Shocking
I think of myself as unshockable.
I realised that I am wrong this week, when I learned that my cousin has cancer, and it felt like a great big whack with a baseball bat. One of those life-changing moments. He's four years younger than I am. I keep having strange, apparently unrelated dreams, but I wake up knowing that this is what they're about.
But, in general, I am not easily shocked. Sometimes I wonder why not, because although in some ways my upbringing was unusual (my Dad's a Communist, you know) in others it was very conventional - suburban house, garden, Very Prim girls' grammar school.
The grammar school gave me my voice, which may best be described as Posh Northern - I say "bath" and not "barth" but otherwise, okay, I sound Posh. So people tell me - it started when I was supply teaching and known throughout the school as 'Er Wi't Posh Voice.
And I don't look unconventional - I look jeans and T-shirt and no make-up, generally. Oh all right then - no make up always. The last time I wore make-up I got married. It was 1980. I was a child bride, of course.
And my eyes have very large pupils, and this makes me look gullible, so every religious cult member in Leeds comes up to me in the street and tries to convert me. And I probably am gullible, in some respects: but I'd rather be gullible than whatever the opposite is. Ungullible.
So this combination of characteristics all combine to make me look shockable. Many times, especially when I was younger, people didn't tell me things, in case I was shocked. I think they wanted to protect me: but it just made me feel stupid when I found out anyway and realised that they hadn't felt able to tell me in case I fainted, or something.
But finally people seem to be working it out. I'm not shocked by the many darknesses of the human soul and I'm not shocked by drink, drugs or the things people do to each other for pleasure or for pain. I wish they didn't want to do some things which I think are harmful: but I'm not shocked by them in that "Ooh! WHAT?" way that some people seem to be.
Good thing? Bad thing? What shocks you?
I come back to it. I was shocked when the Communist was taken into hospital in June and I was shocked this week by learning of my cousin's cancer. Those are the kind of things that change everything for ever.
I realised that I am wrong this week, when I learned that my cousin has cancer, and it felt like a great big whack with a baseball bat. One of those life-changing moments. He's four years younger than I am. I keep having strange, apparently unrelated dreams, but I wake up knowing that this is what they're about.
But, in general, I am not easily shocked. Sometimes I wonder why not, because although in some ways my upbringing was unusual (my Dad's a Communist, you know) in others it was very conventional - suburban house, garden, Very Prim girls' grammar school.
The grammar school gave me my voice, which may best be described as Posh Northern - I say "bath" and not "barth" but otherwise, okay, I sound Posh. So people tell me - it started when I was supply teaching and known throughout the school as 'Er Wi't Posh Voice.
And I don't look unconventional - I look jeans and T-shirt and no make-up, generally. Oh all right then - no make up always. The last time I wore make-up I got married. It was 1980. I was a child bride, of course.
And my eyes have very large pupils, and this makes me look gullible, so every religious cult member in Leeds comes up to me in the street and tries to convert me. And I probably am gullible, in some respects: but I'd rather be gullible than whatever the opposite is. Ungullible.
So this combination of characteristics all combine to make me look shockable. Many times, especially when I was younger, people didn't tell me things, in case I was shocked. I think they wanted to protect me: but it just made me feel stupid when I found out anyway and realised that they hadn't felt able to tell me in case I fainted, or something.
But finally people seem to be working it out. I'm not shocked by the many darknesses of the human soul and I'm not shocked by drink, drugs or the things people do to each other for pleasure or for pain. I wish they didn't want to do some things which I think are harmful: but I'm not shocked by them in that "Ooh! WHAT?" way that some people seem to be.
Good thing? Bad thing? What shocks you?
I come back to it. I was shocked when the Communist was taken into hospital in June and I was shocked this week by learning of my cousin's cancer. Those are the kind of things that change everything for ever.
posted by Daphne at 7:18 pm
4 Comments:
Cynical.
And I am shocked by very little. I was shocked when my cousin and her baby died, but that's pretty shocking. I'm shocked when I witness cruelty to children, but not when I hear of it.
So sorry to hear about your cousin, Daphne. These things always seem even worse when they happen to someone younger, I find. It challenges our innate belief that we are immortal, maybe.
Thank you both - yes, Ailbhe, your cousin and her baby dying is genuinely shocking. I think what's upset me about my cousin's illness is that he was my childhood playmate - and, you're right, Jennyta, we don't expect our childhood playmates to be so seriously ill.
Hmm. I suppose several people I was at school with have since died, so it doesn't seem that unlikely to me. I was far more upset by a neighbour I'd known occasionally dying in his late 60s than by a girl I spent 5 years sitting near at secondary school dying in her mid-twenties.
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