What Is Normalcy? An Old Man’s Tale: Part I
Like lightning getting caught in a bottle, one of the warmest and most influential moments of my life happened somewhere I never expected it to. At an ATM line. It was courtesy of two hilarious, charismatic older gentlemen who, and I cannot stress this enough, turned out to be two of the most observant human beings I’ve ever met.
It all started when Gentleman A and I arrived at the line at the same time. Naturally, I did the polite thing and waved him ahead, but for some reason his face froze for a solid second, and then his eyebrows shot up as he amusingly announced, at full volume, “And the older Barbadians always saying all the young men out here only shooting up places, smoking weed, disrespecting people and robbing. Thank you, young man.”
That loud announcement made the man in front of him, and, quite frankly, everyone else, turn around and chuckle. The man directly in front of us who turned was Gentleman B. With Gentleman B recognizing his friend in Gentleman A, a conversation obviously bloomed.
“You still so loud and full of energy at your age?” Gentleman B greeted.
“Well, my grandson does make sure I healthy and full of energy, boy. You ain’t know how good he does take care of me,” was the loud, energetic reply.
Just like that, they were off. Politics, society, day-to-day Bajan life, and the whole spread was at large. That was until Gentleman A turned to involve me in the conversation, only to be met with a bland, nondescript reply that made both pause in contemplation, with Gentleman A in particular making sure to give me a long, pensive look.
“A failed Pinocchio? This little one here seems to be one of those ones that got over-carved when he was young,” Gentleman B casually started.
I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrow at the abrasive frankness. It was blunt, surprising, and to the point.
Gentleman B excitedly nudged Gentleman A like he was seeing a new display at the zoo. “One of them ones that got that way too overcooked in the disciplinary oven to be outrageously straitlaced and over the top respectful, when the real goal was just to beat up on something smaller to feel in control of something in life. You know? To finally feel dominant because they had no real self-worth,” Gentleman B mused.
Gentleman A was still staring at me with that pensive look while Gentleman B continued, “You know, if he had just gotten the daily beat down, he would at least still have that sharpened swag of having survived something. But this one? Mmmmm, this one looks broken as f***. Like he got the, ‘You are nothing, and will always be nothing in front of me, so stop acting like you are better than me!’ carve down. Spit to the face, heel to throat, ‘nothing you do will impress me’ type spiels. You know it got some people out there who got a lot of issues and don’t know how humans tick due to the delusi-”
Gentleman A turned to glare at Gentleman B and elbowed him in the side, making Gentleman B stop, laugh, and ask, “I wrong?”
Gentleman A replied with, “All right, end that talk for now.” Then he turned and asked me, “Are you in the military?”
Exasperated but highly amused by the usual line of questioning, I replied with a no. He then proceeded to ask several more questions, like if I had any passions in life, if I had children, if I had a nagging wife, if I was just tired, and then finally, “Is this your real personality? Not the one you showing me now, but the one your close friends see?”
My lips twitched upwards at the odd lottery pull. “I’m a lot more tolerant with my friends. They typically want to see me to be happy from the bottom of their souls with no strings attached. So I guess you can say I’m a lot less stiff with them.”
Gentleman B quickly added, “Bingo! That fake ass smile he had before gone like the wind now, ya c*nt. This smile here now is the real deal!”
Gentleman A didn’t laugh at first but tilted his head momentarily with his brows bunched together before letting out a long, deep laugh.
“Are we annoying you? And be honest,” Gentleman A eventually asked.
“Yes, a bit,” I admitted.
Gentleman B’s cackle got louder as he slapped Gentleman A’s shoulder and back. “This little one here ain’t even hesitate. What happen to the military man respectfulness? I hope you know now, after that reply, you in we friend group now because we old people petty as f***.”
I laughed along, but Gentleman A worriedly looked at how the line was moving and quickly said, “We will have to talk after all three of us finish our business, because you remind me a tad too much of my grandson, and I don’t feel comfortable letting you go just so.”
Gentleman B added, “We is he friends now, so we got till the end of time after we finish with the line. But you right, I was going to tell you after we had done, but I guess now is a good time to bring up how he actually does remind me of your grandson.”
Gentleman A didn’t reply. Just worriedly looked at me for a bit, smiled, then turned to go in the ATM since someone had just exited. Gentleman B, however, kept up the pressure.
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but your demeanour is like a chewed up sugar cane devoid of any type of flavour.”
It was another common joke, one I have heard several times. “So I’ve heard.”
“And you don’t plan to change it?”
“No. Most people are generally weird, and some people are really annoying. So flavourless keeps me out of their crosshairs.”
