Friday – A Real Character
Apr. 18th, 2008 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about the fact that I know something about my office nemesis, Dixie, that no one else in the office seems to realize – she is a compulsive liar. I stumbled across this knowledge on accident, and it has given me a window of insight into her personality. The window has drapes over it, in that I can't figure out why she lies about the things that she does. I suspect that she is a person who creates her own reality, and weaves the truth she has with lies that she thinks will get her the sympathy and attention she wants. Once she has created these half truths she believes them wholeheartedly, and anyone who calls them into questions is a threat.
Dixie is not a real person so much as she is a character she has created around herself. A true method actor, she has become this character, and has assigns supporting rolls to those around her. My assigned role is that of a villain, and I think it frustrates her that I don't take her direction and play the role as she would like me to. I don't hate Dixie, though I hate that she hates me. While I avoid her in order to keep her from gathering ammunition against me, I am pleasant and professional in the way I interact with her. I don't do this to prove that I am better than her so much as I do it drive her nuts. If someone tries to make you cry and you laugh instead, it has a way of stealing their thunder.
Dixie is a charming extravert who tells a great story, and she is much loved by those around her. Attacking her outright will not win me any friends, so I am quiet for the time being. Every story Dixie tells makes her audience laugh or cry at just the moment she wants them too. I find her as interesting to listen to as anyone, maybe more than most people, since I know what I know.
I am an introvert, at least until I really get to know a group of people. No one in my office has made an effort to get to know me, so their lack of engagement has kept me a quiet enigma. Quite enigmas are easily viewed as the enemy, and in the play the Dixie is writing around us, she exploits this. I don't think that she has seen too many plays, though, because the quiet enigma has a way of coming out ahead and exposing the real villain in the end. Dixie doesn't realize I am orchestrating a play of my own. Unlike hers, mine is not fiction.
At first glance it looks like Dixie and I should get along very well, since our lives have certain parallels. She tells everyone that her mother died when she was 15, as did mine, and that her father died 10 years later when she was 25 (my father is still alive, however). Since the day I met her, she has always told everyone that her parents are buried in a cemetery owned and operated by The Corporation up in The Woodlands, a master-planned community north of Houston, and talks about what a wonderful job this funeral did for her family in it's time of need. She uses this story to explain her love for The Corporation, and her extreme loyalty to it.
"If you don't mind my asking, what did your mother die of?" I once asked her, when she was rehashing the tragedy.
She waved her hand, annoyed that I had interrupted her story. "Oh, I don't know, some blood disease," she said. "It made her throw up blood every day for two years straight, until it finally killed her." Something about this answer didn't seem right to me, but I shrugged it off. After all, everyone handles grief a little different, so who am I to say that her reaction to her mother's death should match my own experience?
I didn't think too much about it until I worked two days at the funeral home and cemetery where Dixie says her parents are buried. On my first day there, the location manager gave me a tour of the grounds and a history of the location. When The Woodlands area was plotted out and planned beginning in the 1970's, it was only planned as a place for people to live, not die. After the community took root, some 20 years after they first broke ground, it finally occurred to them that they needed a funeral home and cemetery to serve the area. "So the founders of The Woodlands approached [The Corporation] and asked them to build a funeral home and cemetery to serve the people who live her," the location manager said, "And we began operation in 1994."
I had been studying the yellow pollen that was coating my black dress shoes from walking through the cemetery, but this made my head pop up and look at the manager. "1994? So it's only been here for 14 years?"
The manager nodded. "Yes, but it's already very well established, as you can see, and we have a lot of acreage to expand on. In fact, we're already beginning some of our expansion, if you look toward the back of the park..."
But I wasn't interested in the park, I was interested in the dates. My mother died 24 years ago, in 1984. Dixie is 10 years older than me, so her mother would have died around 1974, and her father around 1984. There is no way they are buried in the cemetery she claims they are in. Interesting, I thought.
I then considered what bothered me about Dixie claiming that her mother died of "some blood disease" that she doesn't know the name of. You see, when a parent dies when you are still growing up, you always know the name of what orphaned you. If it is a disease, you are haunted by that disease for the rest of your life. You worry that the same sickness will kill you, too, and ponder whether you should even have children yourself if there is a chance you might abandon them by dying, the way you were abandoned. I wonder where her mother really is?, I found myself thinking, I wonder where she lives?
It might sound perverse, but I'm as entertained by Dixie's campaign against me as I am annoyed by it. Dixie's weapons against me are lies and half truths, which are like sticks and stones. Lies and half truths can hurt a person, but only though blunt force trauma, and they can be ducked and avoided if you are agile enough. I am dodging projectiles, and gathering facts to forge a sword of sorts to attack the one throwing them. Like the old children's rhyme says, sticks and stones can break bones. The truth, however, when sharpened to a fine point, can cut a person to ribbons.
