Dropping the Other Shoe

“You look good.” she said the last time she saw me.  And then silence.  “But?” I asked.  “But what?” she answered.

She would always finish a sentence like that with a slam like, “but you could lose some weight”, or “but your butt is too large for those pants”, or “but that hair of yours is too long for your age”. She could ALWAYS be counted on to drop the other shoe.  Every time.

This time she replied with nothing.  Forget the shoe, I nearly dropped to the floor.  For forty-eight years, the proverbial shoe dropped out of her mouth with every quasi-compliment.  Flattery and criticisms were commonplace from a woman who was described to me by the psychologist as a sociopath.  No surprises here. 

But this time, for whatever reason, maybe it was her age and illness that curbed her tongue, or just a softening of her narcissistic demeanor, she delivered only the compliment.  Of course it had no effect on me.  I laughed to myself.  Possibly for too many years of bracing myself against the barrage of maliciousness she shot at me in reliable intervals, carefully timed to inflict the deepest wound at the most inopportune time, when retaliation was impossible, knocking me off guard, my vulnerability exposed.

Maybe my shell had thickened over time or my ears had learned to reject the sound of her voice. Over the decades, I had developed immunity from her viral assaults to the point of beating her in her own game.  I started dropping the shoe for her, answering the “buts” before she got her mouth open.  I got pretty creative with my own criticisms.   After all those years of dodging and/or being hit by her arrows and the therapy it took to remove them, I learned to laugh at the insanity of it all.   If you can’t find the hilarity in the absurdity of the madness all around you, then you might as well live in that prefab hole dug just for you by the crazies around you. 

Or, you can dig your own primo hole, fill it up with water and jump in for a nice swim. As Carrie Fisher once said, “If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.” It’s my life.  I’ll drop my own damn shoes.