Today’s featured photo was taken in November 2011 on SeaDream I. It’s probably the most flattering photo of several bad ones taken of me without my knowledge or consent on that night… I looked pretty terrible, because besides being overweight, I had a terrible blistering sunburn, and the heat and humidity made my hair frizzy… but apparently, my heartfelt love songs to Bill made me look “prettier” to at least one person…

Yesterday, I was looking through Statcounter and noticed someone hit a post with the tag “Hilltop Hotel”. Inwardly, I kind of groaned, because I remember the hotel experience Bill and I had in 2009 that spawned the original post with that tag. It was a rather peevish, negative review of an Army run hotel that we were forced to stay in as we were leaving Germany the first time.

Because of the particular circumstances we were in, back in September 2009, I was upset on many levels when I wrote my hotel review for Epinions.com. Now that I read the review again– after also having reread it and posted about it last year— I realize that maybe I could have toned it down a bit. I probably wouldn’t have written such a piece today. If I had toned down the review, though, I probably wouldn’t be writing today’s post, which I hope will be more constructive and interesting.

My 2009 review of Hilltop Hotel for Epinions.com went unnoticed for about a year. Then, someone apparently decided to join Epinions specifically so they could tell me off in the comment section. You can see what they wrote in last year’s post, linked in the previous paragraph. The person’s comments were very offensive to me because they were personal attacks on my character and totally dismissed my opinions. That really pissed me off, and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to respond in a really “over-the-top” way. I basically took the person’s comment and deconstructed it, answering each piece.

I noticed today, as I reread last year’s post titled “Who cares what they think?”, that several times in my rebuttal to the woman who told me off, I wrote “You don’t know me.” And I was then reminded of the famous love song, the lyrics of which appear at the bottom of this post. I can sing the hell out of that song. I’ll probably do that today, since I don’t have any big chores to do and Bill is scheduled to come home tonight. He likes it when I sing. In fact, he shared the songs I did earlier this week with his boss, who was reportedly very pleasantly surprised by them.

When Bill was telling me about sharing my covers with his boss, and his boss’s favorable impressions of them, I wrote “Oh good! For once, I can shock someone for positive reasons!” Before Bill’s boss heard my recordings, he didn’t know me as well as he might today. Because that’s one aspect of me he had never seen (or heard).

I’ve noticed that when most people hear me sing, their opinions of me often seem to change, for better or worse. Some people seem to like me more. Some seem to like me less. I think even my own mother’s opinion of me changed after she heard me sing the first time (when I was 18 years old). In her case, her opinion seemed to improve. In other cases, the opposite seems to happen. But rarely does it seem like their impressions of me remain static after they’ve heard me lift my voice in song. 😉

For example, in November of 2011, Bill and I went on a cruise in the southern Caribbean. One night, early in the cruise, we were in the piano bar. It was just Bill and me and the piano player. I started singing to Bill, and this single guy we’d met earlier walked into the bar, mouth agape. And he said, astonished, “Now I can see why you’d love her.”

I don’t know what my exact reaction was to that comment. I might have looked hurt or embarrassed… or maybe I kept stone faced. The guy, who had been drinking heavily, then realized he’d said something very offensive. He grabbed me in an awkward hug and made some more clumsy comments that made things worse. Of course, he was judging me on the external. Like the person who dressed me down in the comment section of my Epinions piece, he didn’t know me, either. He might not have liked me if he did know me, but he was clearly judging me purely on surface stuff. I guess it doesn’t really matter, though. Bill knows me, and he loves me for who I am. That’s what counts.

When I was studying for my MSW, I had a field instructor who accused me of not being very introspective. He really didn’t know me, other than having interacted with me in our weekly briefings. I think he thought of me as obnoxious and opinionated, which I certainly can be. But there’s a much deeper, more insightful side of me that people who take the time to get to know me have actually seen, and most of them now have a different opinion.

I’m sure there are many people who also have that impression of me as a purely obnoxious person, based on what they’ve seen of my personality. But they don’t really know me, either. People who take the time to get to know me often find out that there’s more to me than what they immediately see and hear… as is the case for any person. I just think it’s too bad that so few of us seem to want to know other people, other than what they see on the surface. I will even admit that I’m as guilty of this tendency toward shallowness as anyone is.

I think, especially in today’s hyper Internet driven world, people don’t really take the time to get to know others. They have a lot of shallow acquaintances, but very few deep friends. And a lot of people make erroneous and occasionally embarrassing assumptions about others that prevent them from making true connections.

Here’s another example. Last night, I read in the Washington Post about how France’s president Emmanuel Macron, wants to enshrine the right to abortion in France’s constitution. Naturally, there were many dumb comments from Americans, particularly from incel type men who simply want to lecture women about how immoral they are to want the right to have dominion over their own bodies.

One guy– someone who is probably young enough to be my son– posted this response to a pro-choice woman:

“No right to snuff out the unborn. Stop being a garden tool and you’ll be fine.”

