Tell People What You Want To Get What You Want.
Second option: Give them a crystal ball.
One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever paid a ton of money for was to educate your readers about how to read your story.
I’m not going to do a deep dive into that secret here because this isn’t a post about writing. But the advice has held me in good stead in other areas of my life.
However, if you want a specific reaction from people, it helps to let them know what you expect from them.
That’s all well and good when you’re showing off pictures of your children. Your beaming smile lets people know you don’t want to hear the frigging obvious, that maybe the third one from the left could lose a few pounds.
No, you want to hear, “What a great looking family.”
How hard is that to interpret from your big, proud smile and a snapshot of you with your kids on your last vacation?
However, if you said, “What do you think of my children?” then you’re opening yourself up to a world of hurt, like maybe, “weight loss advice for parents whether you want it or not.”
See what I mean?
I’m usually pretty good at this social semaphore, except when it comes to my health. There I turn it into a puzzle for my friends to solve.
I’ve reached that awkward age. I’m young enough to get out of bed under my own steam but old enough to wonder what ailment will befall my declining body today.
Recently, I had a friendly call from my friendly doctor. He wanted to give me a heads up on a routine test before it showed up on my health provider’s page. I might read the results and rend my garments, jumping to the conclusion that I was about to die of a terrible disease, the name of which scares the pants off all of us.
He said in so many words that it could be nothing, but just in case, let’s do more tests.
I’ve been down this road before. Many women have. In my case, four false alarms, so I wasn’t necessarily worried, but of course, I jumped to the conclusions he warned me against.
But still…what if this time it’s the real deal?
Because I preach positivity like it’s on sale, two for a quarter at the corner store, I mentioned this news to a few friends using my “Oh, it’s nothing” voice.
This is where the lesson about teaching your readers how to read comes in.
Because deep down, the news wasn’t nothing, and I knew it. Let’s face it; we’re talking about the big C here. The big, frigging C.
My fifth brush with it.
And I’m thinking, how many times can I dodge a bullet?
But some of my friends more or less laughed off my news. Oh, that, they seemed to say. Who hasn’t had a mammo scare?
Okay, I exaggerate. Nobody actually said that. But they made noises, actual raspberries, so I shut my mouth and sulked.
Because I wasn’t getting the reaction I wanted. Or needed.
I’m eighty-two years old, and at some point in my life, I developed an appropriate persona. I can’t say what prompted my transition from the whiny little kid who ran crying to her mother when she skinned her knee, to crying on the nearest shoulder when life served her lemons, to, when disappointments landed on my doorstep, basically sucked the lemons and realized it could be worse?
Like so many grown-ups, I curated my outward demeanor at bad news to one of maturity, acceptance, and a perspective on life that, yes, actually, it could be worse.
I said to myself, Self, get your nose out of your navel and look around.
Be grateful for the devil you have and not the one beating up on your neighbor.
Now, that’s how I deal with self-pity, which is not quite the same as how I deal my feelings. But it’s how I project myself to the world.
Somewhere along the road to my mature self, the one I hope is close to my true self, I mixed up the idea that I shouldn’t show any fear about illness.
I guess I wanted people to read some crystal ball that doesn’t exist to tell them that I need some TLC at certain times but not others to clue them into when exactly some medical news might shiver my timbers.
This phone call was one.
But did I tell anyone I was worried? Me. Old Rock of Gibraltar with bunions and bifocals?
No, I mentioned the call from my doctor like it was a baseball score and started sulking when my friends didn’t rally around me with tea and sympathy.
It wasn’t until the test came back negative for any nasty cells, and I reported the good news to a friend, that her comment reminded me of my writing lesson.
“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said. “You seemed so stoic, like you weren’t worried.”
Like I wasn’t worried? I had myself six feet under from the worst kind of breast cancer, and that’s not even what my friendly doctor had suggested was in the realm of possibility.
When my friends tell me (because I’m at that awkward age when friends get calls from their friendly doctors, too) they have to have follow-up tests, I always ask how they’re feeling, can I do anything, do they need anything. I let them know as best I can that I’m there for them.
When I’ve had illnesses, my friends have done the same for me. It’s called friendship, and in that respect, I’m rich as Croesus.
So, lately, I’ve been practicing in front of the mirror, the way I did when I first came to California and wanted to get rid of my New York accident. Carrrrr, not Cahhhh. Putting the “g” in walking instead of saying walkin…
But this time, I try to get these words out of my mouth. “I got a call from my doctor. I’m a little worried.”
What am I afraid of? Does saying “I’m a little worried?” make my ass look big? Does it make me look weak?
Because my friends know me. I don’t fold under pressure.
During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I was a mere secretary. Yet I broke into the name partner’s office to get into his private stash of liquor.
Everyone in the building, from all of us on the 31stfloor on down, was lined up on the staircase in the dark, trying to the street. But a young pregnant lawyer stalled our escape. She was having a meltdown, sitting down in tears, panicked, and she wouldn’t move.
She said she needed a drink of whiskey to stop her premature contractions. I knew where Jerry kept his stash, so up I went to the astonishment of the attorneys, mouths agape that I had the audacity to touch his highness’s 12-year-old Scotch.
Are you kidding me? So fire me. I’d have stared down the devil to get out of that building.
But tell you I’m worried about a possible cancer diagnosis? Deliver me.
These days, I might shut down showing my needs to my fears about illness. But I look back at the episodes in my life when I’ve been in a funk because somebody didn’t respond to me the way I needed or wanted them to.
I know me, the kind of clues I’d give people. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m so much better at taking care of my emotional needs now than was when I was younger. Of course,
it’s easier now because I’m not in a marriage these days. My daily life no longer consists of the give and take of interactions that make up a relationship.
My friendships are by and large frictionless, either because we’ve known each other for so many years, we know how to skirt around difficult issues, or we accept each other’s foibles.
Or, my stable of friends has winnowed itself down to the people I can tolerate and the people who can tolerate me.
But if a genie came along and tossed a wish my way, it would be to go back in time and do a better job of communicating what I need and expect from people.
It would take the burden of reading my mind off their shoulders. Maybe they’d still fall short of meeting my needs, but I would know I’d have given it the old college try.
If only relationships were that easy. If only it weren’t so scary to make ourselves vulnerable. To say please, please help me with this and know the other, the one you need some comfort and reassurance from isn’t going to stomp on your shins, just for fun.
If only we knew that rejection, little ones and big ones aren’t fatal, even though they feel that way.
But maybe that’s why it’s a good thing to live to my old age. Because it takes a few years to learn these things. And because, in fact, you never stop learning. That is if we don’t stop paying attention.
And by the way, you haven’t answered my question. Does saying, “I’m a little worried,” make my old ass look fat?
