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ravens_nestHas anyone ever gotten into an argument that was really intense while it was happening but totally ridiculous in hindsight?
Phase 1: My aunt walks in the door and thee first thing I say, verbatim, is "Hey Aunt Glen, I just got back 5, no maybe 10 minutes ago. No one called in that time."
Now what are the first words out of her mouth? "No hello, how was your day?" Real sarcastic-like too. I swear to God.
Now, our entire argument progressed from there. I reminded her of my previous greeting and she said, I swear, "What does that mean, 'back'? Where'd you come back from?"
Uh, school. This is what I'm thinking. That was when we had an argument over semantics. Is it OK for me to say "I just got back" instead of "I just got home" when I'm speaking about returning from school. Taking into account the context clues (Context is King!) of we're talking in our apartment and the fact that that morning she heard me say I was leaving for school. You should assume naturally that the place I got back from was school and the place I got back to was home. Right?
That argument ended unresolved.
Phase 2: She walks into the kitchen and sees the pot on the stove with the lid partially on it. "I told you not to leave the lid on that pot. Is it clean yet?"
I said, "No. I-" My sentence was cut off here.
"Well, it should be."
I was a kinda angry here, so my words were a little sharp. I told her that she didn't let me finish and then explained that I'd put bleach in the pot and covered it to keep the smell from bothering me, lemony though it was.
Now, I'm going off on a tangent to explain to you why bleach needed to be put in our pot. Two days prior my Aunt felt the urge to boil a sweet potato (Yam). She also felt the urge to not tell me about her culinary quest. Tired from a hard days work dealing with a bunch off rowdy middle schoolers. This is all fine except that she didn't tell me she was cooking and expected me to ESP myself into knowing the stove was on while I'm clacking away on the office computer. Low and behold I only realized the stove was on when the smell of scorched potato permeated through the apartment and reached the office. Lots of fun, that. Thus the pot was burned and needed a bleach treatment.
Back to the argument. Using forceful words, but not yet into the yelling phase, I commented on how her statement seemed to imply that I just walked into the house, looked at the pot and decided not to clean it, willy-nilly like. In this comment I used the word "complain." She took offense and said she wasn't complaining.
Here I'd become even more annoyed so I told I explained that "complain" wasn't always so negative. I really did mean the negative bit, but I still led us into another debate on semantics. This evolved into her complaining about me continuously explaining a topic. I do this often when I'm fired up over something or I feel like you're not understanding. I told her the latter was the reason I kept repeating myself. We argued more.
Before this bit ended I told her that she came in the door wrong and referred back to her useless antagonistic comment about my greeting.
Now the argument ends with me backing off. It'd been going on for like 25 minutes by then and I just wanted to stop. By then I'd cooled off to know I'd been perpetuating a ridiculous argument.
Phase 3: There was silence for like 5 minutes. I'd cooled down quite a bit by then and was on the net checking my e-mail. So, very innocently, I said, "Aunt Glen, I'm going to be late tomorrow. I have a meeting."
She says, "Raven, I don't need to know about that right now. I don't need to know your entire schedule."
Let me explain our typical daily routine. I wake up say good morning, shower, tell her I'm leaving for school. I come home, she comes home usually after, I say hey, get on the computer, we eat separately, I watch some TV (alone), go to bed, and repeat the next day.
I finally remember to tell her where I'm going to be and this is her response. Her comment was so antagonistic, I didn't even get angry again. It was laughable really and I swear I guffawed for a few seconds. I did get sarcastic and said I wouldn't tell her my schedule again.
Another 5 min or so and Aunt Glen randomly walks out of the door and comes back in like she'd just got home. She was trying to start again on the right foot, so I went along.
She apologized for her first comment, the trigger for our entire fight. I told about how I'm like a flash fire. I burn extremely hot and then I'm over. By the time those 5 min were up I wasn't angry anymore, so whatever. A nice ending, right?
Unfortunately, this was not the end of our fight that evening.
Phase 4: She's making spaghetti and she didn't ask me to cook it which is new. So I went to look and I asked how much salt did she put in the pasta. (1/4 tsp) Now I admit that I could have worded this differently, but I said, "You shouldn't put any straight salt in the sauce. Just use the season salt, or it'll be too salty and too much salt is really unhealthy." She took this as me telling her she couldn't cook. I commented on the fact that she often put too much salt in her cooking. (She's using Sea Salt now, I guess to be more healthy, found in the organic section of your local Shoppers Food Store. Now this stuff is like three times as potent as table salt and she doesn't cut accordingly. Often times her food was already salty using regular, but now she's using the same amount with Sea Salt? She made this pot of spinach a couple weeks ago and, I swear to God, it was like I'd dunked my head into the ocean and was chewing on seaweed straight from the source.)
Trying to diffuse another argument in the making, I started to mention what I'd learned in Nutrition class that week about salt and high blood pressure. She interrupts (Before I can say, "It's bad for you if you have HB, or if it runs in your family." My grandma had it.) and says she doesn't have High Blood Pressure and, like the uber-Christian she is, says, "She binds generational curses. I rebuke that in Jesus' name." I'm a believer in breaking generational curses too, but that doesn't have anything to do with putting too much salt in your food. Even if you rebuke it, you can't just spray salt all willy-nilly over your food and think you ain't gonna get high blood from that shit. That's not how prayer works. I said this to her, minus the cursing.
