The Curse of Being Non-Reactive
Disclaimer: This post and however many are in this series look into how I navigate my interpersonal relationships with a focus on my dating life, yet it won’t be exclusive to my dating life. Therefore, to protect the privacy of certain individuals the names of those mentioned have been changed in this post.
Barbara Park single-handly taught me one of the most valuable yet detrimental (in my case) life lessons through her character Junie B. Jones.
I used to be an avid reader when I was a kid, and my mom would have me read the series about the rambunctious five-year-old out loud to her while she read her John Grisham books.
While I’m not sure how much progress I would say Junie B. made in her seemingly impossible journey of not being such a pain in the a$$ to every adult and child she came in contact with, I guarantee you all that she wrote something so profound in first grade when she kept calling this little girl in her class, May, a “dumb bunny”:
“I am not allowed to say dumb bunny! On account of my teacher herd heard me call May that name on the playground. And he said for me to knock it off. Only here is something I just thought of. Even if I can’t say dumb bunny out loud, I can still think it inside my head. ‘Cause heads are silent. Which is what I like about heads.”
What an absolute game-changer in the trajectory of how I live my life. My mom and I have kept that sentiment for years that the mind is silent thanks to Junie B. Jones, and I will forever be grateful yet a little pissed off about how much influence that has had on me. The mere fact that no thoughts or opinions about others being stupid, whiny, or whatever other negative word you could think of there, would ever be exposed to the outside world as long as I keep it in my head? A genius revelation for anyone who might be afraid that their words can have a serious impact on others.
This life motto is typically how I navigate off-putting interactions with people… I don’t say what I’m thinking. I have to be real comfortable with someone to even give them half of my mind. My mind is silent, and I don’t want to say anything that I might regret. This doesn’t negate the fact that I’m an extremely opinionated woman. Seventy-five percent of the time, I’m going to have a definitive argument about how Waffle House is actually still disgusting even if you’re the farthest from sober you’ve ever been. Twenty percent of the time, I just don’t know enough about the topic to willingly speak on it, and that last five percent is when there are no thoughts of which way I should lean on something. That five percent rarely occurs.
I think a lot of words in my head. I think of many ways I should’ve responded to people in a moment, or harsh yet valid thoughts that I could express that are well-deserved. Yet that little voice in my head says, “Just keep it to yourself because that’s what Junie B. would do.”
You see, there’s beauty in the mind being silent. For the most part, it doesn’t get me into any fights or unwanted arguments. It doesn’t make others around me feel as uncomfortable as someone may have or has made me. It’s a self-preservation mechanism that I learned at an early age which refuses to die. For fear of the consequences of my words, I rather just not react. Perhaps this goes against my style of empathy (WORD TO MY LAST POST IN THE SERIES), but whenever I finally decide to express myself, I try to be very intentional in the way I do so, in hopes that I won’t get in trouble or mess up a relationship beyond repair with someone.
Let’s now take a look at some examples from my life where I probably could’ve been more reactive but chose not to be.
Also, shout out to my mom for helping me skim/read through almost every Junie B. Jones' book in my possession to make this point. LOVE YA!
I’ll admit, compared to some people, I was a bit of a late bloomer; I had my first kiss at seventeen.
I didn’t get out much in high school because honestly, I didn’t really think guys were interested in me like that. Part of that is due to being a (semi-average) black girl at a predominately white school where all of your white friends are getting asked to homecoming and dating when you can’t even get a boy to Snapchat you consistently, while the other part is that quite frankly, men scare me sometimes. That’s another story for another day though.
Truly, it wasn’t until I got to college that I discovered I was desirable to the opposite sex. Therefore, I didn’t have much experience when I actually entered the crazy world of dating.
Due to this inexperience, I’ve had a lot of interactions with men that went south very quickly where I probably should’ve taken a step back and said,
“There’s no f*cking way I should entertain this right now…like this man is weird.”
Let’s unpack my first kiss.
Calvin decided that while we were making out to start slowly creeping his hand up my thigh to what I think little kids call my “No-No Square.” Mind you, I had made it abundantly clear to this man that he was not getting any further than first base with me only thirty or so minutes prior in the Chick-Fil-A off Germantown Parkway. I had made him aware that I didn’t drink or do drugs, and I wasn’t down to get frisky??? I don’t know what word to use there, but I didn’t want him to try anything funny. You get what I mean.
Perhaps this was a bit extreme of detail to go into on our second date, but I liked him enough to let him know my boundaries before we went any deeper. That’s just my style in dating—honesty (for the most part).
Anyways . . . .
Why did this man decide to say after I immediately pulled away from him before he got…there: “Oh sorry . . . memories”
N*gga what?
MEMORIES?!?!?!?!?
Say memories ten times fast right now. Sounds like a spell from Harry Potter or something.
At a base level, that’s a completely botched social cue if I’ve ever seen one. He knew he was my first kiss. I had drawn my hard line in the sand with him as I was eating a bowl of chicken noodle soup in the dining room that was probably fifty feet away from his car in the parking lot. Surely, SURELY he remembered this was only our second date and that there were no memories to be had with me. Yet, instead of just concluding his simple, dare I say pitiful, apology, this dude tacked on the word memories.
Why the f*ck would he say that to me? Any normal person (I think) would have enough sense to know that in this specific scenario, that’s just not something you say. Maybe you could argue that normality is relative, but no. No. Absolutely not. There was not a genuinely empathetic thought that ran through his head during that entire interaction. Especially when just a few minutes prior, he had kind of let me know that I wasn’t all that at kissing. I must’ve been something… talking about some “memories”. Be so expeditiously f*cking for real right now.
