Families are funny (Part One)

 Pic courtesy of http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

"I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all." Johnny Depp

When you watch sitcoms, it seems that other people’s families are generally embroiled in complex webs of lies, constant pranks and practical jokes, and huge emotional drama. (Hey, you get all that in one episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, as well as a healthy dose of psychological insight into how numskulls operate.)

But how often do you see the kind of screwiness that really exists in your family? For instance, my family employs a number of silly voices and equally childish nicknames. I have never seen an episode of Frasier where he greets his father with “Good morning!” in a squeaky Bronx accent à la Betty Boop. (This happens to be the standard greeting for my parents.) My brother was called “Professor Klompi” for some time, after a letter came mistakenly addressing him as a professor. I think the “Klompi” part was something to do with the wooden stairs to his room in the attic.

I know I'm not alone in this weirdness. In fact, my family, with their daily quotes from Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, seem quite normal. Some families verge into disturbingly weird – I know I keep banging on about www.etiquettehell.com  but you would not believe the kind of behaviour some families accept as normal! One such lark is when your  new mother-in-law asks you what you’re buying your husband for Christmas, then gets him the same thing. (Astonishingly common, this oedipal battle – but easily countered, I’d have thought, by telling her instead what YOU’D like. Simples.)

Sometimes disturbing and hilarious appear in the same person, such as Aunt Grace, the relative of a friend who shall remain nameless. Aunt Grace has the excuse of old age now, but she has always been... inventive. According to her, she once owned a pet horse that ate at the family dinner table. She also describes with relish the physical fights she had with her father, often culminating in her picking him up and throwing him bodily over a hedge. (She is 5’2, he was a strapping 6 footer.)

 This picture isn’t really relevant to what I’m saying but it does come from awkwardfamilyphotos.com and it makes me laugh.

    

Having kids is the great leveller, because let’s face it, kids are nutters and they bring out the weirdness in everyone. A friend of mine used to have her hair washed over the kitchen sink. She and her siblings hated this routine, so for some reason, her mother invented a character called The Crazy Operator, who would wash their hair, chatting away in a Swedish accent. (She was not Swedish, but the operator evidently was.)  

Hanging out with parents of small children means conversation will constantly be interrupted by such classic lines as “We don't lick strangers,” "Where did you leave your poo?" “Your willy doesnt go in there....” and “That's the dog's treat, not yours.” And my all time number one, heard in a public bathroom: "Yes you can be a crocodile if you want to, but be a crocodile who is doing a poo".

Parents are also famously embarrassing; my favourite story is of my friend’s father shouting "SHE JUST WOULDN'T LISTEN!!" when someone enquired about his wife’s black eye. Cue the bystander slowly backing away and the embarrassed wife hurrying to explain that she had actually hit her face on the counter.

You will be pleased to know that in my family, we keep a record of all the stupid things we say, it’s kind of http://www.overheardinnewyork.com (best website ever!) on a more personal scale. We call it “The Book” and have now reached our fourth volume. 

Sometimes the mere circumstances of a quote reveal our inner weirdness. For instance, I recently burned myself on a baking tray as I removed it from the oven. As I had started by saying “Ooh!” I followed it up with “Oo oo ah ah!” in the style of a monkey. Naturally, my mother joined in with this. Then she announced “It’s because of our past lives, as monkeys.” I might mention that she has been attending a Baptist church for the last 15 years.

More quotes to come soon...

Give in to your animal instincts

Raging at film crew and ("allegedly") assaulting his mother: we all know  how Christian Bale gets when he's angry – but what's the betting that someone will be "surprised" next time he gets violent? They need this book....

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons." 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I had to buy The Gift of Fear after reading numerous recommendations on the etiquettehell forum, of all places. The ladies there would occasionally ask "Was I rude to snub that guy that I found incredibly creepy?" and the answer always came "Safety trumps etiquette."

Author Gavin De Becker is a security expert who runs a consulting firm which advises on situations that might escalate to violence. In other words, if you are the President and a would-be assassin is stalking you, he can tell you the signs which point to needing a bullet proof vest or a one way ticket to Hawaii.

The premise of his book that we all have the ability to keep ourselves safe – it's called intuition. But if you're the sort who scoffs at airy-fairy "feelings," you'll be relieved to know that those hunches aren't necessarily anything mystical. Analysing gut feelings with the benefit of hindsight, you will probably discover that there were plenty of little reasons why you actually "knew" something.

He points out that phrases like "all of a sudden" and "out of the blue" are largely meaningless, a part of the "myth" that predicting human behaviour isn't possible. He points out that "to successfully navigate through morning traffic, we make amazingly accurate high-stakes predictions about the behaviour of literally thousands of people."

Also, "the human violence we abhor and fear the most, that which we call "random" and "senseless" is neither." He argues that while we prefer to think of psychopathic killers as being totally removed from humanity, it's their very humanness which is the key to understanding them. We're not so different under the surface; most people will admit that they could be pressed into violence if a loved one was threatened. Therefore we are all capable of violence – depending on the circumstances.

