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Sunday, Aug. 17, 2003 - 2:04 p.m. SPEED I debated upon whether I should write this entry because I want to start to space out this diary before I get busy at work, but I thought it would be somewhat interesting. At least to me. Last night I went to the Chimes to view a football game because I do not have cable at my house, mainly because I do not watch all that much television. I started with a beer, then two more while I ate a grilled catfish dinner. I then had another before the end of the fourth quarter. The game had ended and there I was by myself trying to finish the beer. I knew it was retro night at the Varsity and that it would be a good place for me to hit after the game. Then on comes this guy that sits next to me, dressed in threads that showed that he was in touch with the latest styles. When he put down his BMW keychain, I could see that this guy was probably the epitome of the classic player. He looked like money and dressed for keeps. Then he opened his mouth. Out came this British accent. I was not expecting this in Baton Rouge. I casually asked where he was from. He was from London. One thing has always been apparent to me. I get along with foreigners far better than I get along with Americans. I am not sure why, but I think the explanation lies with something I read in a textbook for an interpersonal communications class I took in college. It spoke about the concept of "cognitive complexity," a concept the professor found to be the hardest part of the class to explain. However, I will do my best to explain it. Cognitive complexity is one's capacity to adapt mentally to divergent points of view and understand them. It is a crucial aspect of one's ability to understand and communicate with someone from a different culture. It is also a major factor in the compatibility of two people. For instance, your stereotypical illiterate redneck is likely to have far less cognitive complexity than someone who is well-read, well-travelled, and more culturally refined. Compatibility would be determined by the similar amounts of cognitive complexity both people in the relationship share. For instance, you might wonder how the couples on Jerry Springer end up together. They both share a low level of cognitive complexity. They simply do not have the mental wherewithal to hold relationships with people more advanced than they are. Likewise, your average doctor is more likely to marry someone with a similar level of cognitive complexity. That is the explanation in a very simple sense, and it is more complicated than that. For instance, you might meet a plumber that is more cognitively complex than a doctor. Or, you might meet a presumed redneck who also maintains a high level of cognitive complexity. Based on the theory, this shared level of cognitive complexity, no matter how different the backgrounds of the relationship-partners may be, is the main determining factor in their compatibility. That is why you can have a janitor that marries a doctor. I believe I am gifted with an extreme amount of cognitive complexity--so extreme that I am not compatible with most people in this regard. I think it has to do with American culture in general. Most Americans watch Friends on whatever night it comes on, drive their SUV, eat their McDonald's, pay more attention to Jay Leno's monologue than the actual news, and well, you get the picture. They see the world the American way. When they see people dying in Palestine, they look at it and ask, "Why can't they be like America? We are the best! We would never have people dying our streets. What kind of people are they?" Then they flip the channel and watch Everybody Loves Raymond. My best friend in college, if I had one, was from Cyprus. I also spent a lot of time talking to a guy from Indonesia. There was this other time when I was in college, when I was 20, that I kind of played host as a favor to one of my teachers for a day to a mid-20's Mexican woman who was attending a business conference at LSU. She was a consultant for GM stationed in Milan, Italy. She spoke four languages fluently. In fact, a guy in college that I knew from Texas said that she spoke the best English he had ever heard from a native Mexican. We spoke for hours on everything from football to Buddhism. At the end of the day when I brought her to the hotel, she appeared to want me to go in with her. Being the type of person I was back then, I just said good-bye and drove away. The point I am trying to make is that I seem to have a keen ability to bridge areas of difference where other people are so caught up in their single-minded American mindset, they have a tremendous inability to see outside of their narrow understanding of a world that is much larger than this popular culture of ours. That is the main reason the French hate us. Well back to my story, the guy's name was Nick and he moved to Baton Rouge from London because he had a relationship with a girl in Baton Rouge. He broke up with her a couple weeks before. Now he was at the Chimes to meet a waitress he was now seeing. She was a blonde with big breasts and a perfect figure. Your typical bartender-waitress. All he could do was slobber over how attractive she was every time she came to visit him. We got to talking about our families, his consulting jobs in Baton Rouge, and the Baton Rouge bar scene in general. Then I heard him use the term wingman to describe the situation he was once in when he was alone at the Station (Bar & Grill). Everything he told me proved my theory about women in the Baton Rouge bar scene. Of course, he had a law degree from Oxford, and could explain it far more eloquently than I could. He basically said this. Women in Baton Rouge are on a time line. They go to college. When they are finished they hope they have a boyfriend, and they marry them. Those that are not married by age 22 or 23 go on a desperate prowl until age 26 until they meet some guy they can have a relationship with. These guys they will marry no matter what, because they need to stay on their timeline. They have their kids, realize they do not like the redneck they married, and start divorcing in their early 30's. That is when they hit the market again. After our discussion, we went to the Varsity while he waited for his playboy waitress to finish her shift. It was packed. He went away for a while to look for her and I was left all alone. Out of nowhere this blonde comes up and tells me that she used to be a student worker with me in college. I took a double take and realized who it was. It was this girl we nicknamed "Speed" because, when she was in college anyway, she had this really hyper personality. In college, I was a very uptight, irritable, untreated bipolar, and our personalities clashed severely. She would purposely bug me at work. It was always in good jest though. I never found her attractive in college. Her hair was dark brown back then. Our crew of student workers was always a close-knit bunch. They always invited me to do stuff with them, but being the overly serious student I was, I always declined.
I hugged her when we met, hoping to get to talk about everything that has happened our lives. She cut me short midconversation saying that she had to leave with her friends. I expected her to leave, but she instead went around flirting with other guys and kept giving me the cold shoulder when I approached her. That is a serious issue with my past. I am not the same person she thinks she knew. All I want to do is make another contact through her because I am so deperate to build a Baton Rouge network. Instead, she treats me like an outcast. However, like my British friend said to me, she seemed a bit flaky. That was why I never liked her. One last issue needs to be dealt with: all that beer I drank. I must have drank 5 beers that night, more than I have ever drank since before my diagnosis. The long layoff and the combined effect of the medication made me feel very tipsy. It also made me slightly manic and more sociable. I could hardly sleep when I got home last night. During my therapy in Houston, I started to get drunk every weekend, until my therapist diagnosed me as being "alcohol-dependent." Not alcoholic, but alcohol-dependent. It would have been nice if that incompetent moron would have diagnosed me manic-depressive instead. I have basically quit drinking all forms of alcohol for 4 years except for the past month and a half, mainly because it interferes with my medication. However, since I started the bars, I have been drinking more and more beer. And, with my new "college major" I will have to drink other beverages. I am resolving now not to drink any more beer, and nothing more than what my "college major" requires. But that leads to a final point. I am going to make somewhat of an effort to get back in touch with some of my old student worker buddies. I may get lucky and know one that would be interested in being a friend, even if they live 500 miles away. On the other hand, based on her cold shoulder, I have no need for Speed. |