Standing Up For Myself

Standing up for myself is so hard.

I am interesting because I am not weak or confused. I am not cowardly, or afraid to stand my ground. I am not deferential, or scared. But when someone I disagree with vents some intolerable opinion, I do not stand up for myself verbally. Especially if I think speaking up will make no difference.

On Tuesday I took my boys to piano lessons. Their lessons are high on a winding hill street above Hollywood. I pick them up straight from school, where they get to play outside a total of 20 minutes on a schoolyard that is looking smaller and smaller as my boys get bigger and bigger. They can only play outside during limited hours because an angry neighbor behind the school is so irritated by the cries of children playing that the city has said OK, no playing outside at a school before 10 in the morning, and not within 20 feet of the back wall, because that could be really irritating to you, you one grouchy person.

This is relevant.

The road in front of the piano teacher's was crowded Tuesday, so I pulled up and parked illegally in front of a beautiful old Moorish apartment building. Benji had spilled popcorn in the back of the car, so I brushed the spilled pop corn onto the street (the birds can eat it, I reasoned) and shepherded the boys into the house with their piano books. They leapt and laughed and raced in.

I walked back out to my car quickly, was scribbling checks on bills I have to pay before shooting down to the post office, when an older man came and tapped on my window. I could just tell it would be bad news.

I opened my door. "Yes?"

"Are your children students of Gigi?" he asked. Yes, I said. "I am a writer," he said. "I live here because it is quiet. Your youngest child just ran screaming across the street at the top of his lungs."

I searched my memory. I recalled no screaming.

"The shouting of children, the barking of a dog, can interrupt a writer."

Still, I listened. "I live here because it is quiet."

He stopped, and waited for me to respond.

I recalled suddenly that I had heard this same man a few weeks earlier venting to Gigi as we went in, going on and on about how no one disciplines their children, it just shows how bad parents are today. Some other parent sat in the car outside their house for an hour with a screaming child. How do they put up with it? Parents are too scared to step in, blah blah blah. It is so cliched and curmudgeonly I had no time.

I said, "I am searching my memory, and I do not recall my child screaming."

He said, "Your child was screaming. We all have different thresholds. It may not sound like screaming to you, but it is to me. And we need to co-exist in this world."

I knew what he said next would be the same tirade he had unleashed on Gigi the last time, so I kind of tuned out. He finished with, "I am not going to tell you how to raise your children. I know better than to wade into that territory. But people need to learn to discipline their children. To set standards."

I was so angry I feared for his safety. But still I did not speak.

Then he pointed to the popcorn. "And that." I said yes, I am sorry. "My dog could eat that," he said. "He could get sick."

I said, "Fine, I will pick it up." I got up and picked up the 10 pieces of popcorn. He said, "No. No. I can get a broom." I just picked it up and put it in the trash can. I said, "Next time I will drop my children off in front of Gigi's door."

Then I walked away.

He shouted after me. "I love children. I have a daughter. I have a grand-daughter..."

I did not turn around. I did not respond. I got in my car and drove away.

I was furious.

Why was I furious?

I was furious because I did not tell him off.

The minute he began with "I am a writer..."

I wanted to say, "I am a writer, too. And so is my husband. And this is a public street. If you want silence you should move to the wilderness. You have chosen to live in an apartment building in the middle of Hollywood. The shout of a happy child is not criminal. If your ideas are so fleeting that the shout of a child drives your brilliant thought from your mind, it must not have been very brilliant. Writing is made up of life. And children, and dogs, and cars, and birds are part of life."

I wanted to say, "Yes, we need to co-exist. But your standard is not real. No on one in the universe would say my child was wrong for running happily across the street with a shout of joy in the middle of the afternoon. Not midnight. Not at dawn. We have different levels of tolerance, but yours is not realistic."

And when he said, "I like children. I have a grand-daughter." I wanted to say, "And I have a father. And he is an asshole."

(My father is not an ass hole. And my father would NEVER say the shout of a child distracted him. He thinks more children should run shouting through the streets for joy. I am not kidding.)

The point is, that when people like him, angry, bitter people, feel the need to vent, I stand silently and listen, while words and sentences and counter-arguments run through my head like mental subtitles responding in real-time. Each word he says, my response ticker-tapes through my mind, while I stand silently.

He knew I was mad. It is not that I did not make my feelings known.

Still, I was angry at myself. I stood up for myself, but I let him stand unopposed, with his warped view of the world intact. I tell myself I will never change his mind, so why bother, and that is true. But I can also offer him another point of view. I can not be verbally bullied. And I can make him pause before he balls out the next person who walks by his house with a child, or a dog.

And I wonder why I do not stand up.

I worried about Gigi. He is her neighbor, and I don't want to screw up her neighborly relations. I feel it is hopeless, because I will never change the angry, self-righteous man's mind.

And my father made me feel like standing up for myself was disrespectful. Like he had the right to say anything outrageous he wanted, and I could not fight, or I would be punished. I learned that my response could hurt others, and I should always think of them, first. (When I did respond he would say, "You have a sharp tongue, Hilary. You really hurt people." He acted like it was some evil gift channeled by the devil, which he does happen to believe in.)

It is probably one reason I like to write. No one can stop me on the page. And ultimately written words have more power than spoken ones. If the words hit the target, it knocks them over.

But in this case, I should have stood up for myself.

He was a jerk, and if he is going to tell me I am a bad mother and my children are bratty and noisy, I think I have the right to tell him, you are an angry old man and a sorry-assed writer who cannot sustain his concentration. Lame. Or, shell out the big bucks and buy some Boze headphones.

I will have to practice. I will have to give my subtitles a voice. It is a small thing. But big, too.

It is probably why I love Italian families. They all just shout what comes into their heads, then cry and laugh and it is over.

I say nothing, stew, review what I should have said, but never do, except on this lonely little blog he will never read.

How about you?

Do you speak your mind? Do you call jerks on their shit when it flies out of their mouths? Do you unleash your intellect to take arrogant, superior, self-entitled assholes down a notch?

Tell me you do. And tell me how you got that way. I need a training program!!!