By the way that last line doesn’t hold true anymore, so I’ve been told.
Anyways…let’s look at this from an empathetic standpoint, where on God’s green earth would that comment have ever made me feel better?
You are bringing up that 1. you’ve done this with other girls that aren’t me AND 2. those few little words would plant the invasive seeds of comparison—otherwise known as the thief of joy—for the rest of our time together.
I was stunned, and honestly, I kind of wanted to just start pestering him with questions on the spot. Yet, I didn’t. Why?
Well, the situation was already awkward to me, and I didn’t want to look desperate or crazy or make him uncomfortable—even though he had already crossed that line. Why bother? I could just keep these thoughts in my head because “Heads are silent.”
I cried for a few days after that. I didn’t even tell my friends about it until a month or two later because I was so embarrassed about the whole thing, and just as quickly as I got this male attention that I wasn’t necessarily craving but it definitely proved to be a self-esteem boost—I lost it. Sometimes having standards really bite.
I shouldn’t have been devastated though because that wasn’t a normal situation. In fact, that was weird, and if I could do it all over again, I’d call him out right then and there in the car, so that hopefully the next girl he might’ve second-guessed pulling that on anyone else.
What about the time an older gentleman told me, “Happy Mother’s Day!” while I was cashing him out at Walgreens? I immediately told him that I wasn’t a mom—I was only 20. He said, “Well, for the future when you become a mother.” I didn’t say anything for the rest of that transaction. All I was thinking in my head was:
“What if I was infertile and I just started sobbing right now? What if I had lost a beautiful child of mine a year ago? What if.. and I know this is a crazy thought… I just don’t want to have kids? Above all, do I look motherly?”
That last question made me have an existential crisis for the rest of the week that maybe my Black was cracking.
I look back and wonder why I didn’t just ask any of those questions. I mean maybe it could’ve potentially helped him understand why saying that to a stranger might not be the best move. Yet, I just sat there.
My non-reactiveness definitely continued a cycle of this man not considering the impact his words could have on other people, and I’m not saying that eats me alive or anything, but it irks me just a little bit that I could’ve had the opportunity to at least introduce him to the idea that a comment like that could’ve been insensitive. Alas, the head was silent, and it sadly didn’t tell me to speak up.
This is the final scenario that actually happened to me last week. I was at a bar with friends standing around while the group waited for everyone to ride the mechanical bull. A girl, Grace, had come up to me saying, “Oh my gosh, you’re so pretty! I love your hair!” I said thank you, complimented her back, and kind of moved on. I thought that was the end of the interaction. It was not.
For whatever reason, I left the group and came back, and Grace approached me and my new friend of the night, Emma, again. While Grace told me she loved my hair again, she decided to touch and caress my hair while she was speaking. I honestly can’t remember the last time someone has done this without asking besides a baby finally figuring out that it has the ability to grip and yank whatever is in its small yet powerful little hands.
As she was doing it, Emma and I instantly shared a look of “I know she didn’t.” Y’all, somehow the girl caught us looking at each other, and started profusely apologizing. The weirdest thing about her apologies was that they were directed more to Emma (who was white) than to me. She started overly explaining herself saying: “I’m from a really prejudiced town, and I’m learning, but it’s hard.”
I always think that argument is crazy because . . . I don’t see you walking up to any other girl in here and touching their hair because you think it’s pretty—so why would you do that to me? Moot point. Find a better excuse, please.
Emma tried to get her to stop talking to us over and over, but Grace kept going until we left the bar. I wonder did Grace also realize that apologizing for over 10 times as well as bringing up she was from a racist town didn’t help. Without a doubt, it makes the apology look disingenuous.
While I get you might not interact with Black people often, at the end of the day we are people too. You can admire our customs and culture without poking and prodding us at the expense of your curiosity. I feel like that should be a basic known social cue, especially in 2023.
I also get an argument might be “Well, she was drunk.” but like I said earlier, she wasn’t doing that to everyone, and drunk actions are sober thoughts. It doesn’t matter how intoxicated someone is, if they do something like touch your hair or something worse—them being drunk doesn’t excuse their actions. In fact, it just shows how shitty or ignorant of a person they are.
Upon telling my friend Kaylin about this, she told me she was glad that she didn’t see that interaction because she would’ve put the girl in her place. I wish I could’ve been more reactive at that moment because I don’t really think Grace understood the point, and the situation left me still feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t want to express too much emotion about it considering I didn’t want the group to get kicked out of the bar, and I also wasn’t sure if the girl was the violent type when verbally provoked. I was kind of just going to sit there and take it because I just didn’t want whatever I said to impact me or others negatively.
Heads are silent, but loud mouths (could) get you in trouble.
I know that post wasn’t as informative as the previous one in the series, but one of my questions in this series was how I navigate social cues, empathy, and characters. While I’m not saying you should be reactive every single time you are met with an uncomfortable situation, I do implore those who grew up on the “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” mentality to learn when you should speak up for yourself and let people know that whatever they’ve done or said to you isn’t necessarily okay. It might be uncomfortable at the moment, but there are lessons that both parties in an awkward scenario can learn.
Also, tell me, how do y’all react to uncomfy situations? Do you react or respond in situations? According to Kaylin, there’s a difference that perhaps I should explore soon. I might take y’all’s tips & tricks and try to make myself grow into a more… balanced? well-rounded? emotionally in-touch? human being.
As always, thank you so much for reading! I love y’all’s comments and feedback. The next post in the series will be a comparison of how men and women typically view social cues & empathy! I’m going to do some interviews for the next one, so stay tuned!
