judge not, lest ye be judged

When I was 16, I worked at bagel shop in south Minneapolis. And despite my chronic unpopularity with boys and the indisputable fact that I was in an ugly phase that year, it someone came to my attention that "Eric," one of my teenaged colleagues, was interested in going out on a date with me.

I wasn't even the slightest bit attracted to Eric, but given my circumstances, I figured I should take what I could get. I accepted his vague invitation to "hang out" and asked what he had in mind.

"Well, I was thinking we could go the Mall of America. I mean, the mall has everything, right?"

I don't know if I sneered openly or if I merely muttered something noncommittal, but either way, the outing to the Great Mall never happened (and neither did the love match). The mall has everything? What kind of person could even say that, much less believe it? What kind of teenager thinks the mall is cool? (Now, thinking rationally, probably a pretty typical one, I suppose.) This was a turning point in the development of my personality: my desperation for male attention had given way to my burgeoning snobbery.

Okay, so it's wrong to judge people, right? I mean, I know it's a really shitty thing to do.

Like last week, when I was locking up my bike downtown and I couldn't help but overhear the conversation of a passing group of 20-something ladies: "So, you know Parasole, the company that owns Chino Latino and El Gatto? Well, they have this incredible deal where when you go to one of their restaurants you just get a stamp on this punch card and when you've got six stamps you get a free drink!"

People actually talk like this? They think these things and then say them out loud to other people? God, how boring!

Okay, so I realize these thoughts call attention to my shameful and previously unrevealed feelings of superiority. After writing so much recently about the hell that is other people, it's only fair that I finally unveil the truth--I am actually just as bad.

Take, for example, the coworker who entered the break room the other day, loudly talking to someone via an earpiece, his cell phone clipped to his pleated pants in a white-collar holster. He was wearing a tucked-in polo shirt advertising one of my company's products, and was talking about the details of his son's football practice. He set about the business of filling his water bottle with hard-nosed efficiency. In other words, he was the portrait of corporate American masculinity.

I slouched in my chair in the corner of the room, studying an eight-month-old copy of More magazine so as not to make accidental eye contact. "I am definitely a lesbian," I thought to myself.

Like my friend Mark once said, "There are good people everywhere...but they're a different kind of good people." We were on the subject of "work friends", and how when you're being held captive at a place of employment, you're not always in a position to be choosy. Whereas in college I could snob out to my heart's content ("Ugh, did you see Michael reading On the Road in the cafeteria? Plus, he wouldn't stop playing Tom Waits when he invited me back to his room..."), this position is simply not sustainable in the modern suburban workplace.

And this is how I find myself nodding in agreement as that girl from the tax department tells me about how she lost "five inches" after she started eating microwaved veggie burgers for breakfast, and listening intently as my coworker describes how much money he saves using "coupon theory", which he actually learned about in his MBA program--"You know those chocolate-flavored Teddy Grahams? Five boxes for $2.99 at Cub this week."

So you know, you get older and you start to realize that life is probably going to involve making some compromises, and that you'll probably be happier if you can convince yourself that your boss is "just fiscally conservative"...not the other kind that would require you to quit on principle.

All this makes me look at my various relationships and wonder who might be "settling" for me. "Shannon?" they might respond, when a real friend asks about their association with me. "I don't know...yeah. Work is pretty boring, and she's always up for making the drive to Pineda Tacos...so."

don't knock it till you try it: "treats" at work

I used to work as the assistant editor of a window treatment trade magazine. One day "Lisa," one of the advertising sales girls, barged into my cubicle.

"Hey Shannon, I made cookies. Do you want one?"

I didn't want one. "Okay," I said.

"They're pretty stale," she said, once I had one in hand. "They've been in my refrigerator for about a week, but I figured I'd just bring them in to work!"

This seemed wrong to me, but she probably had a point. I am frequently overcome with a sense of awe when I look at the quality and condition of the "treats" people bring in to my job, and am blown away by the speed at which they disappear. Congealed doughnuts from the Cub Foods bakery? Why not! Three-day-old banana bread from the United Way potluck? Don't mind if I do!

On the first day at my current job, my manager marked the festive occasion with a box of pastries. Since it was day one, I felt obligated to choke one down. However, just a couple days later, I was summoned to a conference room to celebrate a coworker's birthday. I declined the slice of cake. "Kathy," my manager, looked me up and down. "God, Shannon, trying to make the rest of us look bad? A little sugar wouldn't kill you!" I held my ground (but I think I've paid the price by becoming the object of her fashion scorn).

I guess what I'm saying is, you usually have to give in, or risk getting unwanted attention for being a "vegan" or "anorexic."

But in the case of Lisa's stale cookies, I thought it was safe to secretly decline. I waited until she was back at her desk, and then silently opened a desk drawer and placed the cookie inside. I knew I couldn't just throw the cookie in the basket under my desk--Lisa was the type who might actually check your garbage when you were out at lunch.

(I mean, this was the girl who, when her boyfriend--a fellow coworker at the magazine--refused to buy her a Christmas present [not forgot, refused], marched around the office, telling everyone about how she had been done wrong and encouraging all of us to hassle him about it. If my boyfriend refused to buy me a Christmas present, I'd be mortified--or more likely, would probably just reason that I didn't really deserve a present.)

