I ran some errands during my lunch break yesterday. I had some checks to deposit and the most convenient place is a cramped ATM vestibule near my office. It has four ATMs, but no space for anyone waiting to stand, and when I got there they were all busy. I stood near-ish to the last one, with a line of people who came in behind me, so it was pretty crowded; I was wearing my headphones and listening to my iPod, which is true of about 90% of the time I’m outside my apartment.¹

I was endorsing a check, writing on the back of my book (because I always have a book in my purse, duh). I had a vague sense that the woman at the nearest ATM was flustered, inserting her card again and again. I heard her say something in my general direction, but thanks to the iPod (and noise-canceling headphones, I hate earbuds) I didn’t hear what. I took off my headphones and moved maybe a half-step forward, and said all of, “Hm?”

And then she yelled, “You’re too close, Jesus!”

I got as far as, “Sor — ” before she stormed off.

So I used the ATM and walked off grumpily. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had been attempting to apologize. And frankly, rudeness irks me pretty badly (don’t even get me started on the guy who walked into the vestibule from the other side and cut the whole line, something that is never, ever acceptable). It wasn’t until I was down the road on my way to the post office that the situation flipped in my brain.

From the perspective of Grumpy Stranger Lady, she was using the ATM and clearly having some sort of issue with it. Some stranger was standing too close, making her uncomfortable, and was off in her own world wearing headphones instead of paying attention to what was happening around her. Maybe she was having a bad day, or was just easily flustered, or short on patience for whatever reason. Regardless, it occurred to me that if she were to tell the story of our very brief encounter, she’d be the reasonable one, and I’d be the rude one.

The thing is, she isn’t wrong; that was reality as she lived it. I’m not wrong either; she was pretty rude. In objective reality, we probably both could have done better, with me paying more attention and her being less snippy. Whatever, it was an encounter that lasted about two seconds, and didn’t have any lingering after effects. But it was a tiny moment of eye-opening for me.

I’m bothering to write this down because I’m someone who reads all kinds of blogs where people share very personal experiences (not to mention I work at a website which features personal stories in a major way). You can see some of my favorites in the link sidebar, but I read a lot about feminism, anti-racism, GLBT activism, anti-ableism, and so on — lots of people examining and trying to figure out how to dismantle societal privileges and *isms of many sorts. I don’t tend to say much, because I rarely feel like there’s anything I can add to the conversation other than “thank you for sharing”/”I agree with you”/etc. And generally, the conversations aren’t about me. What is me talking about my experiences as a white person going to add to a post where a person of color is talking about her experiences with racism? It’s not that I don’t have thoughts, it’s that they aren’t necessarily relevant and there’s no need for me to hijack a thread about someone else to talk about my own junk. It’s a conversation I can learn from but not one I feel like I can add much to, so I am a serial lurker who is glad the big, wide internet has so many people brave enough to talk about their lives.

Back a bunch of years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote a not-very-well-articulated, but none the less honest, post about some sexism I’d run into at the bookstore where I worked.² It was the first thing I wrote that got read, let alone linked to, by anyone other than my close friends; I wasn’t quite prepared for that, but who is? I followed a few track back links and ran into some other people’s discussions of my post. One stands out in my memory; the thrust of the post-about-my-post was, “Well, she says that, but I think she was misreading it. It wasn’t about sexism, it was just an in-group, out-group thing.”

At the time, I was really upset by that and didn’t know why. I get it now: the post was about my experiences, things I knew were true because I’d lived them. It isn’t fair for someone to say that wasn’t what happened and I was misreading the situation (let alone someone who wasn’t even there, but that’s not even close to the point). I knew what my experience was and didn’t understand that what bothered me was someone saying no, my lived experience was incorrect.

It was a pretty minor life experience. Blatant sexism, but nothing with long-lasting consequences on my life. (I learned someone was an asshole. I avoided him after that. The end!) If I was that unsettled by being told my life experiences were wrong in something fairly minor, I can only imagine how people who share significantly more personal experiences must feel.

This is probably the most no-duh-worthy thing I will ever type on this blog, but: privilege is a huge part of what makes that kind of dismissal possible. It allows people to be oblivious to the very fact that there’s another perspective to consider, let alone the validity of that experience. It lets people ignore the whole concept of empathy, of taking a few seconds to realize that other people may have experienced a situation differently, and their experiences are legitimate — even if it’s just why someone is rude at an ATM.

It isn’t just about reading blogs. It’s about being polite, because there’s a good chance the rude person you’re encountering is having a shitty day. It’s about letting things roll off your back when they aren’t personal, and it’s about respecting people when they say things are personal. It’s about having empathy and realizing you are not the center of the world, and other people have thoughts and feelings and experiences, too — and doing your best to treat them that way.

And it’s about never, ever cutting people in line.

So here’s a fun hobby I’ve developed since moving to New York, four-ish years ago: planning what I’m going to do in case of sudden apocalypse. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned from action movies, it’s that there’s a really good chance it’s going to happen here.

Unfortunately, I’m about 97% sure my role in Manhattan’s demise is going to be “casualty.” If nothing else, the odds are against me being one of the few survivors, when there are 8 million other people on this very small island. I’m also small, don’t work out, have bad feet, and am terrified of physical pain. So things don’t look good for me. My real plan in case of, say, zombiegeddon, is to get bitten and learn to love the taste of brains, despite having been a vegetarian for well of a decade.

But on the other hand, I was a Girl Scout for, like, eight years; I can start a fire and sort of cook over it, pitch a tent, sew if I must, and know basic first aid. If I can get off the island — that’s the big barrier to survival, I think — I’d say I have at least a sporting chance. So if I do happen to escape, I’m striking out for my parents’ house upstate. They’ve got plenty of canned food, the neighbors all have guns, and my mom can spin her own yarn. I think these are all things that will be useful when it comes time to rebuild a society.

