reality in the season of pretentiousness

Well well well, here we are again. The six-week time of year where people engage in trying to have others believe things which are not.

I've got a job where I interact with the public on a daily basis, and just like clockwork here it is. Just like the sun coming up, the week before Thanksgiving people have turned on their "nice" switch and for six weeks pretend to convince people of a wide variety of things.

I wouldn't hate this time of year, except for how rift with fakery and pretention it is.

Is there some good come about from what some do during this six weeks? Sure, and I won't knock that. What ticks me is that in January this same everybody will flip that same switch off and go back to being Hyde instead of Jekyl until next November twenty-something.

This exposes the niceness of this six weeks as, let's be honest, a bunch of chicanery and shallowness.

I would rather people be the same all the time. Why do this in December when you won't be doing so in March? Why are you going out of your way in November, when the rest of the year it's all about your "me and my schedule" mentality?

But this is the time of year for people to crank their penance into hyperdrive. We're jerks for 46 weeks of the year...let's do penance for six to make up for all the rest.

Quite honestly, and I can only speak for me, I'd rather us be self-absorbed jerks and jerkettes as the rest of the year. Slathering on the fakery shouts pretentiousness to me, and I'd rather have people's true self than their attempted deception.

Another part of the year is the mierda people send out at Christmas. Females have the family put on nice clothes and tell them to smile real big, to project to the world what happy and together people they are. (It's such a female thing to project images to others--yet males successfully brainwashed are just as gung-ho about it as the ladies.)

The truth of the matter is these people's lives are writ with quite a bit of ongoing disappointment. The reality of women who talk a big game but then got lost in what women get lost in, and the men who distance themselves from the dig of this by burying themselves in work, civic causes, adulterous lovers, church, naughty pictures, sports, men's groups, other activities. (Then the women are somehow perplexed by the distance, prompting the circular conversations writ with awkward silences and rehashing the same topics rehashed umpteen million times before...yet everyone and everything remain static like rats on a treadmill.)

Yet in light of this reality, look at how many project an Ozzie & Harriet existence to the world.

I wouldn't mind this time of year except for what I know will happen in January. These people I interact with in public? They're still going to slosh around the cheery comments. They're going to speak as though they sincerely wish me well, but the truth is they don't give a rat's ass. And the truth also is that come January this temporary chirpiness and their well wishes will return to scowls,impatience and silence.

Give me your scowls and impatience now, please. I prefer the real you over the attempt to be placated. But we both know that isn't what's going to happen. And so I'll continue to bite my lip and give a silent half-nod as people wish Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and all that.

If I had my druthers, you wouldn't wish me jack shit. All chirpy now, then you turn it off in January. But since it is part of your annual penance and makes you feel better, knock yourself out. There is an ultra nano-percentage of things in life which have even the faintest microblip of merriment, but since people think pretending and the expression of words change dark realities, go ahead and tickle yourself pink. I'm sorry you feel you have to say those things.