Defiant Joy

Look!  Our vacuum cleaner is a progressive!

I saw this news report saying that the negativity we encounter in the news and on social media can rob us of joy.  With the leaf truck making its first visit joyful of the season today, I shut off the media and went out to multiply my joy by picking up our vacuum cleaner.

Our vacuum cleaner had languished at the repair shop for two months.  I had gone in, about a month in, and asked about it, but the person just said they were waiting for a part.  Another month went by.  My husband called, and got a detailed explanation about faulty employees, an apology, and a promise to do better.

Being without the vacuum cleaner did not rob me of joy, but still, we decided that it was time to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Today I went to pick up the vacuum cleaner.  The staff were apologetic.  I said, fine, I just want my vacuum cleaner back. I calmly pointed out that since they didn’t fix the broken part, I shouldn’t have to pay anything. They agreed and added that all the employees we encountered up to now have been fired from their company.  I expressed sympathy for their business suffering from poor employee behavior.  It sincerely grieves me to see a business not do well because of jagoffs*.  But I also pointed out that it was only when my (male) husband got involved that we found out what was truly going on with our vacuum cleaner.

Text to my husband about vacuum cleaner: 
another fun part of married life

I triumphantly put the (still broken) vacuum cleaner in the car and started for home.  I turned on the radio, which lately I have set to the classical music station because it has more joy than NPR these days. As the traffic light turned green I recognized the strains of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, 4^th movement.  That’s the one with full orchestra, full chorus, full soloists, full everything.  The one Ludwig wrote when he was stone deaf.

Beethoven’s Symphony of Joy.  O Freude! I turned up the volume and cracked my window open.  Spreading joy!

I thought of how the vacuum cleaner repair place only gave results to my husband, and not me.  I thought of how, throughout the years, when we had an issue with our kids’ school, school officials would respond meaningfully to my husband, but not me.  Some people are stone deaf when it comes to listening to a woman.

I thought of the time when, as a young single woman feeling uncertainty and angst in my life, I went to seek help from my pastor, a married man twice my age.  As I expressed my psychological agony to him, his response was to take me in his arms and kiss me, full on the lips.  I cannot tell you the shame and confusion I felt at that moment, and still feel on remembering it.  This is, to my knowledge, the first time I have mentioned this to anyone.

Me too.

This, my first “me-too” moment that I remember, was not as severe or traumatic an experience of sexual harassment or assault as other women have had.  It took me a while to realize that my experience counts as part of the culture that allows it all to happen.  I am mistrustful of social media campaigns like this “me too” thing, but I felt compelled to declare that it has happened to me, too. I want to acknowledge that I have forgiven that man.  All of us, including me, are prone to make judgments of error.  I was not permanently scarred by this incident.

Pulling onto the main road and growing defiant in the way only a middle-aged suburban woman can, I turned up the Symphony of Joy to ear-splitting volume and rolled down both windows. 

I thought of the all the times when I was the only woman in the business meeting with about twenty men.  One of them cracks an off-color sexist joke.  They all laugh.  Then the jokester turns to me to “apologize.” I thought of the time I was at the Paris office for one of those meetings.  I needed to make photocopies for the meeting but had no clue how their photocopier worked.  A grain trader came up to me and asked me to make his photocopies.  Because apparently men couldn’t do things like make photocopies.

I decided it doesn’t matter if the sexist-joke-plus-apology or the men-don’t-do-office-tasks was full-on sexual harassment that qualifies as part of my me-too list, or just jagoff behavior. (I wonder what it is like in the office of the ******-in-Chief.)  

I thought of the time the male doctor I went to about a sore throat felt compelled to feel me up, somewhere lower than my throat. That happened when I was married, and I told my husband.  He encouraged me to report the doctor.  But somehow I knew that reporting it would cause me far more grief and pain than it would the doctor.  After all, it was my word against his.  My silence added to my shame - because I wasn’t willing to fight it.

Me too.

Then I thought of instances I have seen recently of men minimizing women. You know, it’s 2017, and it’s still okay to suggest that a woman can be paid less than a man for the same work, especially if the woman is married to a man making a professional salary.  You know, it’s okay to call a woman by a demeaning nickname rather than her actual name, and if you have a problem with it, you need to lighten up, honey. Those of you who do these things – yinz are jagoffs.  And don’t say that my objections make it impossible for you to interact with women at all.  Just treat women respectfully as your equal.  It’s that simple.

The chorus and orchestra were by now blasting All Joy out of my car windows into the suburban street.  I fully entered into defiant joy, driving aggressively under the speed limit for maximum effect. 

I must proclaim, in my defiant joy, that nearly all of the men in my life have been genuine, kind, respectful, worthy, upstanding human beings.  I have encountered many pastors who listen respectfully to me and respond appropriately.  The company I currently contract with has none of those shenanigans at meetings.  As Beethoven and Schiller put it:

Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium…
Alle Menschen werden Brüder**,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,

Daughter from Elysium…

All men shall become brothers**,

wherever your gentle wings hover.

I forgive the sexual harassment and discrimination directed at me.  Let’s wise up, people, and learn how to treat all of us with respect.

* Jagoff (definition): ˈjaɡˌôf/ noun (chiefly in western Pennsylvania) a stupid, irritating, or contemptible person.

At the request of my husband, rampant use of this word in this post has been reduced to just three instances.

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** Dang it, it’s just impossible to escape gender-non-inclusive language.  I guess I have to forgive Beethoven and Schiller for their 18^th century verbiage.