Intrusions
In much the same way that I don’t like people smashing the door off the hinges, terrorizing my family with guns or knives or other blunt weaponry, and stealing all our valuables, I don’t like people knocking on it.
It feels rude to me, this door knocking.
Especially when it becomes more and more insistent. As if I didn’t hear the first knock so they keep right on knocking, louder, then louder still. I automatically hate them for this. I mean really. Is the whole world supposed to stop merely because you’re outside knocking on my door? Well contrary to what your knocking ass thinks, I’m doing something. I know that may surprise you. Perhaps you imagined me on the edge of my seat all day, hoping and waiting for your unsolicited arrival. Well guess what. I wasn’t. In fact, the image of you never even entered my mind. It’s only there now because I want to kill you.
The same goes for the phone. A ringing telephone trumps all other forms of more concrete presence. Why? It’s just like any other jerk interrupting you with no finesse for transition. I’m talking to my wife. RING. I’m eating dinner. RING. I’m reading. RING. It’s rude. Isn’t it rude? And yet people drop everything to answer the telephone. Have you ever carefully observed people around you when a phone rings? They startle. Whatever they were doing SNAPS off and they look around frantically like they only have 5 rings before a bomb explodes.
I like to ignore the door or the phone when someone (WHO I INVITED) is over. “Did you hear that?” they ask. “Yes.” I reply. And then they look perplexed, like they can’t possibly imagine why I might value being with them more than answering some invasive knock or ring.
I imagine a lot of you are just like me when it comes to the door and the phone. Because you are, after all, reading this blog. Which makes you weird. But, for me, this excessive irritability in response to intrusion extends all the way to people speaking to me.
JENNA: Hi.
BHJ (knits eyebrows): So fucking rude.
JENNA: What?
BHJ: I’m just sitting here, thinking, minding my own business. What gives you the right to just explode into my awareness with your cheerful greeting? It’s like what I’m thinking about doesn’t even matter to you. No. Of course not. It’s much more important to bombard me with the sound of your voice and force me to dwell on its implications.
JENNA: What implications?
BHJ: Well you say ‘Hi’ and it dominates my entire field of consciousness. It implies that I too should say ‘Hi’ and then continue down a road of small talk, abandoning my own considerations.
JENNA: Well jeez. If it bothers you that much, don’t say ‘Hi’ back.
BHJ: Oh no the damage is already done, honey. So… Hi.
JENNA: You realize that, when the time comes, I’m just dropping you off at the institution’s door and getting on with my life, right?
*
My imagination frequently returns to the fertile event of the European confrontation with this “New World”. What a sublime cultural challenge. These continents were littered with rich pockets of diverse cultural systems, each with their own unique vision of religion, art forms, and ways to be. Would the foreign invaders embrace this richness, use it to inform and enhance, broaden, expand, their own visions of the world? Or would something inherent to their own culture require them to extinguish the intrusion of all things new and strange.
They might have left some babies / crying on the ground.
*
I don’t like the way I am or defend it. I may pose like I’m this mad open wild thing, ready to grapple with destructive philosophy and all the weirdest ideas, but how does my 11-year-old son feel about approaching me? I wish I could be reading a book and absorb his intrusion like I’m interested in a zany new culture instead of feeling like a shattered window. My legacy in his memory concerns me. Will I be just another distant Fatherly ghost, inaccessible, unresponsive to my children knocking on my door?
The knock at the door signifies the need of the strange to come inside, sit down, and have a cup of tea. I want to become better at opening doors.
But the phone? Still an accursed contraption suited more for bullets than answering. RING. I want to shoot it, stab it, and smash it with blunt weaponry.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Reader Comments (37)
Which is the reason I don't call.....
. . . but, somebody WANTS something . . !
We're cut from the same impenetrable cloth, my friend. I can't count the number of times I've been absorbed with something . . . a book, a post, a problem that needs my attention . . . only to have one of my kids, or my wife, knock on my head with their fist. "Hello? Any body home?" I honestly didn't hear them, such is the depth of my concentration.
So now, I plan on intrusions. Set aside a portion of my day to simply engage. Them. Not the phone. Fuck the phone . . .
It's why I love e-mail. I get to it when I want to, not when I am freaking beckoned.
I'm like you too. I like to live inside my own head and how dare anyone pull me away from my own thoughts. I'm getting rid of our land line too because who really needs it? Other than telemarketers that is ....
Usually, when the phone rings I'm chasing the sound because I can't remember where I placed the cordless the last time. Helps with exercise though.
So now I'm torn--do I leave a comment and risk the invasion as you will surely be notified that a new comment has been made or do I just skip it and leave you to brood?
