Bossey Boots: The Return
I was having breakfast with my mother a week ago when inspiration finally hit. I’ve been waiting to start a blog until I found a name that felt right. Lo and behold, all it took to find that was a visit from mom, and a conversation about growing up in small town Iowa with a brain chock full of ideas and a mouth that couldn’t seem to hold back.
From the beginning, I was determined to learn how to talk. My mom tells stories of reading books to me, but unlike most children, I fixated on the way her mouth moved while she read instead of staring at the pictures on the pages. As soon as I learned how to string a coherent sentence together, I was dead set on running the show.
My report cards often came back reading, Anne is her own person. When I mentioned this at breakfast, I elaborated that even as a child, I never knew whether that was meant as a compliment or an insult. My mother revealed that it’s a bit of both.
“Anne is a complex thinker,” she quoted some of the report cards I couldn’t remember. “She has big ideas and is eager to share them. However, she needs to work on letting others share, too.”
My first thought?
Well, I wouldn’t have been so overeager if the other kids weren’t so slow to share. I knew how to get it done in the quickest, most efficient way. Of course I’m going to be the first to speak up.
My inner Kindergartener swiftly smirked and nudged me in the ribs. It was at that moment that I remembered saying something similar to my mom after parent-teacher conferences prompted a parental lecture on my “bossy” behavior.
I reminded her of this, and in doing so, realized that in twenty-four years, some things have, surprisingly, changed. My approach to sharing is vastly different from when I was a child, mostly due to what I’ve dubbed the “small-town social disease”, and the irritating desire to be well-liked by my peers. Unfortunately, all that really means is that it takes longer to reach a group consensus than it should — a result I had figured out at six that most twenty-four-year-olds still haven’t grasped.
This quickly tied into a video that had recently gone viral, and popped up in my Facebook news feed courtesy of UpWorthy. Emma Watson gave a speech to the UN about He For She, an organization that hopes to achieve gender equality. While the speech is full of far more important issues than what I found relevant to me, I identified most with the part at 3:17, when Emma says, “When I was eight, I was confused at being called ‘bossy’ because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not.”
Upon hearing this, I remembered, with vivid clarity, how often I felt confused, angry, and frustrated for being called “bossy,” while the outspoken boys in my grade were deemed “leaders.” Somehow, one had a negative connotation, and the other did not, despite approaching solutions in the same way.
Before this segues into a huge political/intellectual/opinionated argument, hold your horses, eager beavers. Getting into heated gender role debates, slinging accusatory statements, or discussing feminism and whether I identify myself as such is of absolutely zero interest to me. I can’t seem to find any reason to argue over topics most people never change their stance on. I may be “bossy,” but I’ve got enough logic to realize that those conversations are generally a losing battle where many walk away hating each other.
So instead, I’m going to focus on me (hear that bossy tone? *smirk*), because that’s what and who I know best. Well, most days.
So what am I going to write about?
How being “Bossy Boots” while wanting to make everyone happy isn’t really possible, but I try anyway.
HBIC,
Bossy Boots
