Thursday, January 30, 2003
Unabashedly irascible - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER – Here's a story about a comment I took too seriously. It's one of those personal pieces a reader once wrote in to say they liked. The names have been changed just because.
So I'm planning a little get together with some friends, whom I regularly break bread with. Just a little something my old dinner companion Joy, likes to call ‘chasing the January blahs away.' For once my old pal Walter suggests a restaurant that really does intrigue me. No, not Red Robins, that endless chip joint. Or something fishy, like one of the plethora of sushi places we've got in this town. (There's so much sushi in Vancouver, you'd think they put dogs in it.) Walter suggests a dining room at a certain Downtown hotel. I concur, murmuring that it'd give me an excuse to don the pair of cufflinks my old friend Sally gave me. With Walter and Sally on board, I ask my old lunch buddy Herbert if he wants to go. Herb, who hardly wears sleeves, let alone hangs at any of the swank hotels in the city centre agrees, and I ask him for suggestions as to whom else would like to go. It gets better.
Sally, wants to bring her old friend Bernadette. I went to the same high school with Bernadette, but I didn't know her then, though I've had a meal with her before. She's harmless, and Sally wants to bring her. I think she owes her money. Sure, say I. I ask another friend, Casey, if he'd like to go. However the studious scholar that he is, he passes. Something Walter said would happen. Walter's a smart guy. If only he wasn't Polish . . .
I ask my awfully candid friend Martha if she's got plans that night. She says she'll call. I'll wait, since it's just under a month away. I ask my old friend Harriet if she'd like to go. Harriet insists she's never worn anything fancy to a restaurant before. Like me, she's now got an excuse. Harriet's a yes, Sally and her friend Bernadette ditto, Herbert and of course Walter, whose idea this all was in the beginning, but who has had the gall to step aside and let me take over and call it my own. Bless him.
Herbert says his friend Alice is interested in going. I know Alice. We aren't close friends, but being the hypersensitive and irascible person I am, I recall Alice once saying something about me. Frankly, the comment was an inane slip of the tongue, something I took too seriously. I seize on the opportunity, because no one I know ever seizes on anything. No seizing on the big issues of the day, or even the mundane. For example, in a mix group of guys and girls, you'd think there'd be some getting together, or what my friend Marty Beckerman wrote a book on – ‘hooking up', when there clearly has been clandestine interest. There's a lot of snivelling though.
When I learned that Alice was coming to dinner, I take the opportunity to make a point. I contact Herb, whereupon I say the comment was an affront to my character, and that I found it ironic in the extreme that Alice would attend a dinner I was planning at the unnamed Vancouver hotel, considering she said I had no taste. Quel horreur! Yes, that's what poor Alice said. Yes, for a guy who cruelly made a woman cry on the bus, who refused to nod docilely as a Hell's Angels angel tore a strip off me, who grew up with my father – took Alice's comment a tad too seriously.
Harriet, ever the diplomat, tries to placate me. She's also interested in seeing this sorted out. Seems she has been planning an outfit already. I vehemently want this out. I want Alice to withdraw her comment, or apologise. I want it discussed, because I know it's wrong. Anyone that knows me knows it's wrong. It's all very silly, but what she said isn't the truth. It's a lie, really. I mention it to Herbert at the time he first brings up Alice's name. But as blase as he is, he ignores it as one of old Joe's idiosyncrasies. It'll pass, he thinks. Alas it doesn't. Another lesson to be learned.
I know I'm difficult. I know it's all petty and harmless gibber-jabber from someone who doesn't know better, and frankly, I don't know too well either. Harriet and Herbert think I hate Alice. I don't. I don't know her well enough to hate her. I just want everything, hashed out for once. My colleagues in my English class have made me realise the importance of what people think about you. It does matter a damn what people think.
The fact of the matter is I am irascible. I am moody. That's what happens when you're me. Blame it on Sinatra. Blame it on my Dad. Blame it on the water. Whatever the case, I have a penchant for feeling tremendous highs and ignominious lows. I'm not a manic depressive, but I understand the life of emotional contradictions. We all will one day. Maybe not now, but we will. I know the ability to suffer a system that can withstand a vast array of emotions, from extreme sadness to uproarious elation. I pick my causes selectively. I may gloss over the most important and champion the absurd. That's what I did here. Rather than hound Martha over whether she'll show up at the dinner, I make a point over Alice's comment, something she's practically forgotten, putting Herbert in the most precarious of situations. What do I care? Like the fearless cattleman in the Old West, watcha gonna do?
