mooooorning and say `Bless you baby, be well my child?’”
King of the Hill usually uses that accent for counselors, social workers, New Age types, and the like. I’ve always called it the “counselor inflection”, just as there’s other accents that seem to be a trademark of certain professions; long-haul truckers, airline pilots, and strip club deejays to name a few.
They all make everyone they know watch What the #$! Do We (K)now!?* Practically every time someone comes in asking for that movie, I can guess who recommended it. (Me: “It’s in Documentaries, under Religion/Philosophy, because we don’t have a Bullshit section.”)
Yes - middle-aged (got me there)
Partially - artsy chicks (I like artsy things, but I’m not artsy myself)
No - patchouli (ugh, nasty stuff! I don’t use perfumes or scents at all*)
No - scarves (I don’t own any scarves)
Partially - long gray hair (my hair isn’t yet totally gray, but it is long)
No - dangly filligree earrings (I don’t own any earrings)
No - …beads… (I don’t own any beads)
No - homespun shawls tossed diagonally across their shoulder (no scarves)
No - silver ring on the the thumb (I don’t wear any jewelry at all)
Don’t know - they tilt their head (I’ll have to stay aware to see if I do this)
No - make aggressive eye contact (I have to force myself to make eye contact)
Don’t know - contort their face into a look of monumental concern (I hope not)
NO - “How aaaaaaaaaaare yoooooooou?” (shoot me if I start to sound like this)
No - “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, it’s Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish,” (not named Trish)
No - What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (haven’t seen it, have no interest in seeing it)
Anything else?
well, other than the residual after rinsing scents of Zest soap, Suave shampoo and conditioner and AIM toothpaste, plus Suave Powder Fresh deodorant.
I kind of work like someone like this, minus the hippy clothes. Upon meeting you, she sizes you up instantly and talks about how great you are as a human being. Very friendly, very touch-feely, always has a book to recommend, always impressed with the things youv’e done. Asks interesting questions and generally seems to care about your answers. Very expressive and full of suggestions, many of them out in left field. But at least she listens and sees you as a real person.
But the thing is, she actually is kind of an impressive person too. She’s a retired professor, independenty wealthy, and she’s literally trying to sell the merits of human shit for agricultural use So it’s not really like she’s fake or anything. I always say hi when I see her, even though she works on the other side of the floor. I’m not new agey or anything (though I do wear Tevas and wear “natural” jewelry), but eccentrics, especially positive ones, always make for better company.
I know she’s a fresh of breath fresh air compared to the self-absorbed coworkers who regulary bombard my office with boy and wedding drama 24/7. My conversations with the “new age” woman may be a little more awkward, but at least I never want to kill her.
Oh I would love to see middle-age again! I’m officially a senior. Artsy? Yeah. Patchouli? Too sweet. I don’t wear scents often. Too many of my friends are sensitive or on chemo. But when I do, my favorite is a French perfume that’s been around for almost a hundred years. I never find anyone else wearing it here. (That’s for sure.)
I do wear scarves – sometimes to be more discreet about my baZOOMS. I have medium length dark hair with some silver hairs. Okay. Quite a few. I don’t usually see filligreed dangly earrings. I prefer the simplicity of smaller hoops. Great big beads look silly on my small bones. Little tiny beads are a bitch to string. Most of my beads fall into the medium category. But I do love to make beaded necklaces and have scores of them! I didn’t spin or weave any of the shawls I have and I don’t wear them diagonally, but I do love them. It’s a tartan scarf that I wear diagonally.
Silver ring on the thumb? I have lots of silver rings, but my thumb ring is 14K gold and one of a kind. It is especially made to flash in case I wish to bite my thumb.
I do have aggressive eye contact. I intentionally developed it before I began teaching. It was part of a course I took at Peabody/Vanderbilt. Something like Successful Classroom Management Strategies 432. Unfortunately I have it only in one eye while the other one wanders off to do whatever. But that one eye was sufficient in the classroom. And I have the off mode available to me also.
I’ve been told often that I have a very pleasant phone voice, but that I need to speak a little louder in person. (I used to be able to project my voice a couple of blocks away if I needed to.) People that I’m met through chat rooms say that I sound like Scarlett O’Hara. At the moment I’m having trouble speaking at all because of surgery.
I’m surprised that other things weren’t mentioned. The boots. The hats. The cane. The circle skirts. The boa constrictor. But I give you both fairly high grades for this one.
I used to have a neighbour across the landing who was exactly like lissener’s description, but she had graduated onto the next level of consciousness. She would often stand in her open doorway and see who was going up and down the stair. Apparently she stood there naked once when workmen were carrying some stuff up. She would also ‘decorate’ the stairwell with hippy junk. Once I came up the stair and saw that my flatmate’s bike had been covered with all sorts of crap, which would have to be moved before it could be used. This neighbour was standing in her doorway so I said to her “Could you stop putting stuff on Cathy’s bike?” She replied, in a posh Scottish version of the voice described above, “I know Caathy verry welll.” Obviously a couple of conversations count for more than 15 years’ acquaintance.
And to the OP, Pagan Festivals are full of these people, and they are not only women. I just spent the last 6 days with many people like this, and I stay away from as many of them as possible. The most interesting part of this personality type is that they tend to have very disfunctional personal lives, which they like to hide behind the touchy-feely-new-agey facade, but if you talk to them for longer than 5 minutes they will tell you every single illness, relationship and employment problem they have.
The ones I am friends with are more like monstro’s co-worker, though.
