Over the years, I have been repeatedly admonished by the people who are supposed to love me best, as I am, that I am not to speak of certain “fancy” topics in a social setting. Um. Wat? Hellooooo?
My husband told me 17 years ago that I should not reference the reversing, spiraling pattern of an aimless, choked-up Thanksgiving Buffet line as “kinda like an MC Escher drawing, amiright? *LOL, swigs some more mojito from my red Solo cup*.” I wasn’t being some weird smarty-pants snob – I *saw* the image of the “Relativity” print in my head and I spoke of it, in what I thought was a friendly and joking manner. He was bothered. He thought I was being high-falutin’ and would make a poor impression on a group I was meeting for the first time in a social setting. No such thing was intended. I visualized a thing, I shared it socially. I was chided. I’m still really annoyed about that event. I married him anyway, on the assumption that his intent was positive. However, I am clearly still troubled by what occurred in an otherwise very relaxed, celebratory environment.
At the bar of our Lodge today, my mother whispered a demand that I stop discussing Ayn Rand and my recommendation of starting with “Anthem,” skipping right past “The Fountainhead” (not a likable character in that turd), and heading for the delight of “Atlas Shrugged” and going Galt to the gentleman on my left. I think she assumed intellectual snobbery on my part. I really do wish she had considered that adults can have conversations she might not have the full context for instead.
The line I am fed on a recurring basis is that I am speaking over others’ heads and they won’t know what I am talking about. I passionately disagree. Nearly everybody has seen the image of the funky-ass staircases by Escher, even if they don’t know the artist’s name, nor the title of the artwork. C’mon, now – what do you think the House staircases in the Harry Potter movies were based on? A rather large amount of people have heard of “going Galt,” or “Atlas Shrugged.” They may not know Ayn Rand’s name, or have heard of Objectivism, but they are at least lightly aware of the concept of the “doers” versus the “feeders.”
What irks the crap outta me is people assuming my buddy at the bar at the Lodge won’t “get” Ayn Rand. So. Guess what? He and I had a really great half-buzzed talk about esoteric literature and he took notes about Rand on his iPhone, and sent me a screen shot of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, a work I was not familiar with. He’s going to read “Anthem,” and I am going to at least scan the Cliff Notes version of “The Art of War.” Then we will regroup over cocktails and snacks and discuss further. Because even middle-aged drunks can talk about something more than what’s on the local bar’s TV screen.
I firmly believe that assuming others cannot grasp a concept they have not been exposed to is presumptuous at best and, quite frankly, damned insulting to everybody in the conversation. I prefer not to decide what the intellectual capacity of somebody I am speaking with is out of the gate, and if you do, shame the heck on you, dear Sir or Madam. Shame.
Give everybody a chance and offer some context they can grasp before you get judgy, howboutdat?
/rantover
You are too kind, thank you, Elaine! I get aggravated when others tell me to hush/change who I am, because I try really hard to pay attention to folks I am conversing with – I regularly will ask, “Hey, did I get oddball on you, would you prefer we get back to casseroles?” or some such – and follow their wishes. However, I actually get more people who enjoy trying a new topic than the Social Police would imagine. 😉
There you go, showing your sexy brain again. Don’t ever stop! You meet the best kind of people that way. The ones that are confoosed from your repartee should either fess up and ask a question or shush and learn something new from context.