How I do not argue with someone who thinks he knows everything. . .

I got worn out by a lawyer friend. We had a disagreement on a couple of situations. The man is a badger by nature and a lawyer by trade. I have two things in my life that I do not like to discuss and they have not come up here. I literally disassociate myself from him when he starts harping-- I do not do this intentionally, but my brain scrambles his words. I wonder if he thinks he won the argument and if he is proud of himself, but in truth, he is an ass. Somehow for him, me agreeing with him makes his world OK on matters that don't involve him. He chose to not back me and that was ok and I was never going to talk about them again nor was he to, but his constant bringing of the issues to conversations that are meant to be about other things makes me wonder if, on top of him seeming narcissistic, if he also has a neurosis. (I have brought them up a couple of times, but as a friend who does not support, you just be silent for your friend and let the comment pass: 'It is your life, I don't understand, but you hurt, so it is what it is for you.')

The friendship is probably non existent at this point because I'd told him not to bring them up, he agreed, and somehow me bringing up some other topic always brought him to the topics. He also informed me that I have wasted my last several years in not finishing my education. I told him of some of my hurdles and he said that I needed to work them out with my husband. He had spoken of so many very personal things, brought them up on his own, but found my hurdles for what he thought I should be doing as too much pesky detail.

A few days ago, he asked me, "What do you tell people in social situations when they ask what you do?" Somehow, saying that I am a housewife with seven kids still at home is supposed to hurt me, but I told him that when I say that I am a housewife with seven kids still home that people usually seem to have no problem. (My older two, who make it a total of nine children that I have birthed and raised, are in college, so I must be doing something right. I talk to them a couple of times a week and we get along well even though I have no wealth to share with them, so we must love each other, too.)

Tomorrow I have training with an organization that I care for. I am getting sick. I have two kids who are getting sick. I may have to not go in. I will be a failure to this so-called friend if he ever finds out why I missed it. He doesn't get it as he looks at me-- I am articulate and I have, in his opinion, wasted my life-- gee willikers, I could have done something with my life and I have all this great talent that I have wasted on my brats! He has four kids that he hardly knows and has managed to not figure out how child care and sick kids can impact a person's training and job prospects.  (My articulation somehow should make everything great in my life so I can have it all, all at once! And he can go to a certain city 20 times in ten years, but not see his kids as much and with all his education, he is doing so much better than me. I felt like it was the 1980's all over again with the housewife debates. I am a lesser person because I am a home and we struggle money-wise.)

Anyway, I feel gross and sad and like I should have fought and it's not worth it. I feel like in his eyes I am a failure and this hurts. How does one argue with a biased judge in one's life? It's best to not try to defend yourself when everything sounds like a big, fat, lame excuse-- were I to do anything different, I'd be neglecting my responsibilities as a mother and he'd be the first to point that out. If he got it, he'd have to realize that he is dead wrong and only experience can teach you some things and I don't wish it on him-- he missed his experiences with his own kids and that revelation would be crushing if he figured it out.

All his successes in life matter little when through my magnifying glass, he missed years of the lives of his own children because his ex wives were smart enough to leave him. I can only imagine him at the births of his children, smiling and beaming with the mothers of his children, stealing their thunder of their labor stories with the presents he bought them that he wanted to show everyone who came to see his children. . . and asking his wives, "So, when are you planning to go back to work? You look great, you can go back in three weeks instead of six!"

He needs a sterile trophy wife and sterile trophy friends.
I have gone off course in this post.

(He does not read my blog.)  

I can't believe what I just did.

I wrote an e-mail to my Russian prof and asked her for some poetry of the Russian masters. I asked for something simple so that I can learn to speak it better. I did not tell her this, but the dialogs that we recite in class mean nothing to me. She gives us poetry that children recite which is just little rhymes. They mean nothing to me. Chances are, I will not go to Russia in this lifetime. I am a mother with nine children and it's just amazing that I am even competing my degree. I used to want to travel, but now it seems as likely as me traveling to Mars. I don't give a rat's ass about the dialogs. I care about the poetry.

When I was younger, I had a bad stutter. I joined the debate team in high school because I wanted to get over it. My coach, for whom I named my first child, would later tell me that she went home and cried. I was so excited to be on the team, but my stutter was a huge hump in public speaking. It was painful to listen to me, but I so badly wanted to join the team. Debate teams over here do more than debate. They have drama events and she got me into mime so I could compete while she gave me poetry to practice for dramatic and humorous interpretation events. I read Shakespeare and Wordsworth and modern humorists and everything that she gave me. I overcame my stutter by learning the rhythm. I would stand in the hall after school and practice my works while kids ran indoors for the running team. I know I seemed weird but the same athletes who I was in class with noticed that when I read even when they good naturedly teased me and ran circles around me or tried to mess me up, I wasn't stuttering!

Once in a class another teacher called on me and asked me a question and I tried several times to answer him, but my stutter was bad that day and I stopped and asked to go see the school nurse because I had started to cry. One of the runners said, "Tea, you don't stutter when you read. Pretend you are reciting Shakespeare in the hall after school!" After that, I started getting better. Three years later, I was impossible to beat when I did my speaking events-- and I lost my stutter.

I hope the professor doesn't tell me that I have to memorize only the children's rhymes and dialogs and then get the poetry later.

In my German classes in high school, we only learned dialogs and I think that if she had taught us some poetry from the great German writers, I'd still speak it. Poetry is Art. Dialogs are lame and only useful if you get to travel and if the speaker deviates, you get confused. I read poetry for fun in English. I think that I would still speak German had I been introduced to it. Poetry has rhythm and there is a cadence to it. Poetry can be historical. You don't do poetry for a grade-- you do it for the sake of doing it.

Poetry teaches the structure of the language; it is like practicing katas in martial arts or doing compulsory figures in ice skating. Children's rhymes don't do it for me and dialogs depress me as I will most likely not travel to Russia.

I am not making any sense. She is going to laugh at me for even asking for something simple from the great writers, but that is what is relevant to me.