Is Reflection "Emo"? (348 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.9 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by fun_with_needles (View user info) at 2006-08-11 04:45:04 EDT
There isn't a whole hell of a lot that that a person can do to offend me. My work allows me to see a plethora of foul biological things, including but not limited to: dead babies, objects lodged into rectums, prolapsed colons, and my personal favorite, Cheese Box, a.k.a. Vaginitis. I have an iron stomach and my nerves are cool steel.
Yesterday at work I got a phone call from my sister, telling me that my father fell suddenly and violently ill after a business trip to New York. This news doesn't faze me in the least. My father, the son of a Ukrainian immigrant turned Chicago mobster, is pretty much indestructible. My earliest memory that I have of my father is him getting smashed by one of my drunken uncles on a motorcycle. Don't worry about the uncle, he ended up a hopeless alcoholic and eventually got shot in the stomach during a hunting trip in Wisconsin by, you guessed it, another drunken uncle.
I got off point. Anyway, if my father wasn't on the phone or meeting clients, he was getting smashed by 18 wheelers, falling down stairs, falling off the roof of our three story house, being crushed by a falling tree, and surviving an assignation attempt of one his clients in Vladivostok. So I'm pretty sure he can handle anything.
But for some reason, this latest effort on my father's life by the forces of inevitability, I had to face some hard truths. My father will die, and maybe soon. He's very active for being almost 60, and when he is not attached to the phone, or to life support, he is working in our little garden built into the side of a grassy hill. Very Heidi, it is.
The thought of losing my father was something I was unable to accept at this point in time. I mean we don't have a Ward and the Beaver type of relationship, but it isn't too bad either. We're not strangers. So I brought up the fact that guys or girls our age might be looking at losing our fathers in the near future. And I was wondering out loud if I did enough as a son to show my appreciation. This man did so much for his family, and I pretty much shat in his face every chance I got when I was a teenager. I wondered out loud, if we know our fathers as much as we should. Or could.
A little history of me at work: Like any Red, White and Blue, I loved Green. But I hated working for it. So I get a little crazy at work. A little nutty. Sometimes just plain retarded. So, when I thought I was starting a worthwhile conversation for once that didn't include lesbians, Spiderman, or a lesbian spider-woman, I was rewarded with a response that raised my blood pressure up to 250/90 (heart attack): "Okay, Emo boy, go in that back and cry."
I got pissed. I got fucking pissed the fuck off. After the anger faded, I was offended. Then I was sad. Not by the comment, but by the thought of maybe short-handing someone if they were genuinely trying to get something off their chest, and I or other people would just pretend to wipe our eyes then laugh at them. I wonder now, out loud, how often I do this. How often do YOU do this?
User Reviews
Submitted by OfficeZombie (user info) at 2006-08-13 18:42:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nah, self reflection isn't emo. Long as it's sincere.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-08-11 12:03:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
"Emo" has turned into a lame, overused term to mean just about anything.
Fuck dude, I understand. Now go punch your coworker in the throat.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-08-11 10:16:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
sucks to be a dude doesn't it.
girls are allowed bitch fest. of course i just prefer beating things senseless but you get the point.
Submitted by matnotharry (user info) at 2006-08-11 10:06:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Reflection isn't emo. It's aces to think
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-08-11 09:46:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
hardly ever but then I don't associate with faggots
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-08-11 09:38:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
My father is 64 and in marginally good health.
Granted, you might be closer to yours than I am mine, but in principle I can relate.
If ever I were to be brazen enough to express my fear of losing my father to anyone BUT a close friend who I KNOW would understand, then I'd half-expect a response like the one you got.
It's your fault for wearing your heart on your sleeve. This world eats it's young, you didn't know?
Submitted by Susie_Derkins (user info) at 2006-08-11 09:31:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm sorry about your dad. Don't worry about "shitting in his face" as a teenager, the vast majority of us were assholes to our parents as teenagers. So long as you appreciate him now and he knows it, you're cool.
Smash your coworker's face into your knee and take a long lunch, you'll feel better.
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2006-08-11 08:53:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I've been studying the social heirarchy of wolf packs most of my life, and I can tell you that the proper response to such alpha male posturing would have been to bite the coworker in the neck and then sniff his ass.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-08-11 08:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Your coworker was just playing the role that you played so many more times. It just happens to be that you are going through that time we "the monthly" except for guys it happens yearly. You're an emotional basket case right now so I suggest some ice cream with crushed pretzels on top and if that doesn't work, go for a nice big dill pickle. I'm talking the dill pickle that you find at the place where they have ostrich jerky.
Submitted by Sockster (user info) at 2006-08-11 05:03:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I get what you're saying. People are lame nowdays.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2006-08-11 04:56:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It's actually a valuable life lesson. Showing weakness lessens you in the eyes of the people that see it. A husband that shows weakness to his wife, in any one of it's myriad forms, is more likely to be cuckolded than a man who does not. A man who shows weakness at his workplace is unlikely to be promoted. A man who shows weakness in front of his peers is riducled either when he is there or when he is not. A man who shows weakness to his family or community is pitied and thus considered tragically flawed.
Don't be misled by any kind words of encouragement that people in the real world may offer you when you show them weakness, they think less of you and that is that. It is the lot of men.