So I was taking precautions. I figured that when she left for lunch I could sneak the cookie back to the break room and bury it in the communal trash can.

Then I overheard Lisa loudly explaining to a coworker how our desk drawers are actually removable. This coworker was switching desks, and Lisa was insisting that she didn't need to empty her desk drawers--she could simply pull them out and walk them over to the new desk!

A struggle ensued on the other side of the fabric walls as Lisa tried to demonstrate. "I don't think the drawers are meant to come out," said the coworker.

"No, they do!" said Lisa. "I know they do at Shannon's desk."

Before I could act, Lisa was back at my desk, frantically yanking away at my desk drawer--the one hiding her cookie--the cookie I refused to eat. She suddenly stopped yanking when she saw the cookie. She looked at me, first with confusion, then with something more like annoyance or low-grade hate. She shut the drawer and walked away.

Did I do wrong? Should I have choked the cookie down, knowing that somehow--Lisa being who she was--she would find out if I didn't consume it?

I don't think so. She wasn't my manager, so I wasn't obligated to appease her, and we were never going to be friends.

don't knock it till you try it: change your hair, change your life?

My friend Peter took issue with something I wrote in my recent post about self-loathing. (While cataloguing my various defects I made my reference to my "fatally flawed hair--neither curly nor straight".) "You can't say that," he said. "You've got great hair."

Thanks, Peter! The compliment I was fishing for has finally arrived.

But really, I was being sincere when I wrote that. Despite the fact that I have an excellent stylist (hats off to Thea) who thoroughly understands and appreciates the nature of my hair, I have to admit that I spend way too much time obsessing about the topic.

For example, the question of whether or not to cut bangs was one I debated for months. ("What would bangs 'say' about me? Will I morph into a 'Bettie Page girl'? Will I look like a Marianne Faithfull wannabe? Will they make my face look fat?")

Hair length is another subject of endless internal debate. ("Am I not truly a 'short hair' girl? Way cooler guys used to hit on me when I had short hair. What am I trying to prove by growing my hair long? Have I 'gone normal'?")

If I devoted as much time to, say, researching graduate school programs as I do to obsessing about my hair, I'd probably have an advanced degree by now (instead of plans to dye my hair back to its natural dark color, or maybe blue-black...god, I don't know!).

I think part of the deal with the hair is that some of us, no matter how rational we are in other parts of our life, have internalized the belief that changing our hair is a good way to signify some greater, more important life change. Show me a girl with a drastic new haircut and I'll show you a girl who just broke up with her boyfriend.

Likewise, whenever I start thinking about potentially uncomfortable topics ("Is a corporate writing job basically prostitution? How come I barely remember anything I learned in college? Have I squandered my youth?" etc. etc.) I often have the understandably human impulse to squash the feelings of anxiety that rise to the surface. Sometimes I opt for an ocean of wine or a night of panic-stricken insomnia. And sometimes all it takes is a google image search (Milla Jovovich, hair, layers) to keep those troubling thoughts at bay.

don't knock it till you try it: growing up Catholic

It's a funny thing, being raised Catholic. For many years, I didn't know anything different. I can't say that I "believed" in anything in particular, but the state of being Catholic (going to church every Sunday and zoning out, shuffling off to Catholic school, feeling guilty about everything) seemed somehow inevitable.

When I went to college, there were people there who grew up blissfully agnostic but mysteriously were interested in learning about all things religious. My friend "Joanna," for example, once asked me about the significance of the Virgin Mary in my upbringing as a Catholic. It was like she'd asked some gum-snapping, remedial-English sixth grader how to diagram a sentence. "Huh?" I think I responded, as my eyes glazed over. I couldn't imagine how she could be interested in something so incredibly tedious.

Because although I was raised Catholic through and through--I was baptized, delivered to church every Sunday, received my "first Communion" and was even "confirmed" into the church while in the second grade (confirmation is when you make the well-reasoned, grown-up decision to commit yourself to the Catholic church for life)--it's not like I ever really "believed" in it. When times got tough, for example, you wouldn't find me "praying to God" or anything. The fact of being a Catholic seemed like so much pomp and circumstance. I mean, my parents were probably going through the motions in order to "bring me up right" or something. And meanwhile, I was raising my eyebrows at the whole display. So what was the point?

After about 20 years of critical thought, I've determined that the point was guilt and sex--more or less in equal measures, and ideally mixed together uncomfortably. Like John Waters said, "Thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty." I think this is a generous and positive way at looking at the after-effects of Catholicism. In other words, there are some benefits, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I remember being in junior high, and overhearing "Mary McDonald," one of the popular girls, earnestly explaining to someone or other how she would NEVER drink or smoke and certainly wouldn't "fool around" with any boys to prove any sort of point. Naturally, I didn't want to be anything like her. I made the mental note to define myself in opposition: "Drink, smoke and slut around."

Which is all well and good, but not necessarily when you're an awkward, unattractive and severely introverted young teenager. It was during these supremely uncomfortable years that I often reflected painfully upon the only "sex ed" conversation I ever had with my mother.