“You are right about the first part, but you can’t be more wrong about the last,” Gentleman B grimly said as he looked at Gentleman A fiddling with the ATM. All his laughter and joviality were gone. It was like he had instantly sobered up after a long night drinking. “Stupid ass Bajans love to ride the calmest, most docile and obedient horses. They take them for granted while claiming it is the horse that actually takes everything for granted to keep making the horse feel small and rideable. Staying flavourless will only put you in their crosshairs more. These folks don’t care about any type of logic, only how much they can make you squirm for their entertainment.
The cold, winter-like demeanour that slipped out of you for a second when *Gentleman A (censoring the names in dialogue going forwards) first tried to drag you in the conversation is what you need to rock with if that is truly you. You don’t have to be rude to anyone, but you also don’t need to hyper-focus on making strangers feel comfortable around you. That fake ass smile of yours really gave me hives on my neck.
Trying to please people forever will only get mentioned by idiots when you are dead, and even then, they will still flip whatever narrative they know you can’t fight back on since you will be six feet in the ground. They will say you should have done this and that, knowing they could have actually told you that when you were alive, then pompaset about how they gave you this and that only to deflect on how trash they treated you or bad-talked you after. So I will tell you this right now as your elder, and you better listen to me good. No one on this planet will stay perpetually satisfied with anything you do. If you give someone one million every week, then one week only give five hundred thousand, they will think you are a wasteman. So don’t ever waste your time thinking a person will always stay satisfied with you just because you are out of their crosshairs.
Some people will always find that bone to pick with you even if you are in a trench in the sea. There will be people who will never ever be truly happy with anything you do. No matter how you do it, when you do it, or why you did it. If they got a problem with your ideologies or your approach to life, or got a preconceived notion about you that was planted by someone else, they will never care about what was done. They will only care about the part of you that offends them, and that will take precedence over any and everything you do.
A lot of people on this island are either emotionally irrational or would knowingly keep riding your docile back to benefit themselves and boost their own self-esteem. I know people who would look at another person dead in the eyes and say, ‘I don’t know why he so upset with me when he don’t know what I said about he. If he had known about it, I would understand, but I don’t know why he getting on so now.’ A lot of people don’t have any internal moral compass these days. So stay as respectful as you are, but don’t give any extra effort or time to idiots.”
Gentleman A came out and allowed Gentleman B to do his business, ending the previous piece of advice on a chilling note.
“I assume *Gentleman B talked about what we both noticed and then gave his no nonsense answer while I was gone. You see, we both came from a job environment where reading people wasn’t just based on vibes and emotional guesses. Back then, we had no choice but to adopt a systematic, observational habit to keep the positions we had. It’s sort of a shame that the later generations still aren’t exposed to that system. When I was young, I thought surely as time goes on, more and more knowledge will get passed on, but it seems my generation and the ones below still don’t want to give way to the rising youth.
My mentor in my apprenticeship taught me how to tie a tie, how to get to work clean, and all the small little things that people overlook now just so I can get a small edge or advantage in life. Nowadays, we got the elders trying to compete and one-up the youth like if it’s a game. Like they absolutely need to be special 24/7. I’m hearing about 60-year-odd people giving wrong information on purpose to make the youth look bad just so they can protect their jobs from being stolen. You believe that crackhead type logic?
Then they do whatever they like when interacting with clients with the worst social cues and customer service known to man while still racking up fake compliments by employers since they spent years tricking higher-ups that they were irreplaceable with shoddy work standards. A lot of these fake voodoo habits and philosophies that are getting passed down as a replacement for true emotional intelligence are just messing up the youth. Then to make it worse, I have to tune in to Brass Tacks to hear the slowest people among mankind talking about how they have street smarts and how they did this and that when they worked.
Let me tell you this right now, in all my seventy-odd years I can safely say that in this country we only want to tear down, not build up, because people are way too desperate to seem special and kick down the youth. Your reactions and replies to me showed you got torn down a lot,” Gentleman A stated with a chuckle.
Get Stefan Ashton’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
A little confused by his concerned look, I nonchalantly brushed him off and said that it probably happens to a lot of people, so it’s not like my case is anything special. I’ve always kept it moving.
Gentleman A had a flash of anger on his face for a brief moment before he closed his eyes and patted my shoulder.
“Your case is special. It’s special because this is your life that you are piloting. No one else has the controls. Don’t mind people talking stupidness. Anything that is wrong with your aircraft should be considered the highest priority with a lot more diligence. I know Bajans especially love to say you aren’t the only person with problems, but you are the person who has to deal with them. You are the person who has to suffer through them.
