Dismissed

I wrote this before Christmas break even began but it is an excellent example of how I need to start using my words, so I'm putting it here just because:
I hate confrontation. Maybe my total discomfort with that is why I push down my own thoughts and ideas and just roll with whatever the loudest personality in the room says.

I can almost always see the other side of an argument.

I mean, okay. There was this time when a boyfriend wanted to write a bad check to Meijer for cash. That was a no-brainer for me and we fought bitterly over that one. That time, no, I couldn’t see his side. He wanted me to do something that was so fundamentally wrong that I didn’t even try to see his side of things. Let’s face it, he was trying to get me to BREAK THE LAW and I refused. Never is beer worth the risk of prosecution. Honestly, I can’t believe I even need to put that into writing.

But most of the time, the issue is over opinions rather than right and wrong. Most opinions are neither right nor wrong. Obviously there are exceptions. Like if your opinion is that 45 is an excellent president, your opinion is WRONG. But most opinions, like preferring green grapes over red grapes, well, that’s okay, it’s just an opinion, it’s not right or wrong.

Which is why I am not usually willing to debate or argue an opinion. I don’t like to argue unless I know I’m right.

So when Tom got all opinionated about which mug we should stuff with candy and send with Olivia for the sixth grade mug exchange and hot chocolate party, I kind of shut down. His opinion was that the dippy little mug with the picture of the snowmen was better than the taller one that was shaped like a snowman.

I disagreed but I didn’t have a reason for my opinion other than the taller, snowman shaped one was cuter.

His opinion was based on the fact his belief the shorter, more traditionally mug-shaped one would be less-likely to be spilled by a rambunctious (or just clumsy) twelve year old.

My own opinion was based on the fact that the sixth-graders in questions are typical twelve year olds.

I truly believe that Tom was basing his opinion on his belief that Olivia is a typical twelve year old. She’s not. She’s just not.

Where she’d very likely spill that mug, the kids in her class…probably would not.

I started to tell him about seeing one of her typical classmates the evening before at a basketball game (I was there to sell beef sticks, not because I enjoy watching high school basketball. I do not enjoy watching high school basketball…in fact, I do not enjoy watching any level of basketball, be it high school, college, professional, junior high, little tykes or even geriatric. No. I will pass on all basketball, thank you ever so much.)

Ahem, back to the game where this classmate of Olivia’s walked by me several times and then stopped to say hi and ask me how Olivia is doing.

Can you even imagine? A twelve year old girl stopped to say hi to the mother of her classmate and ask how the classmate is doing. She looked and acted fifteen freaking years old. She’s not even going through that awkward chubby stage a lot of twelve year olds go through. She’s beautiful and kind and smart and social and I’m damned sure that if she had a hot chocolate-filled mug that looked like this:

Or this:

She would not spill it. She wouldn’t need this dumpy little mug just to keep the hot chocolate from meeting the desk and the floor.:

And you know what? Who cares if they do spill it? These teachers, the people ORGANIZING this shindig, know these kids. They know them better than Tom and I do. We know Olivia and we know that she’s not a typical sixth grader. And hey, if a kid does spill their hot chocolate (Olivia?) the teachers are the ones who have to clean it up, not us.

But back to my starting to tell him about seeing T at the school that night. I was going to try and explain to him about how mature she seemed and how capable of sipping hot chocolate out of a snowman-shaped mug she probably was but all I got out was, “I saw T, Olivia’s classmate last night at the school-“

And at that point, he kind of moved his hand in a way that came across as dismissive and said, “Yeah?”

I shut down. I shut my stupid mouth and I started to move away.

Tom put his hand out and asked incredulously, “What are you doing? Were you just going to walk away?”

I was. I’d been dismissed so I was done.

He swears he was just doing the hand movement thing to move the story along and that he was waiting to hear a story. There was no story. There would never be a story. I was no longer interested in defending my opinion.

Then…THEN I felt bad for thinking he was dismissing me and my stupid eyes got teary. I hate that so much. I also hate that instead of shutting down when he ‘dismissed’ me I didn’t just call him on it.

My opinion is no less valid than his just because it’s different.

But my aversion to confrontation is so strong that I’ll just meekly walk away rather than ‘argue’ my point. I put argue in the quotes because it wasn’t even an argument. It was a discussion but that man has a strong opinion about everything. And his voice is loud and can be booming. It feels like a confrontation even when he doesn’t mean for it to be confrontational.

Sigh. I don’t know where I’m going with this. Maybe I’m just getting it out because it’s been bugging me for days.

For what it’s worth, he put the dumpy, dippy mug away and insists that we’re sending the cute one since that’s the one *I* want to send. Whatever. Sometimes getting weepy is the only way I can get my way. I hate that that is true.