Again I try to mention what I'd learned in Nutrition, but she cuts me off and asks why I'm talking about this. I leave it alone, leave the kitchen and tell her to put as much salt in the spaghetti as she wanted...go ahead and dump the entire package in there.
Thus ended our newest round of fighting. Must have lasted an hour...hour and a half.
In hindsight, I realize a lot of this fight was because of me. The last couple years I've become really bold, stubborn, and opinionated. To Aunt Glen it seemed sudden, but in reality I'd been repressing this nature up until I was about 17-18. Part of it was that I have a real problem with repressing my real feelings. It still hasn't been fixed, but I'm forcing my self to just randomly mention my feelings to my friends at school, usually as a conversation starter. Also, I was trying very hard to keep from being a rebellious teenager like my older sisters were, so I was largely very obedient in my teen years. Then 12th grade hit and I started doing stuff like telling her where I was going and not asking could I go. I guess to my Aunt I was completely changed, thus her common saying, "That's not Raven talking." But I'd been very bold in my thinking since about half way through tenth grade.
It was a small incident, but I'd approached this girl in science class, I thought it was cool because she'd just transferred in and we were already acquainted from Church. She was already popular and I wanted to be her friend. (Classic teenage peer-acceptance scenario.) I did something stupid and almost messed with her microscope, focusing it so I could see. She got angry, as expected, and rebuffed me. I got angry at her and then at myself for wanting to be her friend. After that, I stopped trying to be one of the "popular" girls' friend. I also stopped caring about what people thought of me, in as much as I didn't caring if I wasn't what people wanted/expected. I started being more bold, and forceful with opinions. And if you didn't agree that's fine. And if you didn't like me because of my beliefs, that's fine too, cause I ain't got to be your friend...there are thousands of people in Maryland that I can be friends with and not a damn one of them is you. I'm already friends with some of them now.
That's about where I am now and I guess my Aunt can't handle that. But either way I can't revert back to how I was before. I refuse to (No regression for me!). So I don't know what to do to fix the problem. It's starting to feel like her and my sisters. Like we just can not live together peacefully. We're starting to have stupid arguments like this maybe twice a week, if not more.
I don't know.
It's late, so I'm gonna sign off and watch some Asian dramas before hitting the sack. Sorry I talked so much this time around, but this has been bugging me for a while.
Ja, mata ne.
Phase 1: My aunt walks in the door and thee first thing I say, verbatim, is "Hey Aunt Glen, I just got back 5, no maybe 10 minutes ago. No one called in that time."
Now what are the first words out of her mouth? "No hello, how was your day?" Real sarcastic-like too. I swear to God.
Now, our entire argument progressed from there. I reminded her of my previous greeting and she said, I swear, "What does that mean, 'back'? Where'd you come back from?"
Uh, school. This is what I'm thinking. That was when we had an argument over semantics. Is it OK for me to say "I just got back" instead of "I just got home" when I'm speaking about returning from school. Taking into account the context clues (Context is King!) of we're talking in our apartment and the fact that that morning she heard me say I was leaving for school. You should assume naturally that the place I got back from was school and the place I got back to was home. Right?
That argument ended unresolved.
Phase 2: She walks into the kitchen and sees the pot on the stove with the lid partially on it. "I told you not to leave the lid on that pot. Is it clean yet?"
I said, "No. I-" My sentence was cut off here.
"Well, it should be."
I was a kinda angry here, so my words were a little sharp. I told her that she didn't let me finish and then explained that I'd put bleach in the pot and covered it to keep the smell from bothering me, lemony though it was.
Now, I'm going off on a tangent to explain to you why bleach needed to be put in our pot. Two days prior my Aunt felt the urge to boil a sweet potato (Yam). She also felt the urge to not tell me about her culinary quest. Tired from a hard days work dealing with a bunch off rowdy middle schoolers. This is all fine except that she didn't tell me she was cooking and expected me to ESP myself into knowing the stove was on while I'm clacking away on the office computer. Low and behold I only realized the stove was on when the smell of scorched potato permeated through the apartment and reached the office. Lots of fun, that. Thus the pot was burned and needed a bleach treatment.
Back to the argument. Using forceful words, but not yet into the yelling phase, I commented on how her statement seemed to imply that I just walked into the house, looked at the pot and decided not to clean it, willy-nilly like. In this comment I used the word "complain." She took offense and said she wasn't complaining.
Here I'd become even more annoyed so I told I explained that "complain" wasn't always so negative. I really did mean the negative bit, but I still led us into another debate on semantics. This evolved into her complaining about me continuously explaining a topic. I do this often when I'm fired up over something or I feel like you're not understanding. I told her the latter was the reason I kept repeating myself. We argued more.
Before this bit ended I told her that she came in the door wrong and referred back to her useless antagonistic comment about my greeting.