He complains about the stupidity of those ubiquitous media quotes such as "neighbours describe the killer as a shy man who kept to himself", which implies that apparent normalcy is actually a pre-incident indicator for abhorrent crime. (All it really means is that the neighbours had nothing helpful or relevant to say, but they got quoted anyway.)

Knowing our natural desire to be polite and see the best in people, he describes key signs to look out for in the kind of dodgy geezers that set off your creep-o-meter. Wisely, he asserts that "no animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear, would spend any of its mental energy thinking "It's probably nothing". We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore – and even to ignore – survival signals."

Among many points, he includes: 

• Forced teaming: the kind of person who wants to make you feel "we're in the same boat".

• Charm: ask yourself why they are trying to charm you.

• Too many details: beware the person who talks too much and answers questions you haven't yet asked.

• Typecasting: sometimes men will use truly pathetic lines like "you look like the kind of woman who is too snobbish to talk to me." (To which the answer of course would be "that's funny, you look like the kind of man who makes lame attempts to manipulate women into talking to you.")

• Loan sharking: forcing you to accept a favour, eg carrying your bags.

•  The unsolicited promise: "I'll just come in for a minute then I'll go, I promise." Why does this person need to convince you?

• Discounting the word "No" – We've all had the person who "insists" that we accept a lift home / a second drink / the book we expressed an interest in. While most of the time, people's overbearing attitudes are harmless, they all have one thing in common; they refuse to accept the word "no."

(And if I may add one of my own – men who tell you "I'm a gentleman". Run fast, run far. It's like wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "Sexy". If it were true, you wouldn't need to say it.)

Some of the stories actually resonated with me; a while ago I was introduced to a guy who was a friend of a friend, within a few minutes I was thinking "This guy's got "stalker" written all over him", and I avoided the exchange of phone numbers. When I bumped into him a month or so later in town, he took it upon himself to accompany me to the supermarket, where the only way I could get rid of him was stopping dead, doing a lot of "Well, this is where I get off," and refusing his offers of help to "carry your bags," until he went away. Now if I ever happen to see him (ah, the perils of living in a small town) I actually find my adrenaline starts pumping and my instinct is to run away. Reading this book made my otherwise irrational fear make sense; I don't actually believe he is dangerous, but I do believe that if I'd given him any encouragement whatsoever, I would never be able to get rid of him.

I was especially interested to see that insisting on "helping" is a common theme; saying no to help seems rude – and making people (especially women) feel guilty enough to give in is key. On the flipside of the "helping" theme, serial killer Ted Bundy wore a fake cast on his arm or leg, and would approach women and ask them for help loading something into his car. (Wouldn't you feel like a heel if you said "No" to some poor guy with a broken arm?) 

Even if the little voice in your head is screaming that something doesn't feel right, sometimes it's very hard to extricate yourself from a situation without feeling horribly rude, especially if you don't have time to think through your reaction. Better rude than dead, though.

Intuition knows more about the situation than we are consciously aware of. For instance, maybe the guy checking you out in the car park as you unpack your groceries is giving you the creeps because you noticed him (in your peripheral vision) in the shop, getting close to you just a few too many times to be coincidental.

There are slightly more boring chapters on "high-stakes predictions, " for instance, the signs that a mad gunman might go on the rampage, among them "perceived justification, alternatives, ability and consequences" (In a nutshell, if he feels like he's been wronged, has no other options, can hit the target and can live with the police on his tail.)

There are also chapters on stalkers and assassins, and why restraining orders can do more harm than good, as they engage with the stalker and possibly provide the victim with a false sense of security.

De Becker unashamedly focuses on giving advice to women, warning that "spousal homicide is the single most predictable serious crime in America". While we've all read the usual magazine fodder on signs that your boyfriend is a bad 'un, (seriously, who would think it was a good sign when a guy says "you don't need other friends, you've got me"?) Gavin has some more interesting hints, such as a man who identifies with violent people in films, news, or fiction, and dislikes change or is unable to compromise.

He also touches on violent children and describes case studies in which authority figures have held up their hands and said "How could we possibly have known?" and said that actually, the actions were predictable, if only anyone had been paying attention.

He points out that often, dark humour can be very telling. The prime example being  people who've said "Hey, I'm not opening that package, it's probably a bomb". When someone else does open it, turns out they were right. This is because humour is "a common way to communicate true concern without the risk of feeling silly afterward".

De Becker also elaborates on how Hollywood has encouraged stalking behaviour with the formula "Boy Wants Girl, Girl Doesn't Want Boy, Boy Persists and Harasses Girl, Boy Gets Girl" and points out that when women are the pursuers (think Fatal Attraction) they are seen for the loonies that they are.

He takes a tough love approach to domestic violence, saying "I believe that the first time a woman is hit, she is a victim, and the second time, she is a volunteer," and emphasises that "staying is a choice". Harsh words, but I would say that they are ultimately empowering. Believing it's possible for a man to change overnight from a big old pussycat into a cruel control freak is terrifying, because it suggests that the behaviour is impossible to predict. There has to be a first time for violence, but there WILL have been clues along the way. It's just that sometimes it's easier to ignore signs than face up to what they might come to mean.