So f*** them and that stupid talk, because when something goes wrong with them and they screaming saying how people don’t look at them or care for them, they don’t be saying that situation is common. When they only get one piece of chicken in a three piece meal from Chefette, they don’t walk off and be like ‘man, that is normal, it happens to everybody so I shouldn’t get upset.’ They don’t. And that is just a little bit of food. It won’t kill them. Food that isn’t even that healthy. Yet they are fuming inside because it’s their money, emotions, and time. So don’t let anyone, and I mean anyone, tell you that you can’t feel anything about your own issues that is happening to you. Don’t let anyone make you discard your own feelings about a situation that is happening to you.
You should know how to stay afloat and keep the cart moving as you said, but you aren’t a puppet either. Don’t fall for the manipulation. Don’t be hollow because people said you should. That is only to make themselves feel comfortable. That isn’t motivation. That is manipulation. People have to handle their feelings. We were born with emotions, and we have to manage them, not just tuck them away till they overflow in some ugly eruption.”
Anger sharpened the furrow of his brow as he tapped my temple with his other hand.
“I guess you were trained to know your place and to hand back anything that wasn’t an insult. But geez louise, that doesn’t mean you have to be a robot that is perfect. Be happy to you have your own train of thought and try to enjoy the small bits of life that is unique to you.
If someone compares your efforts to a man with only two fingers on each hand without taking the time to understand the details or context of your situation, that isn’t motivation or ‘blunt logic,’ as those weird people like to call it. It is belittlement.
Do you really think someone who truly cares about you would look at everything you are struggling with and use another person’s hardship to make you feel ashamed of your own? Do you think they would reduce your life to a comparison just so they could call your pain an excuse?
That isn’t blunt honesty. That is an excuse to lash out at you and disguise it as wisdom. What does it do? Wake you up? Help you grow? Nothing. It helps with nothing. It doesn’t help you grow. It doesn’t push you further. It does not teach you sh**. Why? Because the person had malice behind it.
They want to dismiss your own issues and make you feel guilty for looking out for your individual needs. Someone who truly cares about you can challenge you without making you feel small. They can tell you the truth without treating your pain like a campaign against you.”
With one hand still gripping my shoulder and the other now moving from my temple to my chest, he then pointed at my heart and went, “When people tell you over and over that you aren’t special, that there are countless others out there who could do more than you with less, they aren’t teaching you humility or trying to hype you up. They’re teaching you to shrink. To shrink from them. To shrink so you can duck from their frustrations that are horribly managed. No proper elder is teaching anyone right if a junior has to constantly dodge frustrated lash outs. They only learn how to frustratedly lash out. And just as well as the elder does it too.
When the people who were supposed to celebrate you are the ones making you feel smaller, every kind word from someone new starts to sound like a trap. You listen for the hidden insult. You search for the catch. But, my son, I won’t steer you wrong, so this compliment is from the bottom of my old-man heart. You got it in you to be something special. This isn’t fake flattery. This is real talk. Real man-to-man talk. I mean this when I say this. There isn’t a single person in Barbados in your generation that I have seen like you. The only person you remind me of is me. And that is a compliment of the highest order. The way you pick up on people and emotions is legit. Don’t let ignorant people tell you not.”
The finger pointing to my heart stopped as he realised I was appreciating his advice.
“When I was younger, I got told by a lot of useless ass people that everything wrong with me was an excuse. They didn’t know that I was already harder on myself than any pressure created by their lies to instigate others could be like.
I would also bet all my money that the same people that turned you into this didn’t realize they were training you to look at what’s wrong first before looking at anything that’s going right. I would even go so far as to say they probably felt so smart thinking it was such a great strat to get you to feel disgusted about yourself, but forgot that when you are done feeling disgusted that there aren’t many positive angles to view yourself with after when you get no positive talks to follow up, or at all. It doesn’t balance out. It doesn’t make any f**king sense. One thing I hate to see from Bajans is when they don’t make any type of sense when they hurt people, but then they get defensive and upset when you call out their crackpot behaviour.”
For some reason, we both instantly laughed at the same time. It was a joke that was unfortunately a tad too funny for my own liking.
“There are some things you know will blow back in your face if you throw them into turbulent weather. I just don’t get how some people don’t get this. Think about it. If you condition someone to focus on every flaw you point out, day after day, and pressure them to ‘fix’ themselves without ever allowing them to appreciate what they are doing right, they will eventually see everything through the tinted lens of ‘problems first, while everything else doesn’t matter.’