Now the argument ends with me backing off. It'd been going on for like 25 minutes by then and I just wanted to stop. By then I'd cooled off to know I'd been perpetuating a ridiculous argument.
Phase 3: There was silence for like 5 minutes. I'd cooled down quite a bit by then and was on the net checking my e-mail. So, very innocently, I said, "Aunt Glen, I'm going to be late tomorrow. I have a meeting."
She says, "Raven, I don't need to know about that right now. I don't need to know your entire schedule."
Let me explain our typical daily routine. I wake up say good morning, shower, tell her I'm leaving for school. I come home, she comes home usually after, I say hey, get on the computer, we eat separately, I watch some TV (alone), go to bed, and repeat the next day.
I finally remember to tell her where I'm going to be and this is her response. Her comment was so antagonistic, I didn't even get angry again. It was laughable really and I swear I guffawed for a few seconds. I did get sarcastic and said I wouldn't tell her my schedule again.
Another 5 min or so and Aunt Glen randomly walks out of the door and comes back in like she'd just got home. She was trying to start again on the right foot, so I went along.
She apologized for her first comment, the trigger for our entire fight. I told about how I'm like a flash fire. I burn extremely hot and then I'm over. By the time those 5 min were up I wasn't angry anymore, so whatever. A nice ending, right?
Unfortunately, this was not the end of our fight that evening.
Phase 4: She's making spaghetti and she didn't ask me to cook it which is new. So I went to look and I asked how much salt did she put in the pasta. (1/4 tsp) Now I admit that I could have worded this differently, but I said, "You shouldn't put any straight salt in the sauce. Just use the season salt, or it'll be too salty and too much salt is really unhealthy." She took this as me telling her she couldn't cook. I commented on the fact that she often put too much salt in her cooking. (She's using Sea Salt now, I guess to be more healthy, found in the organic section of your local Shoppers Food Store. Now this stuff is like three times as potent as table salt and she doesn't cut accordingly. Often times her food was already salty using regular, but now she's using the same amount with Sea Salt? She made this pot of spinach a couple weeks ago and, I swear to God, it was like I'd dunked my head into the ocean and was chewing on seaweed straight from the source.)
Trying to diffuse another argument in the making, I started to mention what I'd learned in Nutrition class that week about salt and high blood pressure. She interrupts (Before I can say, "It's bad for you if you have HB, or if it runs in your family." My grandma had it.) and says she doesn't have High Blood Pressure and, like the uber-Christian she is, says, "She binds generational curses. I rebuke that in Jesus' name." I'm a believer in breaking generational curses too, but that doesn't have anything to do with putting too much salt in your food. Even if you rebuke it, you can't just spray salt all willy-nilly over your food and think you ain't gonna get high blood from that shit. That's not how prayer works. I said this to her, minus the cursing.
Again I try to mention what I'd learned in Nutrition, but she cuts me off and asks why I'm talking about this. I leave it alone, leave the kitchen and tell her to put as much salt in the spaghetti as she wanted...go ahead and dump the entire package in there.
Thus ended our newest round of fighting. Must have lasted an hour...hour and a half.
In hindsight, I realize a lot of this fight was because of me. The last couple years I've become really bold, stubborn, and opinionated. To Aunt Glen it seemed sudden, but in reality I'd been repressing this nature up until I was about 17-18. Part of it was that I have a real problem with repressing my real feelings. It still hasn't been fixed, but I'm forcing my self to just randomly mention my feelings to my friends at school, usually as a conversation starter. Also, I was trying very hard to keep from being a rebellious teenager like my older sisters were, so I was largely very obedient in my teen years. Then 12th grade hit and I started doing stuff like telling her where I was going and not asking could I go. I guess to my Aunt I was completely changed, thus her common saying, "That's not Raven talking." But I'd been very bold in my thinking since about half way through tenth grade.
It was a small incident, but I'd approached this girl in science class, I thought it was cool because she'd just transferred in and we were already acquainted from Church. She was already popular and I wanted to be her friend. (Classic teenage peer-acceptance scenario.) I did something stupid and almost messed with her microscope, focusing it so I could see. She got angry, as expected, and rebuffed me. I got angry at her and then at myself for wanting to be her friend. After that, I stopped trying to be one of the "popular" girls' friend. I also stopped caring about what people thought of me, in as much as I didn't caring if I wasn't what people wanted/expected. I started being more bold, and forceful with opinions. And if you didn't agree that's fine. And if you didn't like me because of my beliefs, that's fine too, cause I ain't got to be your friend...there are thousands of people in Maryland that I can be friends with and not a damn one of them is you. I'm already friends with some of them now.
That's about where I am now and I guess my Aunt can't handle that. But either way I can't revert back to how I was before. I refuse to (No regression for me!). So I don't know what to do to fix the problem. It's starting to feel like her and my sisters. Like we just can not live together peacefully. We're starting to have stupid arguments like this maybe twice a week, if not more.
I don't know.
It's late, so I'm gonna sign off and watch some Asian dramas before hitting the sack. Sorry I talked so much this time around, but this has been bugging me for a while.
Ja, mata ne.
