When I was in fourth grade, I shared a bedroom with both my younger brother and my younger sister. They were both barely toddlers, and were easily riled up, especially since our beds were smooshed close together (my sister and I shared a bed). One of my favorite “ornery older sibling” schemes was to get the kids going by throwing pillows, jumping up and down in the bed, and other “this is stuff that we should not be doing while Dad’s trying to fall asleep” shenanigans.
Of course, I was older than they were, and I could hear Mom’s feet flapping through our kitchen as she made her way to our room to kick some butt. So I could quickly stop jumping around, get back under the covers, and act like I was asleep and gravely inconvenienced by the goings-on of my obnoxious younger siblings. But my brother and sister would be chuckling up a storm, still throwing stuffed animals around and bouncing up and down.
Mom would throw the door open just as I let out a weak, “keep it down guys, I’m trying to sleep, I’ve got school tomorrow,” for effect. And boy did my kid brother and sister get it! And they never caught on, no matter how many times I’d pull this stunt. They never knew when to crank it down a notch and pretend to be asleep before Mom tromped in.
I had a thought today at the office that this is not unlike what goes on in social settings amongst people who do not know each other particularly well (example: an office). So the signals that one sends can often be misinterpreted, and not everyone knows the game that is being played — as with toddlers missing the cues and failing to learn the script being written by the older sibling.
To be a bit more concrete, there were people with whom I worked when I was a Jello wrestler who could simply not reconcile my jello wrestling with my work at a multiginormous bank. “I always knew you weren’t cut out for corporate America!” someone (a Harvard grad, no less) emailed me when I announced I was leaving The Bank for God’s Social Network. At the time, I wrote him off as a complete moron (which may or may not be true, but certainly would not hinge upon that one comment) and replied that perhaps Yalies were more multidimensional than kids who went to school in Cambridge (which may also be true).
But I think now I understand why this happens, why some people observe X and cannot see past it in order to also see the Y, the Z, and everything else. All they can see is X. They are like the little kids caught up in the moment of throwing pillows, and they are unable to hear feet flapping, are unable to switch gears rapidly.
So perhaps I need to be more sensitive and delicate when I decide to rile people up. There are some who can see past X and chill it out quickly, and there are those who cannot. There’s no use getting mad or annoyed or short about it. I can always delegate the getting mad business to Mom.