Fuck it--you showed up in my reader first.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's ambivalent about the phone. I usually let it ring a couple times before answering it, especially if I'm already doing something I'd have to put down or whatever. I relish the control, I suppose.
I love Caller ID and voicemail, and I don't think it's antisocial to treat a ringing phone as a recommendation instead of a demand.
I probably wouldn't leave someone hanging at the front door, though, unless it was someone I didn't know, and it could at least plausibly seem like I wasn't home. You're a better man than me. Now get back to your mulling.
Lately I resent the ringing phone even more because half the time it's my ex's girlfriend wanting to know where he is and why he's not answering his phones and would I ask him to call her? Sigh. Guess how I was awakened this morning??
I don't often answer the door when not expecting any one. It IS an intrusion, strangers knocking. The phone is an assault on my senses, and I often resent it even when it's someone I WANT to talk to.
I struggle to be gentle with the Evil Genius when he interrupts (for the millionth time that second) with whatever antic he thinks I must see to live. Sometimes I fail and snap, and I hope those aren't' the times he recalls. I hope he remembers how often I stopped writing, stopped folding laundry or putting away dishes, stopped reading, got down on the floor and played with him, or read him a story or danced with him.
Shade and Sweetwater,
K
I am on the phone at work the majority of the day. Consequently, I rarely answer the phone at home. In fact, two people used to call me regularly, but now that one of them lives with me, well, he doesn't need to call, therefore I have only one reason TO answer the phone. I don't like people to come knock on my door wrangling an invitation in. If you want to see me, you could call and invite me to your place. Which would be great if I ever answered the phone. However, I have voice mail, and if it is important I will usually call back.
As for the other, I have decided this year that I am off duty at 8:00. That means school work has to be checked, papers signed, plans made all before 8:00. Because then I have been able to be a mom and give them what they need, and can also have that later time to delve into my own little world. It has worked pretty well thus far.
Ignoring a ringing phone, a friend looked around the room and said "who could be more interesting than you?"
That's why I love emails, and even TEXTING, because I don't have to answer right away. I can finish what I'm doing and get to it when I want to.
Exactly. What you said.
See. Yet again you catch me off guard with the ending. Well done. And I hate the phone. Hate it.
I grab the phone as fast as I can because it invades my world and sounds that i'm not expecting grate on my nerves...I would leave it until later, but if I don't take care of the message/e-mail/door knock, I will obsess about who/what/why and not be able to focus on what I was doing prior anyway, or think that it was someone calling or knocking to tell me about some emergency with my kids or family. It's very surprising people ever got on without all these little devices to depend, because if my battery isn't charged or I forget the phone, I fret all day that something bad is going to happen and I won't be able to get help.
So you're the guy that drives slow too, huh? I am always ALWAYS in a hurry....I could definitely take a lesson from you in being in the moment and fully focusing on it, and not always making sure to be available to my IM/Chat/Facebook.
I don't always answer the phone. We don't even have voicemail. This drives other people crazy. I don't care. Neither does the rest of the family. Often, we may all be home but no one answers the ringing phone. This perplexes visitors because it's not like anyone even gets up to check the number that's calling. We just ignore it hoping it'll go away. I almost never phone anyone either. Certainly not without a very good reason. I'm beginning to wonder why we even have a phone.
There is rarely a knock on the door. I am happy to answer if it is a friend or neighbor...not so happy if it's someone selling windows or religion or such or collecting money.
I absolutely fucking hate a ringing phone. When there is a knock at the door, I am immediately suspicious. And when I am otherwise internally engaged an external hello is usually met with a blank stare and a few blinks....then 'Sorry, I wasn't listening to a word you said...could you repeat that?'
You need to find yourself a "studio." It could be the room over the garage, or the actual garage, or a nearby storefront or cabin you retreat to one overnight a month - but you need some physical space to yourself to let your brain run solitary and free through the metaphorical meadow. No kidding: the hardest part about being a parent for me is the constant interruption of brain flow. There is a reason my kids went to day care when I wasn't even working - it's called "preserving my sanity." I think some of us, no matter how highly socialized we can be with our spouses and kids and neighbors and work aren't really built for group living.
i don't answer the phone, the door, texts or most emails. I like living in my dark cave.
"It’s only there now because I want to kill you."
Fuckin' A.
I put a sign on my front door awhile back that said "No soliciting."
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, changed. So I ripped it off angrily.
I am now considering replacing it with a sign that just says, "I want to kill you."
Perhaps then I will find out if people truly are rude or just can't read.
We've turned off all the ringers on our house phone and instructed the kids to call our cells. It is amazingly quiet around here. Very tranquil. I still look out from the 2nd floor before answering the door, but that's just because I'm a bit paranoid. I mean, who in this day and age just comes knocking at the door without prior notice?
Exactly.
The phone is a huge irritant to me. Whenever we are doing anything, little or big, I always want to slap my husband for jumping up to get the phone. Seriously?! If it's an emergency, then we'll find out sooner or later, but in the meantime thanks for talking to your mom during family dinner. We appreacitated your undevided attention and respect for our quality time.
Yeah, the phone pisses me off more than I apparently realized.
A long-recurring fight with my husband and I concerns the phone.
I have it set for the message service to kick in after 3 rings. Because if I don't feel like answering I don't want to listen to it . He's resentfully reconciled himself to this. But he still thinks it's the height of rudeness that I may be available, that is, present, but choose to not pick up.
ring
Him: (shouting) "Get the phone!"
I can be sitting next to it, and if I'm occupied with my own thoughts will say, "Can't. I'm busy."
He doesn't understand this.
The most passive aggressive thing he can do is pick up the phone when I refuse to, and say, "You want to talk to Excavator? She's right here" and hand me the phone. When it's my mother. Or worse, his.
It's as if he believes the caller has a disembodied view of our home, and can see us sitting in proximity of the phone, knowing who's calling and refusing them (mother!), outright flipping them off.
I say that's what machines are for, and I refuse to run for a phone. Unless I'm expecting one from a hospital and it's concerning my child.
Odd, though, that while he expects me to respect the phone's tender feelings by picking it up whenever it calls, a "hello" in the morning can generate the same feeling of intrusion for him that the ring does to me.
It's good to greet the phone with equanimity. There are reasons we say a phone call is "for" you, not "against" you. Your door is on the BHJ team, little friend.
me..if someone is knocking on my door, I want them to be big. I like big knockers.
It's this very thing that turns me from a mild mannered person into a seething ragey She-Hulk... Telemarketers and door to door salesmen who pound ceaselessly. There's one group who has been back to my house THREE TIMES so far. I guess I didn't go Hulk grandly enough.
But I do understand where you're coming from.
Perhaps you could use a sign on the back of your head, much like a cab. Lights up when vacant, so we know when it's ok to approach.
I feel the same way at work when an e-mail alert interrupts my blog reading. Sheeesh people can't it wait??
I loved the way you describe reactions to a ringing phone!
I don't answer my phone or the door.
Fuck 'em.
And I don't check my voicemail either. I have to want to speak with you.
I ain't never calling your sorry ass, then. I can see your pained expression from here.
I hate the phone. We hardly ever answer the phone when it rings...even my 10 and 8 year old don't pick it up. If kids won't answer the phone and take messages for us, why do we have them ;-) At least, I'm training them well :-)
I read an article once about how Dick Cheney's kids never felt like they knew him at all because he always had his nose stuck in a book and he was always grouchy when they tried to talk to him and one of them said in the interview "Dad's never been exactly what you would call a WARM man" --- and I remember thinking, Wow, what a DOUCHE BAG. That guy is totally JUST like BHJ. And this post proves I was right.
The knock at the door signifies the need of the strange to come inside, sit down, and have a cup of tea.
This will be, guaranteed, the best thing that I read all week.
Reading this post is like the first day of school and walking into the classroom and the class is filled with all the people you feel comfortable with and the teacher is barefoot and sitting on top of the desk and you realize that there is a place in the world where people understand you and it's all good.
I flipping hate my phone. I have to change the ringtone on a regular basis because no matter what song or jingle or noise I change it to, in just a few weeks I'm going to absolutely hate the sound of that song, jingle, or noise. People call and I don't answer... and then they get pissed at me and give me crap for it. It's not like they pay the frigging bill. And the people that call over and over again because they know I'm not answering? Those people really REALLY piss me off. Because then I finally answer and I'm like "WHAT?!?!?" and they think they're funny that they got me to answer. Because seriously? There is no emergency in the world that only I can handle for these people. It's not like anyone's life depends on me answering the damned phone. Call 911 bitches!
I'm really riled up now. I think I'm going to go insanely clean my kitchen.
I hate the phone with the fire of a thousand cases of raging diarrhea. And the door? Would love to hang a sign that says "Go the fuck away unless you were invited."
Amen, brother.
My children don't answer the phone. It's a testament to how little I care for it. It took my partner years to deal with it. If he answers the phone and it's for me, I ignore him when he tries to interrupt me to hand it to me. I continue doing whatever it was that was more important than the phone to begin with. He's adjusted and gotten used to taking messages when he feels it necessary to jump up and answer that ungrateful, demanding and rude contraption. Glad I'm not alone, except oh wait, I am, in my antisocial bubble. It's nice here, don't bother calling.