This ain’t precisely about gardening. It is, fah cryin’ out loud, January! Anyway this is what’s been on my mind as we stride bravely into 2012.
When Loved Ones Overrun Manchuria: Bob’s Little Human Relations Column
By Robin Ford Wallace
Winter leaves the garden column in a hole.
At least, it leaves in a hole the kind of garden column that carries on much about gardening. How fortunate that Bob’s Little Acre is less wedded to the genre than most.
BLA seems to have meandered off the horticultural high road somewhere around October (perhaps following a BOILED PEANUTS sign) and has yet to find its way back to the on ramp.
Come spring, the column will consult its road map, or possibly a state trooper – tossing beer cans at them as they whiz past is, by the way, amazingly effective in attracting their attention – correct its route, and return to its peaceful agrarian existence.
But January is more suitable to hoarfrost than to horticulture, and BLA will thus postpone its rededication to dirt until the thaw. Instead it will pull up to a cozy roadhouse, the kind where one sits before a gas log eating fats and carbohydrates delivered by waitresses with plump, comfortable names like Mabel, and spend the rest of the winter indoors as a human relations column.
Or at least that’s how it will spend this week. What happened is, I read a piece by one of those inspirational columnists on the subject of leaving the bitterness of the past behind us as we stride determinedly into the future. And I thought: We might as well! Since if we’re waiting for those who embittered us to apologize, we’d better ask Mabel to bring us more fries because we’re going to be here a while.
With 2012 opening before me like a shining new city, there’s nothing I’d like more than to leave the baggage of strife at the train station of reconciliation and go tap-dancing into the streets of happily every after. I’m feeling loving! Hopeful! In a mood to forgive everybody everything!
But nobody’s asked me.
People by and large do not apologize. Lately I’ve put a lot of thought into why, and I’ve concluded the chief reason is: They’re not sorry.
Here is an obscure comedy snippet my husband is always quoting (and I’m probably misquoting): “We was just sitting around one night drinking beer when we took a notion to form us a littley old Third Reich. We didn’t mean nobody no harm.”
That beautifully illustrates Point A: People never think they’ve done anything wrong, even the ones on trial for crimes against humanity. Much less your sister!
Say your sister has done something awful, made off with your boyfriend or spread vicious gossip about you or rampaged across Europe breaking out shop windows, shooting university professors and rolling artillery into peace-loving democracies.
If it was me I’d say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I love you and honor you and in the future will be more careful about crushing Western civilization.”
But most people would rather die! Confront them with wrongdoing and they’ll explain why it was right:
“I wasn’t stealing your boyfriend! I just thought he looked cold over there. Anyway I planned to bring him back in time for the wedding.”
Or they’ll tell you it wasn’t wrong, it’s just your sick mind:
“Nobody else would mind their picture on Facebook naked on the toilet picking their nose! You just enjoy feeling persecuted, don’t you?”
Or they’ll say it’s so insignificant only a psycho like you would think it mattered. “So, stupid, you think anybody else is going to miss Czechoslovakia, a tiny country with no really good restaurants?”
There are exceptions to every rule and to the apology rule the exception is: Me. Come to my house for dinner and I’ll apologize for the house, I’ll apologize for the dinner, then I’ll apologize for apologizing. I have to stop myself from flagging down cops and apologizing for the Kennedy assassination.
Moving on though, another reason apologies are so hard to come by is (Point B): People lie.
As a garden columnist, I’ve often pointed out that much of what we’re told about the universe is lies or male answer syndrome. But I never realized until recently that this includes practically everything we hear on the interpersonal level – even from quite nice people such as, say, your sister – when it’s a matter of defending Point A.
“France?” your sister will say. “Why would I want to go and invade France? Never been there! Nasty unpleasant place, no public restrooms.”
This, while you’re looking at a photograph of her goosestepping into Paris, the jackbooted B-word.
Parenthetically, I never lie myself, not even when people ask, “Does this make me look fat?” or “How did you like the sweet potato casserole?” Oddly, this honesty has done little to improve human relations in my neck of the woods.
Yet another factor in the apology drought is (Point C): People forget.
Say you’re finally back on speaking terms with your sister and she says, “I only invaded Poland because you borrowed my blue sweater.”
To which your astonished reply is, “What blue sweater?”
And then: “Poland?”
See, you’d caught her red-handed in France but Poland is fresh and new. Point being, give people enough time and they forget not only what they did to ruin your life but what lies they told you about it later.
Except me. I never forget anything. In arguments, I assert, “But that directly contradicts what you said on May 2, 1986.” (Imagine what a human relations plus that is.) (But it is also why people should give up and apologize. I am right.)
Well, people are imperfect and I suppose one solution is to forgive them whether they ask forgiveness or not.
Another is to bomb them into the Stone Age. While I make up my mind, how’s about another plate of them nachos, Mabel?
Robin Ford Wallace lives in Deerhead Cove, where she plays quietly in the dirt, disturbing no one.