Dixie is telling the truth about one thing; you can't trust a quiet enigma. In any drama, whether the enigma proves to be hero or a villain, they always turn out to be a force to be reckoned with. It is, just as people say, always the quiet ones you have to watch.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Dixie is not a real person so much as she is a character she has created around herself. A true method actor, she has become this character, and has assigns supporting rolls to those around her. My assigned role is that of a villain, and I think it frustrates her that I don't take her direction and play the role as she would like me to. I don't hate Dixie, though I hate that she hates me. While I avoid her in order to keep her from gathering ammunition against me, I am pleasant and professional in the way I interact with her. I don't do this to prove that I am better than her so much as I do it drive her nuts. If someone tries to make you cry and you laugh instead, it has a way of stealing their thunder.
Dixie is a charming extravert who tells a great story, and she is much loved by those around her. Attacking her outright will not win me any friends, so I am quiet for the time being. Every story Dixie tells makes her audience laugh or cry at just the moment she wants them too. I find her as interesting to listen to as anyone, maybe more than most people, since I know what I know.
I am an introvert, at least until I really get to know a group of people. No one in my office has made an effort to get to know me, so their lack of engagement has kept me a quiet enigma. Quite enigmas are easily viewed as the enemy, and in the play the Dixie is writing around us, she exploits this. I don't think that she has seen too many plays, though, because the quiet enigma has a way of coming out ahead and exposing the real villain in the end. Dixie doesn't realize I am orchestrating a play of my own. Unlike hers, mine is not fiction.
At first glance it looks like Dixie and I should get along very well, since our lives have certain parallels. She tells everyone that her mother died when she was 15, as did mine, and that her father died 10 years later when she was 25 (my father is still alive, however). Since the day I met her, she has always told everyone that her parents are buried in a cemetery owned and operated by The Corporation up in The Woodlands, a master-planned community north of Houston, and talks about what a wonderful job this funeral did for her family in it's time of need. She uses this story to explain her love for The Corporation, and her extreme loyalty to it.
"If you don't mind my asking, what did your mother die of?" I once asked her, when she was rehashing the tragedy.
She waved her hand, annoyed that I had interrupted her story. "Oh, I don't know, some blood disease," she said. "It made her throw up blood every day for two years straight, until it finally killed her." Something about this answer didn't seem right to me, but I shrugged it off. After all, everyone handles grief a little different, so who am I to say that her reaction to her mother's death should match my own experience?
I didn't think too much about it until I worked two days at the funeral home and cemetery where Dixie says her parents are buried. On my first day there, the location manager gave me a tour of the grounds and a history of the location. When The Woodlands area was plotted out and planned beginning in the 1970's, it was only planned as a place for people to live, not die. After the community took root, some 20 years after they first broke ground, it finally occurred to them that they needed a funeral home and cemetery to serve the area. "So the founders of The Woodlands approached [The Corporation] and asked them to build a funeral home and cemetery to serve the people who live her," the location manager said, "And we began operation in 1994."
I had been studying the yellow pollen that was coating my black dress shoes from walking through the cemetery, but this made my head pop up and look at the manager. "1994? So it's only been here for 14 years?"
The manager nodded. "Yes, but it's already very well established, as you can see, and we have a lot of acreage to expand on. In fact, we're already beginning some of our expansion, if you look toward the back of the park..."
But I wasn't interested in the park, I was interested in the dates. My mother died 24 years ago, in 1984. Dixie is 10 years older than me, so her mother would have died around 1974, and her father around 1984. There is no way they are buried in the cemetery she claims they are in. Interesting, I thought.
I then considered what bothered me about Dixie claiming that her mother died of "some blood disease" that she doesn't know the name of. You see, when a parent dies when you are still growing up, you always know the name of what orphaned you. If it is a disease, you are haunted by that disease for the rest of your life. You worry that the same sickness will kill you, too, and ponder whether you should even have children yourself if there is a chance you might abandon them by dying, the way you were abandoned. I wonder where her mother really is?, I found myself thinking, I wonder where she lives?
It might sound perverse, but I'm as entertained by Dixie's campaign against me as I am annoyed by it. Dixie's weapons against me are lies and half truths, which are like sticks and stones. Lies and half truths can hurt a person, but only though blunt force trauma, and they can be ducked and avoided if you are agile enough. I am dodging projectiles, and gathering facts to forge a sword of sorts to attack the one throwing them. Like the old children's rhyme says, sticks and stones can break bones. The truth, however, when sharpened to a fine point, can cut a person to ribbons.
Dixie is telling the truth about one thing; you can't trust a quiet enigma. In any drama, whether the enigma proves to be hero or a villain, they always turn out to be a force to be reckoned with. It is, just as people say, always the quiet ones you have to watch.