Nothing they accomplish will feel meaningful because it will always be dismissed as the bare minimum, especially when they are constantly compared to Timmy with no feet in Africa who is supposedly doing more with less.
The result is a problem-focused personality. They stop looking for evidence that they are growing and start searching for proof that they are failing. Eventually, that way of thinking doesn’t stay focused inward. A person who has been trained to find flaws in themselves first will eventually begin looking for flaws in everyone else too. They will scrutinize other people the same very way they were taught to scrutinize themselves. The will always notice what is lacking before they notice what is good.
Which is quite apt for these types of people who don’t know how to be a positive person but want to teach or tell others to be positive. Imagine getting hanged by the very rope you were trying to hang someone else with. The definition of ‘you reap what you sow.’ People who plant negative seeds like that should eat the crop without acting all surprised like if they weren’t the ones who tended the crop for years. You cannot create a well-rounded person by teaching them to see only problems. You can’t possibly hope to mould someone who can’t recognize their own worth and expect them to know how to recognize it in anyone else. If not for someone telling me the same thing I’m telling you right now, I probably would have spent years of my life drifting in the abyss still not recognising who I am.”
It was as though a cosmic puzzle piece had finally clicked into place. Much of what he said was familiar to me. It was information I admittedly already knew and had been working through, yet hearing it articulated by someone else gave it a force I had not anticipated. The insight itself was not new, but its impact was profound because of how astonished I was by his sheer, raw analytical ability. I had never met anyone in person who possessed the same analytical talent at such a level of mastery. There were, of course, two or three people in my life who were comparable, but none matched the precision with which it was executed. It was like seeing a skill tree from your own future refine itself and bloom right in front of you. It was like a crazy out-of-body experience.
The encounter felt so improbable that I began to wonder if I had been run over by a car and was hallucinating in death, or whether I had passed out from the heat and was dreaming.
He tightened his grip on my shoulder, revelling in my clearly shocked face while a cold smile slowly took over his visage. “I’m 100% certain now. You haven’t been conditioned to your normal. What you set yourself apart from isn’t your normal. You are probably treated as a freak of nature in your environment, and that wouldn’t be a wrong assessment, because you truly are a talent. The fact you can keep up with me at all or even understand half of what I’m saying is crazy in itself, but the fact you are an over-carved puppet with that level of reasoning is what impresses me the most.”
His grip on my shoulder got stronger as he glanced at Gentleman B, who had already exited the ATM at this point and was finishing up a conversation with another friend that had grabbed his attention.
“You can apply this talent to anything, and I want you to, so you can grow tall enough to control a lot more of your fate. There are things you can’t escape like death, illness, sun and rain, but with this level of talent? You for sure can make your norm a lot more comfortable. You can work towards a more normal system that you have yet to experience.”
Gentleman A at this point had pain written all over his face, and his eyes held a smouldering anger that couldn’t be extinguished by my bafflement at the sudden change in demeanour.
“I’m sure you are probably unsettling a lot people around you who are reminded of the opportunities they never pursued, or the abilities they always feared they lacked. Talents and abilities that you currently have. Abilities that outshine their own. Abilities that have allowed them to hold a type of authority with, which for them, is now being threatened after seeing you grow.”
The smouldering anger then morphed into absolute and unmistakable disgust that brought his eye wrinkles together.
“Tell me right here, right now, that you won’t let anyone take your effort for granted going forwards. No matter how many people try to make you look incompetent or foolish to knock you down a peg. No matter how often people try to treat everything you do as a failure to ease their discomfort, tell me right now, you will never again give those types of people any of your efforts once they mess up through those displays of childishness.”
I paused for a bit. It was a hard promise to make; I also had to be sure we were on the same page. “You mean like someone saying I installed a hard drive too powerful for their laptop?”
It was only after it escaped my lips that I remembered his age. Fortunately, he yet again impressed me.
“What?” he exclaimed. “Somebody actually tell you something so foolish? I getting up in age, and after my grandson teach me a thing or two about computers, even I know that is foolishness. That is even possible?”
“No,” I replied with a chuckle. “It’s not possible in the way they were thinking of.”
He looked at me with absolute incredulity while Gentleman B finally joined in.
“I don’t know a fart about them fancy devices, but all I know is, if you wanted pork shoulder, you could’ve gone down by the supermarket and buy it. Why you grabbing he up so? I thought you was ready to chop off he shoulder and run off wid it with how hard you gripping this boy.”
Gentleman A released his grip on my shoulder and stepped back while a myriad of emotions fought for supremacy on his face. After a second of conflict, a loud peal of laughter won out.
“I just wanted to make sure he remembered my words.”