I think it's possible that domestic violence could be reduced dramatically if this book was taught in schools. It won't change violent people, but it could help to inform potential victims about the danger signals and type of partners they should avoid.

Evidently, we're all capable of reading other people; it's what we're designed to do. We've been analysing each other and making predictions and conclusions about each other for thousands of years, we should be pretty good at it by now. By trusting your "caveman brain" you can tap into knowledge you didn't know you had.

The book can be a little dry in places; we're given a lot of detail on some historical cases and why assassins struck, and a fair bit of advice for bosses of large corporations. Whereas I think I speak for all of us when I say we want more juicy stories about would-be attackers being foiled by someone's intuition.

The website https://www.gavindebecker.com/ also has some useful and interesting info on how dangerous the world may or may not be – including a guide to de-coding the scaremongering style of news reports. 

The overall message is reassuring; trusting your intuition is the opposite of living in fear, as it eliminates all that unnecessary worry.

This book is a must read; I devoured it in a couple of days and have been recommending it to everyone. However, I must warn you that by the end of it you may feel tempted to actively seek out creepy people just so that you can yell "No is a complete sentence!" in their faces.

When foot in mouth disease flares up....

Oh Kim Kardashian, you may have the face of an angel and the curves of a runaway train, but you do say some silly things.

I am a huge fan of etiquettehell.com a website with incredible stories of everyday rudeness; a place where you can learn appropriate responses to inappropriate observations (the catch all phrase being “What an interesting assumption,”) as well as enjoy “Oh no she di’n’t!” calibre stories. 

I have noticed lately that men seem to have forgotten that “How old are you?” is one of those questions you must never ask a lady. (And if they’re not sure whether or not you are a lady, a knuckle sandwich should help them out.) Age now seems to be their first enquiry, closely followed by “Who do you live with?” which I now realise is what’s considered a “subtle” alternative to asking if you are single. One guy even followed this up (in the space of about three minutes) by asking about my last relationship. What else do you want to know, how much I weigh? 

Famous men also seem to be etiquettely challenged when it comes to chatting up women. Cristiano Ronaldo successfully seduced the mother of his baby with the line “Me.You. Fuck fuck.’ Which would surely result in any self-respecting woman responding with “You. Door. Fuck off.” Alas, it seems that fame and money go even further than personality.

(If any elderly relations are reading this, apologies for my disgraceful language.)

Some celebrities are worth following for the guaranteed genius of their quotes. Katie Price defended her use of botox with “I don’t worry about not being able to show emotion. It’s not like I’m an actor and need to have that ability.” No, Katie, but you are a human being. Let’s not forget that sometimes, even people who AREN’T Kate Winslet value being able to move their faces.
 

Dane Bowers confessed “I don’t really like Shakespeare. But I prefer the more modern stuff he wrote to that old school shit. I can’t understand most of it.” At least he’s honest, although I’m not sure what “modern stuff” Shakey wrote. (Could he be thinking of William Shatner?)

Some celebs have been pounced on for creating controversy, Kim Kardashian momentarily forgot about her own topless posing and sex tapes when she tweeted her disgust at a fellow restaurant patron daring to breastfeed with “no cover up”. The horror! (Although I do agree that changing a diaper at the table is going above and beyond the call of duty.) 

Kristin Stewart got into trouble for saying that photos of herself dealing with intrusive media attention made her feel “like I'm looking at someone being raped". Insensitive perhaps, but if that’s the way she feels, the Thought Police can’t exactly change that. (And I don’t suppose many people, especially at the age of twenty, could cope with the attention of the world’s media AND bloodthirsty Twilight fans...)

I’m no stranger to the tactless comment myself (hey, I’m a Sagittarian!) My most recent effort was while chatting to an American advertising executive about the differences between the US and UK. “How do you stand the TV?” I asked. “When there’s an ad break before the programme, then after the opening credits, then every three minutes...” He politely mentioned “Well, it’s my business, so....” and I frantically back pedalled, “Well, of course, there are the annoying adverts, and then there are the really good ones.... I can’t think of any really good ones right now... but I’m sure all of yours are...” 

It’s a good thing I don’t embarrass too easily; I also made a mirthful entrance to a garden party recently. The invitation was for a “Mad hatter’s tea party,” and the dress code read “Tea at the Ritz.” Hurrah! I donned my puffiest skirt and little top hat and set off, looking only slightly kooky. On the way, I met a small bumblebee who seemed to be ailing; I come from a household where poorly bees are always fed with watery honey. So I picked him up with a leaf and continued to my friend’s house with the unfortunate insect cupped in my palm, hoping I could perk him up with some sugar upon my arrival. 

Tottering as fast as my high heels could carry me, I arrived at the party to find a roomful of men staring dispassionately at the football game on TV. As opening lines go, “Has anyone got any honey? I’ve got a little sick bee here!” has to be my favourite to date. 

Unfortunately Mr Buzzy was not long for this world, but he did at least get a last meal (sugary water). And while I was the only one who had actually taken the “Ritz” part of the invitation to heart, in the words of Dita Von Teese, “I LOVE being overdressed.” But perhaps that makes me rude?