The Big Bang Theory gets a lot of play in this house. Of all the comedies that do -- Mom, The Nanny, Two Broke Girls, several others old and newer -- it's the most palatable to me. Sometimes I even turn around and watch it.
Despite its Laugh track.
I DESPISE laugh tracks. The biggest reason is that I feel fit to join one on (maybe) every twentieth joke, and that's if the show is exceptionally funny.
To be clear, I don't find this show"exceptionally funny". Its humour is, however, my kind of humour: gentle even when pointed and filled with heart. The characters mock each other relentlessly, but you can feel the love. Trust me -- please trust me -- I know the difference.
I wrote a little anniversary blog on Facebook yesterday (Eva's and my 23rd) and in my original draft went a completely different direction with it. One of the things worth keeping from that aborted effort was a line about what wasn't in the vows but should have been: I promise to at least try to make you laugh every day...especially on the days where you need to.
In keeping with my soul forest conviction, this and many other vows are non-exclusive...which doesn't make them any less binding in my mind, if not in yours.
Sometimes you'll laugh at me. I give you permission to do that because I love you: if you know me and you're seeing this, the sentiment applies to you. I know you'll laugh at me the way the characters on The Big Bang Theory laugh at each other. Mostly you'll laugh with me, because I've learned to laugh at myself. Most of the time.
But sometimes I'll come out with something -- as a joke or otherwise -- that doesn't sound like my kind of humour at all. It'll sound either self-deprecating to the point of caustic, or worse, externally directed at you...and caustic.
Sheldon said something just now that's a perfect example of just such a double edged sword that I might unwittingly wield myself. Somebody -- I missed who -- asked him if he felt at all bad about the state of their friendship and he responded "yes, I do. I've put a lot of effort into making room for you in my life and I don't want that to have been in vain."
That sounds arrogant as fuck now that I look at it on the page, and it's certainly how most of Sheldon's remarks get interpreted. Like, you're such a colossal burden that I struggle to make space for you.
And yet I might say something similar, because it's true. You're hard to live with. But that's not you, it's me. You're hard to live with because I'm hard to live with.
I consider myself difficult to live with even though several housemates have said the exact opposite over the years. I'm easygoing and it takes a lot of provocation to set me off. Within reason, I have a live-and-let-live mentality. I have cultivated that over decades because I'm hard for others to tolerate in proximity over a duration. If you're going to have issues with me (and you probably will), my reasoning goes, one of them shouldn't be any issues I have with you. Not unless they're egregious. I've posted about this before, many times, but it's so wise I will continue to share it. Dan Savage - The Price of Admission,
"There is no settling down without some settling for", says Savage. "There is no long term relationship without, not just 'putting up with' your partner's flaws, but accepting them...and then pretending they're not there."
My price of admission is too high for some people. I find anger directed at me by someone close extremely challenging to process, because it hurts, not only emotionally but often physically. If you start hurling f-bombs at me, I will like as not respectfully decline to engage and withdraw. As I do so, you'll see a stricken, panicked, little boy puppydog expression on my face. I'm like my late dog Tux. We don't know anything about that dog's puppyhood and I don't think we want to. We could surmise enough from the way he cowered when Eva and I raised our voices at each other in a moment of uncharacteristic upset. It's hard to take any pleasure in shouting someone down, even if I were the sort of person to do so, when your dog is looking at you like you're committing a war crime right in front of him.
That puppydog expression is oh fuck I fucked up they're mad at me they'll leave me fuck fuck FUCK -- and yet it almost never fails to upset people further...which makes me retreat even more hastily. But I'm not stonewalling: I'm processing. I'm pulling myself back ten or a thousand steps, figuring out where I fucked up, and how to at least try to make amends. I am not capable of doing that while being subjected to what I perceive as actual attack. So I pull back, and it can take years for people to truly understand why.
Actually, most of the ways I'm hard to live with can be summarized that way: it can take years for people to understand me. I'm probably not like you. I don't have your drive to 'get ahead'; I disdain cutthroat competition, bullying being how I frame it. Gratuitous violence profoundly disturbs me. I welcome noise in my world on my time and terms. I have a strong preference for silence and don't feel an obligation to fill it. This is a price of admission Eva and I both fork over, because it represents one of our few incompatibilities. She needs noise in her life about ten times as badly as I need silence. Recognizing this -- one of your problems with me shouldn't be my problem with you -- I have headphones and I ain't afraid to use them.
Other prices of admission we both pay: I would have little trouble living in a tiny home. I think if Eva tried, the pile of stuff would eventually eject her out its chimney. Eva grew up forced to clean not just her house, but those of family friends and strangers, unpaid, unthanked, and it bred in her a revulsion of housework. For me, meanwhile, the effort I put into any task is directly correlated with how long that task will stay done. Some things like dishes are unavoidable, but I refuse to be the only one doing housework, which means you can describe our home as "there appears to have been a struggle.
And I do put effort into making room. Sometimes a lot of it. It's up to you whether or not to occupy the room -- and if you stand in the doorway long enough without fully entering, I'll close the door (but never lock it). But it's kind of like chores: the amount of effort I put in signifies the desire I have to have you in my life. I think we're all like this, but I'm again non-exclusive with it, which is hard to wrap a head around.
The thing to remember with prices of admission is that you're both probably paying them. Allowances simply have to be made. I will occasionally snark not quite under my breath that "the fucking garbage bag is RIGHT THERE". She will intone with feeling "Jesus, Breadner, the OUTSIDES of things need to be cleaned". I'm like, they were right there in the cleansing dishsoap, I even ran a cloth over them, that should have done the job." It didn't. My self-righteousness that it should have - hello misplaced idealism, my old friend - bits my ass again.
Amazed I still have an ass, at this rate.
The general sense is that Jim Parsons plays Sheldon Cooper as if the character is on the spectrum.
I'm like Cooper in some ways. Not as smart, but undoubtedly unique, every blue moon even wise. Routine means a lot to me, albeit not to the degree it does to him. And we're both kinda hard to relate to because we're often off in our own universes. People take that personally sometimes. I wish they wouldn't.
If I say something that upsets you, please assume best intent even if you can't see how I could possibly have meant it as anything other than upsetting. Inevitably being informed of the obvious way you interpreted the remark I meant in some other completely unanticipated (by you) manner is doubly stinging: not only have I pissed you off without intending to: I am distressingly able to pull this stunt even thinking carefully about what I'm saying and how I'm saying it. Blind spots. I have them. Still.
Yes, my price is high. It's taken me most of a lifetime to even start to believe in my value, to those who unflinchingly pay it. And I think that's something we all should take to heart.
