Mean What You Say

As I returned from fetching the mail yesterday afternoon, I came across this lovely view on our front step so I snapped a photo. My daughter, Katelynn, had drawn a beautiful bouquet of flowers in a pastel rainbow of chalk with the words “Keep Out” embossed in the center. The irony was immediately apparent. The message to “keep out” was clear, but the presentation was all too warm and inviting.

As I reviewed the picture on my camera screen, I thought “what a girly thing to do”. I don’t mean the pretty colors and the cute little flowers and stars. Yes, the artwork may appear feminine, but I am referring to the mixed message it brings. Isn’t that what we girls are prone to do? Say one thing but send signals that say the opposite? Why do we fall prey to such bewildering etiquette?

The number one reason, in my humble opinion, is that we want people to like us. We are so afraid to offend anyone that when do have a negative message to deliver, such as “keep out,” we want to find the absolute best way to sugar-coat it so we can maintain our popularity rankings. This sounds like a benign motive, after all we just covered “Be Nice” in the Guidebook last week, but this behavior has consequences.

When I was in high school, there was one teacher in particular that was too nice. She wanted desperately to be loved by all of her students and she went out of her way to give compliments and even gifts to win us over. She was an English teacher and that subject was a no-brainer to me. I spent most of my time in her class with other books tucked inside my text book or playing word games on hand held electronic devices. It infuriated her that I could do anything BUT read Shakespeare and still ace the tests.

I was also what you might call an “introverted class clown.” I was often very quiet in class (mainly because I was preoccupied with my own study materials) but my humor and sarcasm came across rather plainly on test questions and in essays. She didn’t think I was so funny and she let me know with negative comments carefully drawn in dark red, bubble-letter ink across the top of my papers and punctuated with a smiley face at the end. We had a very definite personality clash.

So I did what any other high school student would do in that situation. I milked it. I determined to push every button she had. If she complained about my lack of attention span in class, I’d work harder to ignore what was going on around me. If she threatened detention, I would reply with a sarcastic “whatever”. When she complimented me, I rolled my eyes. I made our relationship difficult, but she was determined to make me like her. Ugh.

At the time, I didn’t understand why I had such problems in her class or why I just couldn’t stand her, but later it dawned on me. She was sending us mixed messages. She did not mean what she said. She may have attempted to discipline students on occasion, but there was no true threat behind it. She wouldn’t dare give us a detention and risk jeopardizing our unblemished image of her. Some of her compliments may have been genuine, but the majority were just fluff designed to make us like her even more. Her body language and her facial expression told us that we could do whatever we wanted as long as we liked her and showered her with attention. That is how most of my peers learned to play the game.

I am horrible at pretending. I could never be an actress because I just can’t fake anything. I just could not get the hang of playing her “love me” game. I saw no purpose to it. In fact, I ended up losing respect for her because her mixed signals exposed her weakness for discipline. This weakness had consequences. My teacher was effectively allowing me to learn negative behavior and she was reinforcing it. I figured if I could get away with my rotten behavior in one class, then I could surely try it in another. And I did. Repeatedly. She did not help me one bit.

Had she meant what she said when she said it, we would have all been better for it. I would have learned Shakespeare and participated in class. She would have earned my respect and I would have genuinely liked her for taking a stand and truly correcting me. We would both have achieved the results we were after with much less effort and frustration.

This next Guidebook entry is titled ““:

Clarity is an absolute must in any kind of revolution. Without clarity, your message becomes diluted. Lack of focus causes confusion among the ranks and gives your opponent a chance to poke at your weak spot. When you project your words, you must also project effective body language to back up what you say. Avoid added fluff and be direct. Don’t dress it, just profess it. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

“Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.” ~ Anonymous