I couldn’t resist responding, so I wrote this:

“Stop using your garden tool to fertilize our gardens and we’ll all be fine.”

I thought that was a pretty banal and kind of funny response… but the guy was apparently wounded by it. He came back to me with a comment that showed that he really doesn’t know me at all!

I’m not to begin with.

Lol you don’t even know who’s in your garden. You invite so many dicks in your garden, you automatically think every guy on Facebbok you come across has been in your garden

SMH

I responded thusly… So far, he has not responded.

OMG…. You think that’s a comeback? Seriously, dude… some woman obviously hurt you, and you can’t get over it. Nor can you get over the fact that you owe your life to a woman. The power we have really pisses you off, doesn’t it?

Hilarious! 

Now, I don’t know him, either. However, I do know that, like everyone else on the planet, he owes his life to a biological female. And I conclude that immediately assuming that I “invite dicks in my garden” is a sign that someone who owns a vagina must have hurt him deeply. I could be wrong, though. I took a peek at his profile, and it looks like he’s probably not a bad person. He was sharing pictures of dogs needing homes. I can appreciate that.

If that guy and I were to meet offline, he’d probably be someone I’d like. He might even like me. But, because I pointed out that unintended pregnancies aren’t just a woman’s fault, he went really ugly and made a totally baseless comment that isn’t rooted in reality. There’s a whole lot you can say about me, but I am not at all promiscuous. And immediately inferring that someone is a “slut”– only because they support abortion rights– is a sure sign that someone female has wounded them somehow. So now, they take out their pain on all of us.

I notice a lot of men are very opposed to abortion rights, and I really think it’s rooted in a deep fear that men have that they will soon be obsolete. After all, a woman can get pregnant without a man’s physical input if she can afford to go to a sperm bank. And she can raise the child without a man, too.

A lot of men also resent that if they impregnate a woman, while having what they’d only intended to be a fun roll in the sack, and she decides to keep the pregnancy, he’ll be on the hook for child support. So, they don’t think it’s fair that a woman can decide to have an abortion, and they can’t fathom why an abortion might be necessary. They seem to forget that pregnancy is a whole lot more involved for women than it is for men… kind of like that ham and eggs anecdote I’ve written of. When it comes to ham and eggs for breakfast, a pig is fully invested, but a chicken is just “involved”. Same thing goes for pregnancy. I don’t know why there are so many men out there who can’t understand that pregnancy isn’t a 50/50 situation, but alas, here we are…

I traded comments with a couple of other guys, one of whom wisely bowed out kind of early. Another engaged me longer, and I think ended up regretting it… because he eventually outed himself as a slut shamer, and I called him out on it. Notice in the below exchange how he goes into the “personal responsibility” speech, as if any woman who might need an abortion is automatically “irresponsible”. I didn’t see him commenting on how people get pregnant in the first place, and how those folks need to be responsible, too.

I didn’t mean to wind up writing about abortion again. It just kind of fits in with today’s theme. A lot of people judge people and situations they don’t know. They aren’t at all curious about who the other person is, or what their story is. It didn’t used to be this way. We had fewer friends, but most of the people we knew, actually knew us in person. And if they didn’t like us, it was based on something more tangible than what they read online.

I suppose it can work the other way, too. I met Bill online, and we got to know each other through nightly chats for about 18 months before we met in person. If he had met me offline first, he might not have liked me. I can be off putting to those who don’t know how to take my personality. He might not have given me a chance. I might not have given him a chance, either. But he liked my erotic fiction, so we got to know each other. As you can see, 20 plus years later, it still works. And no one knows me as well as Bill does.

Anyway… I try to get to know people when I can. I hope others will try to get to know me. I may not have the most genteel or appealing personality when you meet me in person, but if you get to know me, you’ll eventually find a deeper, softer, more empathic side. And no, I’m not really a spoiled snob, a fat, lazy, slovenly slob, or a slut with a dirty mouth… All of these characteristics have been assigned to me by people who made snap judgments based solely on the shallow external. Only one sort of changed his mind– the one who thought I was a fat slob– and that was because he heard me sing and liked it. Suddenly then, I had some worth, and he could then see “why Bill would love me”.

Wow.

It’s really not fair, is it? Well, I think I’ll record this song, because I feel like it. Maybe some people will like it. Maybe some won’t. But at least you can see, there’s more to me than self-indulgent blog posts. 😉

You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
Well, you don’t know me

No, you don’t know the one
Who dreams of you at night
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
Oh I’m just a friend
That’s all I’ve ever been
‘Cause you don’t know me

For I never knew
The art of making love
Though my heart aches
With love for you
Afraid and shy
I let my chance go by
A chance that you might love me, too

You give your hand to me
And then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh, you never know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

For I never knew
The art of making love
Though my heart aches
With love for you
Afraid and shy
I let my chance go by
A chance that you might love me, too

You give your hand to me,
And then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh, you never know
The one who loves you so
You don’t know me

You never know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

(written by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold)