Is It Karma or Do I Have Resting B*tch Face?
Why do some people rub us the wrong way immediately upon a first meeting?
As I open the hotel room door for housekeeping service this morning, I note the first impression she left me days before still lingers upon seeing her now. I don’t like her. What? Why? My altruistic, gushy hearts and flowers side demands a plausible and rational answer.
I’m all tapped out of those, for now.
What the hell is wrong with me? Am I so pinch-hearted and petty that I’ve made some sort of subconscious assessment of her or worse a dreaded knee jerk judgment about a person I know nothing of? I can’t tell you why I feel this aversion, I just do.
What is it in our social or human DNA which immediately, effortlessly attracts us to or repels us from one another? I’ve always fondled the idea of karma in a way that felt familiar but I’m not sure it applies here. Once I met a psychic named Judith digging for crystals at an Arkansas mine I haunt in Jesseville. After hailing me from some 50 feet away with a presumptive wave and hello we closed the distance between us only to discover we didn’t know each other from Adam. Undeterred, she immediately offered her theory to explain how she believed people reincarnated in groups and we must have been incarnated previously in our own little group! Weirdly, I immediately adored her and found myself nodding my assent.
On the other hand, perhaps it me? Maybe I am the one, who upon immediate assessment by the other am feeling the wave of her aversion? Oh, dear, not the rejection rabbit hole again! Please, don’t make me go down there!
As the woman moves busily about the hotel room, I struggle with these questions and the view I hold of myself as a relatively good human.
Oh no, you’re going to chat me up now?
Good lord, can I exchange an appointment for a root canal for this occasion of awkward small talk with a stranger I’m not particularly fond of? Please?
I’m usually compulsively polite whether people deserve it or not, but in the recent years I’ve either become crotchety or I have realized I have very little precious time or energy left to fritter away engaging others in this way. I think maybe sometimes I come off arrogant or rude because of this, but I’ve decided it’s not my job to like or take care of strangers any longer. It is, however, a requirement to be respectful. But I no longer feel bound or destined to parry with you as if we will exchange holiday cards at year’s end. A card, once received, would compel me to ask, “Now, who’s this again?”
Sounds harsh doesn’t it? I thought so too. Now let me temper my detached, irascible countenance with a distracted half smile I’ve learned to paste upon my face in these situations, though I fear the permanent furrows between my brows while in semi-anxious repose may send the telltale message of disinterest anyway.
So I ask you, will this attitude permanently give me Resting Bitch Face?
We’ll see. I will try it on as I tip the housekeeper when she leaves.
More humor if you like to laugh, and who doesn’t like to laugh?
The first time I heard my typically mild mannered, etiquette conscious mother speak the word “fuck,” I was in my late…medium.com
s lynn knight 2016