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say that I reviewed The Forest of Hands and Teeth, zombie horror by Carrie Ryan, over at Active Voice today. And it scared the bejesus out of me.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend pointed me towards this post by Mad Marvel Girl. The post basically asks, what are your three stories — the stories of your heart? The stories that grip you and don’t let go, which you could read or watch over and over, and why? It’s not about how good the text is, it’s about the actual story, the part that makes your heart happy.

As one very smart friend of mine paraphrased, what are the stories which, if every other story was a riff off them, you’d still be pretty happy with?

I’ve been thinking about this on and off since. I’ve managed to come up with two.

Star Wars. (If I must be more specific, The Empire Strikes Back.) There are a lot of general things I love about the trilogy: the space opera backdrop, the rag-tag band of rebels taking out a much more powerful enemy,¹ the epic scope of world-building, the fact that the movies are fun before all else. But let’s face it: for me, the big, big thing is Leia and Han. I love Leia and Han. Or rather, I love Leia, and am in love with Han.

About my love of Princess Leia: I love that she’s making serious contributions to the rebellion even before the movies start. She’s a leader, and she’s good at it. Once captured, she remains defiant (“I should have recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”). Even when she’s the one being rescued, she’s still perfectly able to grab a weapon and kick down an exit where one doesn’t exist. She can run around and do the action hero thing, as well as the pretty, dress-wearing, traditional fantasy princess thing. She’s smart, she’s angry, and she kicks ass. I adore her.

Han… well, he’s my fictional type. Smug. A rogue with a heart of gold. Not necessarily nice, but certainly nice to look at. He can do bad things, but generally does the right thing in the end. And smug. Did I mention that? My first fictional crush, when I was about five, was Peter Venkman in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon; I have no idea how I was wired to find smug jack-ass-ery particularly attractive, but it is absolutely typified by Han Solo.

Beyond anything else, the story of the two of them falling in love while snarking at each other and having adventures speaks to my soul. The Empire Strikes Back is my idea of a perfect romance.

To sum up: a kick-ass woman and the smug guy she loves (and often rescues). ² If they starred in every story, I would be a happy camper indeed.

My other story is Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey. I’m amazed it took me this long to realize that, actually, as I’ve read that book at least fifteen times. I first read it when I was in fifth grade, and even though, as an adult, I can spot plenty of flaws in it, it’s still among my all-time favorites and I reread it every couple of years.

In it, our hero, Talia, runs away from the home where she’s always been unloved and unappreciated, gets Chosen, is swept off to Valdemar’s capital city and thrust into circumstances she doesn’t fully understand. But once she’s there, by way of tenacity and hard work (plus being super-duper-special) she overcomes the odds and makes it, proving to both herself and the world in general that she’s truly deserving of her new-found status.

Or, in other words, a girl who feels awkward and out of place — particularly because she’s bookish and none too feminine — is just sure she can do and be more than anyone realizes, if only she gets the chance! And when the chance comes, even though it’s hard, she’s plucky and determined! And in the end, she succeeds! Hooray! ³

It isn’t a complex story, but look, there’s a reason I not-so-secretly love Mary Sues. The story, simply as a story, speaks directly to my id. But it gets me in Arrows of the Queen in particular, I think because when I was 11, I identified so strongly with Talia. Ultimately, I don’t need the story to be about someone bookish, or even about a girl,⁴ because it’s the I’m-something-more leading to plucky determination leading to success! that gets me. I could happily read that over and over again. I have read that over and over again.

I think, if it came down to it and I absolutely had to pick one character archetype over the other, it would be Leia over Talia. But maybe that isn’t a surprise, either. I identify with Talia in ways that reflect who I am: someone who often feels awkward and out of place, who wants to do and accomplish more, even though I don’t know how or even, really, what I want to do. I want to be part of something important, something that matters, even though I haven’t figured out what yet. But that’s where Leia already is, where she starts her story. Maybe it’s just that ultimately, I’d rather read stories about what I aspire to than what I am now.

Especially if I get Han Solo in the end. Just sayin’.

(Unrelated ETA: upgraded WordPress, fiddled with plugins. Threaded commenting should now exist. And possibly automatically posting to Facebook. So if this shows up there… Hi!)

So I took the day off to go to the Yankees tickertape parade¹. Now I’m home, I’ve napped, cuddled my cat, and I’m watching Roseanne on lifetime because I love this show.² And a commercial just aired for some kind of pre-made pancake batter.

It looks like every other pancake commercial ever. Happy family, messy kids, smiling mom, and end with a close up of the final product: a stack of delicious pancakes with a small square pad of butter on top, and plenty of syrup coating the whole shebang. It’s kind of the iconic image of pancakes.

But my question is: whaaaa?

Who eats them like that? With the pad of butter on top and then syrup. I mean, yes, butter on pancakes is delicious, and as far as I’m concerned, the more syrup, the better.³ But you don’t just want a mouthful of butter. You want it spread across the pancake, right? And if you’ve put the syrup on before you spread that butter pad out, you won’t really be able to.

Basically, that iconic pancake stack looks lovely, but it is not an accurate depiction of real pancake-eating life. I object!

Anyway.

Fire, Kristin Cashore’s second novel, is a sort of prequel/companion to Graceling, her debut. I loved Graceling so much that I gave a copy to my Dad, since we have similar tastes and all. But, while not a bad read, Fire doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor. Though it was good enough for me to assume it’s a sophomore slump, and thus I shall look forward to more from Cashore anyway. Review over at Active Voice.