The other night, I get on the dreaded instant message thing that I find at the bottom-right-hand corner of my computer screen. People have told me it's unreliable, but I use it anyway. I dread everything about it: the egregious use of slang, the abhorrent abbreviations, the ugly noise. Herbert greets me with pleasantries and a perfunctory greeting that is enough to make you heave. I know what's up and he does to. Why then, the faux and transparent prelude? Perhaps it's akin to the bow that a duo who are about to engage in a karate match do, or the shaking of hands that prizefighters engage in prior to a bout.
Herbert fires a question: "Why do you hate Alice?"
I rebut: "I don't hate Alice." I engage in a carefully worded dissertation on why I think Alice is seriously delusional or just terribly mistaken.
At this point Alice fires her own missive. (Herb probably gave her my number.) She inquires as to why I hate her. She's heard things. Nothing is sacred in this world of ours. Or perhaps it's just the people around me. I admire Alice's gall at confronting me over this insane situation. I tell her, no, I do not hate her, and that my grievance is over her misspoken comment. Turns out she doesn't recall ever uttering it. I tell her I can look up the date if she so wishes. I keep meticulous records. Then she contributes what I surmise is an apology, if not a repudiation of the remark. I am satisfied. End of issue? No.
Herbert, while all of this is going on, doesn't know the discussion going on at the other side of cyberspace. He's still trying to ascertain details, as well as try to nail me with accusations from being a disgruntled bitter, oversensitive, obsessive, irrational, a different me, and the kicker: a hypocrite. Just when you think, it's over, having it all sorted at the horses' mouth, Herb's still smarting over yesterday's leftovers. I like a good scrap. I ain't backing down, and from the looks of things, neither is he. Bring it on, I mutter under my breath. If anyone's walking out of this one, it's me. I can hear his rejoinder: feet first probably.
He's making a mountain out of a molehill now and I play along. Why not, I started this mess, I'm going to finish it. Digging a deep, dank and dark hole is fun, especially when you're watching Herb do it. I make my point that perhaps this will be a lesson for all: to stand up to whatever it is, one says. Backing words with deeds and vice versa. Herb doesn't take too well to instruction.
Herbert then comes up with the mother of all hypotheticals. One surmises from the depth of depravity, stooped by Herb, that emotions have run high at his end. "How would you like it if I held a dinner and said you could invite anyone you wanted," he states, "but I said you couldn't bring them. How would you feel?"
Oh mon dieu. I don't know whether to laugh at the thought, or weep at his originality. I matter of factly state, that were he to pull off a prank like that, I would simply not attend. I anticipate he'll respond in kind. He doesn't. Mind you, were he to pull off the hypothetical reality he's dreamt up, I would merely tell him to do the sexually impossible to himself.
He proceeds to say I'm childish and that I've been overreacting. I am glad. He still thinks I'm a hypocrite. I laugh at my side of the computer screen. He thinks I'm wrong. I recount with delight the speciousness of his badly flawed argument. He thinks I'm nuts. I think about the line between his failed contestation and his own mental welfare.
I know I overreacted. So sue me. I'm still waiting for Herb's statement of fact and the call from his barrister. I don't believe I was wrong to make my case, no matter how untimely and unnecessary it was. I shouldn't have made great hay over a silly comment, but I did, knowing the kerfuffle and grief I caused for others. Herb claims I put him in the most difficult of positions. All this, even though I hardly know Alice and at that, rarely if ever do I see her. The moral of the story probably is that I rarely I forget things. I expect more of others than I do of myself. I'm irascible, and exhibiting the greatest sign of being an only child – I've got a healthy ego.
The lesson I'll always remember passed down by generations of my forebearers: forgive, but never forget. Not forgetting is part of the obsessiveness I exhibit as a person. It's a kind of nitpicking, selective madness I have. I'll insist on donning a fresh, white handkerchief in the breast pocket of my shirts, but I won't bother tucking in the damned thing. I'll drop hundreds of bucks at my favourite bookseller, but I'll endeavour to use a coupon that'd give me back a tiny minuscule portion of the said sum, even if it means unnecessary paper work for the poor, frazzled clerk. I am what I am.
At least in this instance, the prophetic saying: ‘don't get mad, get even' is particularly apt. For me this exercise has shown the depths to which I'll go to make other people's lives hell. If I think long and hard, probably Herbie deserves all of this grief. Maybe once, he said something about me. Or maybe he did something that annoyed me, as he is wont to do. What? I don't remember.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .