Like
most people, I always try to look my best and often rely on others to tell me
if I have a blob of mascara on my cheek or if an outfit makes my butt look big.
But sometimes, this assistance crosses a line and what should merely be a
suggestion becomes a hands-on invasion of personal space.
A while back I became the victim of what I
call “unwelcome grooming”. There I was standing in front of a mirror in a
clothes store, trying on a pair of jeans, when a stranger walked up to me and
pointed out that I had some stray hairs swaying above my head as though I’d
stuck a fork in an electrical socket. “Darling,” she said “I’ve wanted to do
this since you walked into the shop.” And with that, she licked the tips of her
fingers and smoothed the offending hairs with her damp, sticky mitt.
Yes, that’s right, a woman I’d never met
before decided that, rather than suffer the embarrassment of a few stray split
ends, I’d prefer her saliva smeared all over my head. To some, this might not
be confronting but, as someone who has a borderline phobia of other people’s
bodily fluids, it made me want to dip my head in a bath. In my defence, the
average mouth carries more bacteria than a toilet seat.
Her unwelcome grooming took me back to being
five and having mum attack my chocolate-smeared face with a tissue she’d first
saturated with spit. It’s bad enough to wake from a nap with your own drool on
your face, but having someone else’s drool on my face sends my gross barometer
soaring.
Unfortunately, unwelcome grooming isn’t
limited to hand-lickers. Look out for groomers who presume you don’t like your
jeans low-slung and promptly pull them up on your behalf. This should only be
permitted if the offender is showing an extreme degree of bum cleavage.
Then there are those who insist on picking
things off your face. A friend once leant in to pluck a fallen eyelash off my
cheek, which turned out to be a long facial hair that was still attached to its
follicle. Another pal doesn’t just point out something lodged in my teeth, she
insists on scraping it out herself.
It’s time for victims of unwelcome grooming to
unite and stand up to this daring invasion of personal space. Once and for all,
we say no to wet tissues on our cheeks and alien fingers plucking hairs from
our faces and poppy seeds from between our teeth. Let’s all agree personal
grooming is best left to the individual. If you ever find yourself compelled to
lick your hand and wipe it on someone’s hair, for goodness sake, reach for a
can of hair spray instead.
It
has recently occurred to me that my life revolves around one very anti-social activity.
I indulge in it from the time I wake up until I go to bed at night. The irony
is, I consider this activity as the most impersonal and laziest form of
interaction. I’m referring to texting.
When SMS messages first came on the scene, I thought
there was no way I could be bothered typing messages on a tiny keypad that
barely fit my thumb pads. It’s easier to dial a number. But somehow, over the
years, texting has taken over my life.
It got me to considering some of the pros and
cons of sending text messages. It’s hard to go past the lack of warmth and
emotion involved in texting. We’ve all received short, sharp messages that left
us wondering what we had done to upset the other person. This demonstrates
another problem with texting: how easily it results in misunderstandings and
miscommunications between friends.
Along with the damage done to our
relationships, texting is also wreaking havoc on the English language. Let me
put a final nail in the texting coffin by saying, omg how gr8 wud it be if the
next generation cud actually spell? On the upside, when you’re busy, it’s much
easier to type up a text than be weighed down by a long conversation. Even when
I begin my calls with, “Hi I need to be quick,” my friends acknowledge this at
first, but end their quick story an hour later.
Texting also comes in handy when you have to
let someone down. It’s easier to write “Can’t make it” than have a chat where
you’re forced to admit you just can’t be bothered. There’s also the beauty of
the group text. Instead of calling a raft of people, you can press ‘send’ and
go for the scatter gun approach, hoping the recipients never catch on it wasn’t
a personal message especially for them.
Is it my imagination or are the pros rolling
off my tongue quicker than the cons? Maybe it’s too late to overturn our
reliance on the written word to sustain our relationships. Maybe the phone is
best left for call centres. Or maybe this whole thing should be left to someone
else. You see, as much as I’d love to continue defending the merits of personal
communication, I really need to wrap this up – I have some tweets to send.
I
don’t want to talk on the phone anymore. I used to love it, and in the past
there were periods when I only got off the phone for meal breaks. Police would
have given my description as “Caucasian, female, about 175cm tall with a black
mobile phone attached to her left ear”. But that time is now over. Now I text.
“See you in five” – done. “What time are we
meeting up?” – tick. “Lol…got it” – simple! Convert any of those text messages
to calls and I am losing up to 12 minutes of my day. A quick survey tells me
that this is the new status quo. Unless it’s an emergency, you text. And to be
honest, if triple zero actually accepted SMS as an SOS, I’d do it in an
emergency. There’s been a revolution and girls love it.
Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell men
this. Guys make phone calls. I know this because they’re the only ones who
still call me. Even if I text them, they
call back. “Hi Salvatore, any chance you might be able to swing by this
week? Our television is playing up again. Thanks! M.” RRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNG
RRRINNNGGG!! Nooooo! A quick “Sure, no problem” would have made my day. But a
call-back? I have to talk? This definitely was not the plan. I have a to-do
list to focus on and two celebrity chef judges counting down from ten to zero
in my head all day long. Why do you want to spoil things and have a
conversation?
And really, what do you need to tell me
anyway? Surely just knowing the TV isn’t working properly pretty much covers
it. Finding out why the TV could be kaput is information I’ll never retain. You
might think girls are listening as you explain things like this, but we’re
pretending. Trust me. And while we’re at it, you call me on my landline? What century
are you from?
So, why do men insist on using their mobile
phone as an actual telephone? Well, firstly, it’s polite….I suppose. Secondly,
guys love explaining things. And thirdly, guys are up for a chat. They’re like
My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Fieldel, who comes into the kitchen to see how
things are going. This is a classic men are from Mars, women are from Venus
moment. The guys seem genuinely pleased to see him; they’re ready for a good
old chinwag about the poaching time of their twice-cooked spatchcock. The woman are silently screaming, “Get out of
my kitchen, s’il vous plait.” The producer who thought up that idea is either
clueless, or male. Women are time-coded during business hours. Our lives are
planned to the minute. Texting is the magic wand that makes the Manus in our
world go away.
I can text and do; I can’t talk and do. Make no
mistake, I do use the mobile phone for actual conversations, but it’s generally
at 10pm and always preceded by a text to
my friends saying, “Got time for a chat?” And there’s the clue. It’s the end of
the night, no interruptions, and no lists. Besides, it’s about really important
stuff like food and Mad Men and even Manu. It’s never about anything that
involves fixing stuff.
EVERYONE
knows teenagers are a different species and need to be studied if we are to
find a way to eliminate them. So, in the interests of science I will therefore
seek to provide an understanding into the teenage mind. This will hopefully
fulfil the twin functions of expanding the horizon of human knowledge and
putting an end to parenting columns once and for all.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen I present Tess
and Ocky. Tess is 15 years old and a neighbour of mine. She is kind of like an
indie but her friend Ocky - 14 years old and by Tess’s analysis not as mature -
thinks that maybe they’re just wannabe indies, which is to say windies.
When they are not doing anything they are not
chillin’ anymore, they are illchin’, which is like chillin’ but different and
doesn’t rhyme with “like Bob Dylan”. Tess
and Ocky are quite preoccupied with emos, which are kind of like goths. Some of
them are stoners. Some of them make little cuts on themselves. They are called
emos because they are rather emotional, which explains the little cuts.
Not everyone can be an emo. There are wemos,
which are wannabe emos, and memos, which are mistaken emos. The latter is
someone who is not an emo but is confused for one. I can’t personally explain
how this happens but apparently it does.
There are also lads, who are, to quote Tess,
“like mainstream guys and wear, like, the polo shirts”. There are also wiggers
(white guys who think they are black) and chiggers (Chinese guys who think they
are black). But Tess and Ocky are in no way racist. “We sit with the cool
Asians,” they tell me. These are called hasians, which is short for hot Asians.
There are skinny guys, who suffer from
manorexia, and browned up girls who suffer from tanorexia. These are known as
tandooris. The feral pretties at Tess and Ocky’s school, for example, are
tandooris. It is reassuring that the 14-to-15-year-old demographic does not
approve of drugs – apart from the occasional emo stoner. Cocaine, although
never sighted, is referred to as the devil’s dandruff. How this comes up in
conversation I do not know.
If they care a lot about something - “I care
about the music,” Tess assures me - they might say “this is my jam”. Something
particularly good is a breeze of brill, something bad is flag. I do not believe
this is an anti-patriotic statement but with kids today you can never be sure.
They also employ a large amount of French,
which I naturally find disturbing, but this is largely used to describe bad
things, as in the phrase tres tragique. An
unattractive person might be referred to as fugly but I am assured they are never
unkind enough to say this to someone’s face. When they are experiencing high
self-esteem the girls consider themselves to be indie-credible. I asked them to
put this in a sentence and they said: “Tess and Ocky are indie-credible,
fo’shizzle.” I am yet to clarify this further.
On less positive days they wonder if perhaps
they are just windies but on reflection Tess is more certain of her status. “We’re
on the indie train, platform one coz I’m number one, sucka,” she explains. I
had been under the impression that the term juicy was also used to describe
something good, however it turns out this is a brand of clothing - albeit, I am
informed, a good brand.
The girls are also philosophical. Holding
forth on the interplay between inner beauty and the aesthetic demands of an
image-driven society, Tess observes: “You can’t polish a turd.” Asked to
expound further, she says: “You can’t make somebody ugly look pretty. I never
say that but. I’m not that mean, I’m a pretty cool chick.”
Should you find Tess and Ocky at a soiree, you
might see them crumping. This is a form of dance, as Tess explains: “It’s like
in, um, like rap videos.” If
you see them you might want to say “What’s the hap?” When you depart, you simply
inform them “I’m outie”. I asked Tess and Ocky how normal people were ever
supposed to understand them and both agreed they never would. This is,
according to Ocky, because “we are the rulez” although Tess thought it was also
perhaps due to the fact that “I am a free spirit”.
But it was Tess’s final words that will stay
with me forever, dancing around my mind full of promise and hidden meaning.
“Merc”
she said, “make sure you publish my thoughts bee-yatch”.
