Fighting

Picture this… Mayfield Mall in Mountain View California. The JC Penney Auto Center….1973-74.  It’s the oil embargo. Lines form around the block for gas when it’s available.  We were paying, I think my records said, 29cents a gallon. But we would wait for maybe an hour to get to a pump.

Me?  I’m the young woman behind the customer service desk. I’d been hired for evenings and told them I was not available on Sundays because of my faith commitments. The embargo changed all that.  Everyone had to work whenever. I couldn’t.  Sundays were out of the question.

So Mr. Arnold Grey --- God bless ya’ wherever you are—calls me into his office. He’s the manager of the Auto Center.  We got toe to toe about Sundays. I offer him every other hour in the week he wants to work me but not Sunday. Quite frankly, he was a power hungry jerk about it.  Now he was gonna make me work Sundays just on principle that no peon worker should ever have the privilege of commandeering the situation.

I point to my nametag. “What does this say?!! “ I ask him. “It says ‘the friendly place ,’ “ I answer before he can take the stunned look off his face. “I just don’t think this is a friendly way to negotiate with the workers.”

Defeated I walked out of the office back to my little cubicle. The other workers had had their ears pressed up against the adjoining wall. Not only had I lost my argument, but also I lost my cool. That was the real defeat.

Raised in a household of boys where testosterone ruled, I had been taught to fight like a boy.  In her book ‘Knowing Your Value’ by Mika Brzezinski outlines how guys just shout in each other’s faces like they were standing out at the pitcher’s mound arguing over a ball’s trajectory and then two minutes later they’re pounding each other on the back laughing.

When I revert to those tactics, I know I’ve lost. I am a woman. I don’t like fighting at all. I have a magnet on my fridge that says, ‘Speak when angry and you’ll give the best speech you ever live to regret.’.

So it was that afternoon. I’d tackled the situation the way my older brothers had trained me to survive, not the way that represented my values and my gender.

Mr. Gray pulled me into his office again the next day. Losing my job was inevitable I knew.  He looked quite serious, took a breath. I prepared for the scolding and the release. 

“I’ve talked to the people in the main building about our conversation” he began.

“I understand “ I replied in my most conciliatory, humble voice. No sense burning my bridges completely.

“They want to know” he paused and took a breath.  “Would you be interested in entering management training?”

I couldn’t speak? It was one of the greatest life lessons of my short journey and has carried with me. How on earth could my behavior have ever been considered anything except completely inappropriate?

Over the years I’ve held that story as an example of how confusing communication and cultural values and my own walk as a woman has been.

This week, my youngest daughter and I have had to walk on either sides of a line of demarcation in our family that neither one of us is comfortable with. We have no control over the situation involving a third party and we are deeply grieved by it. We discussed the situation, at the top of our lungs. Because of our grief that was about the only way two estrogen driven people could do it. We came to new understandings, sang a duet and then ate pancakes together. We’ve got a new strategy now for dealing with the situation.

There are lots of fights on the Island. Some are civilized. Some are personal. Some are disguised as other situations; some have no meaning at all. Some are incredibly passive aggressive. Others are downright confrontive.

But this I am assured. Fighting will always continue. A pacifist organization will have a dispute over management. Business, the arts, countries, health alliances…oh and how about the government of the strongest country in the free world, all will have fights.

I have an enormously long fuse. I’m pleased for that. But there are still times when I reach my limit. Here’s what I offer about fighting. “In so far as possible live peaceably amongst yourselves…”.  Seek reconciliation. Think of fighting as failure and search for what you are trying to make happen. Resist being baited into a fight. Keep to those who hold flowers not rocks. Keep short accounts.  And remember ‘love covers a multitude of sins.

My daughter and I?  She says I should tell the truth (which I’m afraid to do because of my stance on that alcohol thing). We are going to sit on the deck and watch the sunset together. She (who is over 21) says “ Tonight we are popping champagne, celebrating the victory that comes from committing to resolution”.  To which we both say, “L'chaim” 

Love
Deborah