Dumb Blond

So Bobby sent me a sweet text message  to say "My two cents--re Mark et al., always show your intelligence with a dominant. It only make you more beautiful..."

And that was part of why I liked Bobby so damn much.  Most men see intelligence and either they are scared of it, or I think they are scared of it, and I do my best to dim it.  It doesn't help that I have a high-pitched voice and bouncy blond hair.  For years, everyone thought I was dumb and I had to prove myself for people to think I wasn't dumb.  Now, I think people don't make that assumption as much, but that need to prove myself still exists sometimes.

But there is also this deep insecurity that it is something wrong with me.  When I was young, I'm guessing I was 9 and my brother was 6, he told a dumb joke and I said something about it being dumb.  (Wasn't I a nice big sister!)  My grandmother took me aside and didn't talk to me about being nice, she said "A lady always laughs at a gentleman's jokes."  Somehow that stuck with me.  To this day, I always laugh at their jokes.  Even when they're offensive. (Not racist jokes, but I laugh at nasty jokes about women that make me cringe.)

I was talking with a friend about Bobby and realized that I often play dumb at work too!  Not so much in my current job (although I am very aware of shutting up a lot at my current job and trying not to seem too opinionated.  I often avoid getting information because the more information I have, the more opinionated I'll be.  For political reasons, I really can't afford to piss off a couple of people.  But that is more strategic about keeping my job and what I can change and what I can't.)  But I put myself through college and law school by working as a secretary.  And, for the most part, my least favorite part of any job was the playing dumb part.  Finally, my last year of law school, I was less scared about keeping my job and I stopped playing dumb.  I started to get bounced around from boss to boss, and then I got put with a boss that every other secretary hated working for.  He and I clicked (nothing romantic).  He started giving me more and more projects and less and less secretarial work.  While I was paid as a secretary I was doing way more than most secretaries do (I really didn't care because this job was super-flexible about my hours, both what I set as a regular schedule and letting me take days off when I needed to study) and he ended up getting a 2nd secretary so I could do projects, which were WAY more fun.  (At the end, he tried to get me out of the secretarial job, into a junior-level job that would have paid more money the first year than I'll ever make in the non-profit world,, but I'd finished law school and knew I didn't want to stay in corporate finance.)

So, if this in analogous to dating:  I was right that being me, without pretending to be someone else, made it harder to keep my job.  But I did keep my job.  And I found a boss who appreciated and recognized my talents.  And I enjoyed work more.

I am trying to figure out what it was that made me play dumb with Mark, because I really try not to do that anymore.  (My profile is totally written with a subtext that says "hey, I'm interested in ideas, and if you can't keep up intellectually, you will bore me.)  At the beginning, I can be kind of obnoxious about it.  But, once I kiss someone, I seem to want to please him.  And if he doesn't send hints before I've kissed him, I'm less likely to be evaluating him all the time.

With Mark, I think playing dumb started after I said something obnoxious about some of the contract workers I was overseeing, like "I don't know how anyone can live with the high stress and low pay--they're doing a great job, but we are paying them nothing" forgetting that he fell into that category at one of his jobs, which made me feel apologetic.  Then I didn't want him to think that I didn't value his work, so I think I said a couple of put-down things about my work. I believe that is where it started.  He then "joked" several times about my career not being as important as his.   (I should mention, Mark also works part-time as a commercial real estate agent, and he probably makes more money in his part-time job than I do in my full-time job, but it is clear he prefers, the industry we're both in and he is applying for lots of jobs like mine, but because he doesn't have the JD, it seems unlikely (to me) that he'll get a job like mine.)

I think the discrepancy in our jobs and the fact that I don't see his contract job as equal to mine made me more willing to play dumb.  We're basically doing the same thing, but I oversee people like him and get paid about 3 times as much as people like him.  Instead of confronting that head-on, I started to act like less competent and like it was just luck (and there is some luck, but the whole 'what kind of degree and what sacrifices we made to get our degree' wasn't actually luck).  The other fact is that Mark really wasn't interested in my interests, and I wasn't interested in Mark's interests (Poker and football).  This weekend, he was watching a football game and his team was doing really well. About 5 'minutes' before the end of the game, I commented that it looked like they were doing well, and he was annoyed with me for 'jinxing' them.  (They did win, so he said I was lucky and he wouldn't punish me, but that was really over the line for me and made me feel like I wouldn't even try to get interested in football because I'd say the wrong thing.)

So I'm pretty clear that I won't see Mark again.  And I'm playing dumb less often.  But that is a weakness I can often fall into.