ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Aaahhh...to be acknowledged, truly acknowledged. It’s a great thing, isn’t it? Isn’t it what most people want, at least on some level?

The other day I was walking the dogs around the compound and ran into a neighbor. I know, I know, big surprise. You’ll have to forgive me; it’s where the majority of my social interaction takes place. Anyway, this happens to be a neighbor that I like and she seems relatively normal. She hasn’t tried to reveal any scars in private places to me and she hasn’t attempted to prop her fur burger up on me or stick her tongue in my mouth and she doesn’t sport camel toes. So, I consider her “relatively” normal. At least for now, maybe she’ll prove me wrong. Although, her father was a wild one and you can read all about how he was buried in his sequined g-string here. I’m not real sure that we should know about that, so I may have to retract my dubbing of her “relatively normal”.

So, we exchanged greetings and then when I continued talking, she paused then began talking at the same time, but NOT to me. She began talking to the dogs instead of me. I was still talking thinking that she was going to fucking shut her pie hole, but she didn’t. She just kept talking to the dogs. So, I stopped talking and waited. When she finished chatting it up with our dogs, I began to repeat what I had previously attempted to say AND SHE FUCKING DID IT AGAIN! She started talking to the dogs like I wasn’t even there let alone saying anything. I was on the verge of saying, “Bitch, no you dinn’nt.”

But, I gave up. I stood there thinking, ‘you rude hag’. I just stopped talking like she apparently wanted me to and let her finish her conversation with the dogs. At least she was being attentive to them. I was nice and wished her a good day, but she left me feeling a little perplexed. She’s a good woman. And she’s a good neighbor. But I felt ignored. She didn’t even say, “Oh, I’m sorry! What were you saying?” Nope. Not even that.

I didn’t take it personally, but it did bother me. It reminded me how important it is to listen to people, to really listen and to make them feel acknowledged. Or at least to pretend to. I’m not naïve enough to think that there’s a lot of “listening” going on out there. It’s pretty apparent that there isn’t. I guess I was just surprised by how blatant she was about ignoring me.

I mentioned to Will what she had done and he said, “Well, was what you were saying boring? Maybe she was bored.”

And I responded, “Thanks a lot...Clearly she must have been, that really isn’t the point though, is it? Am I suppose to just say really fascinating things all the time to make sure that people always listen to me? And people don’t have to listen to me, but they generally don’t talk OVER me after I already started talking.” Speaking of which, did you guys know that butterflies used to be known as “Flutterbyes”? See? See?? I’m completely fascinating. She must have been out of her mind to do that.