Last night I deftly managed to get both Bel and Sohi to come out and have dinner with me. By which I mean I bribed Sohi with a trip to Naturally on High and then got her to subsequently spend the whole day with me, and I threatened B that I’d stab her if she didn’t come. My problem is that I’m far too accustomed to commanding people to do things… and having them comply. I have all this misplaced confidence apparently, that I’m allowed to behave like this. However at least no one will ever be left dangling wondering what I want, because trust me, I’ll tell them.
It’s fascinating watching how people go about getting the things that they want, it tends to say quite a lot about the person. In my case, the fact that I feel entitled to command and tell people what I want, probably exposes how spoilt I am, and how willing people have been to simply accommodate me. I have another means of getting what I want, which has really been the classic Jen move: being the good girl. When you’re really nice and lovely and accommodating yourself, people are much more willing to go out of their way to help you. It’s a two pronged attack really, with a good measure of arrogance thrown in. My brother on the other hand is a classic wheedler. His method is really successful because he does it with so much cheek and panache- I’m telling you, the boy is charming when he wants to be.
Watching kids go about getting what they want is the most fascinating of all. They all learn how to manipulate from such a young age, it’s a beautiful thing. Niece #1 is sooo clever, I’ve seen her come out with lies with just the right amount of truth as to confuse, and she adjusts her approach according to who she’s speaking to. Her method is a mixture of the “good girl”, the “look how cute I am” and the “sneaky manipulator”. In comparison Niece #3, who is much younger than #1 does the most glorious, hilarious sad face whenever she doesn’t get her way; every muscle in her face moves slowly and independently of each other to form this droopy, sulky face just before she’s about to let out a wail. It’s such a clean expression of her desires I almost want to reward her for it every time.
It’s now I admit that I really admire people who are really upfront and straightforward about what they want. People who passively hover waiting for the other person to guess, or who twistedly try to manipulate others to offer what they want, drive me insane. I just… don’t understand them, and I am incapable of humoring them. Even when I know what they want, I ignore all the hints unless they outright come out and say it. I just can’t be friends with people who are incapable of voicing their desires. It is possible to be upfront while being diplomatic and polite people. I really want to know, is everyone in the world taught that the way to get what you really want is to ask backwards? To passive aggressively suggest and suggest and suggest, and then back away if the suggestion is in any way selfish? This is tiring. Stop it.
On a completely separate note, in between talking about zionists, the show none of us has actually seen (Masterchef- according to Sohi most people shouldn’t feel betrayed by the judges based on the idea that epistemically the judges know better), zionists, how demanding, cocky and lame I’ve become, zionists, and some other sad shit, the topic of babies and whether we’d birth a child if one of us accidentally got pregnant now, came up at dinner last night. Suddenly I had this image of the three of us with little babies, and I had this gross girly moment internally where I really really wanted us to have kids at the same time so they’d grow up together and we’d all collectively be awesome. It was such a golden moment I had to myself, so completely rooted in fantasy that I wanna keep it, except that it is so darn creepy. I’m going to email them both now and let them know that if they decide to move overseas I’m going to follow them. Because they need to know how creepy and possessive my feelings are towards them.