One day when I was nine years old, my mom pulled me aside for a brief sexual education discussion. "Shannon, men will say anything to get you into bed," said my mom, as my personality split into two. Her method for easing into this revelation is lost to me now, so traumatic was it to hear this at the age of nine. But she made her point--"Boys are out to get you! And it's up to you to protect your honor."

Seriously, nothing could have been further from the truth once I got "out there." I can't say that there was a steady stream of young men murmuring over-the-top compliments to lure me into the back of their Chevettes. They will say "anything"? How about finding one in the first place?

Even when I did manage to trick some young man into accompanying me into the woods next to the Minnehaha Creek, nothing was ever free and easy about it. Take my first boyfriend, for example. To my utter confusion, one romantic evening he suggested that he turn himself in for an an attempted (consensually attempted, I had assumed) sexual assault (??).

The wisdom of time has informed me that he was probably just trying to break up with me. But what if I'd agreed? Would he still be in jail, instead of designing video games in Seattle?

It's stuff like this that makes me doubtful about having kids of my own. Seriously, what ridiculous advice would I provide to my unborn daughter? "When he declares himself a rapist--call his bluff"?

To be safe, I'll probably need to send her to Catholic school, so she has something to rebel against. And I guess there you find the point of Catholicism--to have something to live in opposition to.

don't knock it till you try it: self-loathing

Today I am horrified by a variety of details related to my physical appearance, my intelligence and my basic abilities to perform the various administrative tasks that plague my daily existence.

For example, let's start with my cuticles. God, they are disgusting. Seriously, have you seen them recently? Have you noticed just how ragged they are? I don't even bite my nails or anything. They are just naturally that bad. I remember reading an article once about how to impress people during job interviews, and one woman was quoted about how she always checks a woman's manicure. Apparently, a woman with well-kept nails is a woman who deserves to be offered a job. Ravaged nails, on the other hand...clearly a sign of an unwell mind.

Manicure? Good lord.

Actually, I did get a manicure once. I casually entered the nail salon, as if "getting my nails done" was something normal for me. When I sat down across from the nail technician, she gave me a knowing look. "You don't really seem like a 'manicure' kind of girl," she said.

She was right--I'm not. But what did that mean? Was it a compliment? I tried to take it as a compliment. "Yes, I'm so confident and naturally alluring that I don't need to do stuff like this to feel okay about myself." Or did it mean something else--something else entirely? I could imagine her eying my never-laundered-since-I-bought-it-at-the-thrift-store sweater, thinking, "A little nail polish isn't going to distract from the mess that is you."

My own mind displays plenty of skill and creativity when cataloging my various faults (the ridiculous fit of my pants--"what was I thinking?", my fatally flawed hair--neither curly nor straight...), but when this is not enough, I've found that the universe will provide.

I can take it all the back to fourth grade, when I was systematically tormented by "Todd Womper" (whose real name I totally want to use, but I won't) for being hideous and unpopular, and who frequently declared that I would grow up to be a "hooker." (Which actually doesn't sound so bad right now.) I'm pretty sure he didn't mean it in the third-wave feminist, sex-positive kind of way.

Before the fourth grade, I was blissfully unaware of my own unattractiveness. The need to be physically acceptable to other people didn't even cross my mind! But this episode of harassment (well, a year-long "episode") was probably a blessing in disguise, really, in the way it helped instill a general mood of self-loathing that has encouraged me forever more to police my own appearance--reducing the need for others to monitor it for me.

But there will always be someone willing to lend a hand, right? Let's reflect for a moment on the complicated subject of other women.

I should start by saying that I like women; most of my friends are chicks. But I distrust women who don't like other women--the kind who declare that they "just get along better with men" (while pouting and jutting a hip) or who giggle and say, "I don't know, I guess I'm just intimidating to women!"

These are the ones who are dangerous--the ones who are always on hand to make a catty comment about your footwear ("Cute shoes, Shannon--I remember those from two summers ago!") or your makeup application techniques ("Have you EVER thought about using a foundation brush?").

Seriously, how are you supposed to respond to this kind of thing? I guess I could try to be empathetic--"Goodness, she's just as self-loathing as I am! We have so much in common..."--and give the offending commenter a break, right?

Or I could take solace in another cliche, that thing people always say in these situations--"She's just jealous." Is that so? As a perenially unpopular person in my youth, I don't buy that at all. "She just gets off on insulting people she perceives to be 'beneath' her." Okay, that makes sense.

Take, for example, "Nadine," the friend of this guy I once dated. When "Edgar" and I got together, Nadine was all excited about it. "God Shannon, I'm so impressed with Edgar, he's really changed," she said, pulling me aside earnestly at some party. "I mean, he used to be so concerned with being cool and having hot girlfriends. But he's totally gotten past that. I mean look at him now--he's dating you!"

I'm still trying to determine the best response to this sort of comment, which, if experiences my mom has had in recent years are any indication, are going to be lobbed my way well into my 60s. "Take the higher road" and say nothing? Back-handedly compliment in return? Sleep with her boyfriend? All are viable options, and yet none seem just right.