Solution:

I will now respond to exceptionally stupid posts on Facebook with a cheery comment that said poster should enjoy a very happy birthday.

Because people who reduce complicated issues to a single sentence deserve to live in a more confusing world.

Agreeableness

The pop psychology personality profile* I currently favor has a trait called Agreeableness. It doesn't measure how pleasant a person is so much as it measures how kind that person thinks everyone else is. It's an interesting inversion- it's oddly satisfying to think that one of the foundations of self is an unshakable belief in the wickedness of the world.

*It's called OCEAN or CANOE or FFM or Big Five, and there is some nebulous scientific evidence that it's valid. Eat it, Myers-Briggs. Another advantage over the MBTI is that no one has put much energy into defending being very Neurotic as a good thing.

I'm from a small town and I grew up cute, white, and well mannered. Thus, on some cellular level, I think that everyone else is probably a better person than I am. Every single prudent, street-wise behavior I possess is an aftermarket feature.

My abstruse point is that most media sources don't share my faith in humanity. I assume it's because they're better informed. Well, I assume that the people who are newsworthy are statistically more unpleasant and that journalism is a very competitive field and very competitive fields tend to reward random chance and nepotism and that is bad for trusting others. This is why I'm not better informed: I tune out as soon as it seems like one party is acting like Snidely Whiplash.

My only hope is media created by similarly entitled people. Thank god for This American Life.

Garrison Keillor Told Me It Was A Bad Idea.

Doña C was talking about one of her protegees. Said woman is French, and married to an American- an American who won't learn French. Dastardly. What will become of their potential children?

As I may have noted, I no longer assume that the Conquistadors use guile. This is because C and his mother do not, and his father now believes that I am as dense as his wife and child. It is wonderful.

So I spoke from the heart. I said "That poor man." I'm an idiot.

After I spent a third of an hour agreeing that being bilingual is important, and that dedicated people can apply themselves and learn a second language as adults, I want to defend my side of the story. Can I do it with an unnecessarily convoluted metaphor? I can indeed.

I'm not a great swimmer. Due to certain physiological characteristics, I can float for a very long time, but I'm not fast or strong. But I love to swim. Given the opportunity, I will swim five times a week. I am comfortable in the water. Like a duck. Like a cork. Like a platypus. One of the best advantages of switching to Health At Every Size is that now I can float on my back indefinitely. I am, in all senses of the word, buoyant. When I swim, I am in my element- literally and figuratively.

I feel pretty much the same about speaking English. It's very comfortable to speak, obviously, and I'm confident enough in my abilities to try new things. I use words when I'm not sure of the meaning or pronunciation, I can throw in little quips and puns- it is a delight to speak. I like my language.

In both endeavors, my comfort predates my competence. My dear parents emphasized safely, then confidence, then ability. Once they were sure I wasn't going to drown or run around yelling "FART" all the time, I was encouraged to have fun.

I'm very vain. I don't like to do things I'm bad at. And it would take a long, long time to be good at speaking Spanish. I am weak and selfish. I am sorry, honored in-laws, but learning would have to be fun.

And apparently, expatriates are not big on new languages being fun. They are conscientious people. They want you to be precise, accurate, and to practice on your own. They are pretty much insufferable about this. Why would learning a new language be fun and exciting? Why would you bob about, like an inept duck? Get with the program.

My husband, who is not conscientious, has adsorbed this attitude. This is not helpful. I will point out that in the last nine years, I have gone from yammering on in mediocre Spanish to silence and a dread of short sentences full of pronouns. ("Dile que no lo haga." is one of the most terrifying sentences ever.) My beloved spouse can now keep up in conversations composed entirely of unspoken references to puns- and I think his vocabulary is 1.2 times larger. This is because terror is not a learning tool, and feeling clever is fun.

We spouses of the bilingual are delicate flowers, people. Cosset us. For the sake of your descendants.

Conversations.

C is working from home today. I overheard a conversation with his boss. Afterwards, I said,

"I'm constantly surprised by the different styles for office communication in men and women. If I were having that conversation, I would have said 'thank you' and 'please' a lot more and just a landslide of conditional statements and compliments. Even when I edit my brother's internship applications, he gets angry because I say things like "such an honor" and "very prestigious" and "I would be so grateful if..." He says it sounds feminine and conciliatory."

"Does he get those internships?"

"They're competitive."

"And prestigious. Do all my former bosses like and respect me?"

"Do they?"

"Have you considered the possibility that he and I are just aren't very bright?"

The Corner of the Internet I am In Right Now.

"Frankly, while I know my cats’ biological sex, I can’t truly say I know their respective gender-identities anyway."

"My mother pierced my ears at a month old because she was tired of me being ‘confused’ for a boy. Now I have unprofessional-looking holes in my ears that won’t heal, and on top of it, I ended up being male anyway. "

Privilege

I went to yoga for the first time today. The teacher dabbed some essential oil on my forehead- I spent the entire meditation time trying to figure out what my face smelled like.

After class, someone else asked- it was myrtle oil. Myrtle oil is apparently good for the immune system and balances hormones to prevent PMS. I glanced over at the lone male in the class, and thought how awkward it must be to be in an environment where the default person is not your gender- where things cater to the needs of another sex as a matter of course. I pitied this poor man.

Then I thought again and got the giggles.

So, feminist gentlemen, if you want to get a good idea of your privilege, go to yoga or Pilates classes. There will be a focus on getting a smaller waist hip ratio and a series of exercises to strengthen abdominals weakened by pregnancy or damaged by C-section. If something has a self-defense application, the teacher will first look at you and narrow her lips slightly. All the tips on how to make exercises easier assume you have a protruding butt, curvy hips, and weak wrists. It must be a little awkward, guys.

A Seasonally Disjunct Guide to Samhain Parties

There are guides out there for people who get invited to holidays that fall outside their religious experience. You learn about other cultures with many varieties of flavored grain, that babies sometimes merit a huge party for not dying, and that there are candles you should never ever blow out.

I can't find any such guides for Wiccan Sabbats.

Clearly, I need to write a quick and dirty guide for non pagans attending Samhain. It's pronounced Sow-wean (Like the female pig, not planting things.) It's celebrated around Halloween- there's a certain amount of flexibility in most people's specific date; like Easter, there's a bit of full moon/equinox madness. Somehow, this means I get invited to a couple every year on different dates. It's meant to usher in the deepest darkest bit of winter.

Why yes, I am writing this guide in March.

First things first. What you want to know, gentle reader, is if this festive event is worth attending. Since you can't equivocate during the invitation, (Will there be a ritual? Are we going to have to tell ghost stories? Will there be alcohol? Do I have to wear a costume?) you need the ask two questions: What proportion of the guests will be under the age of ten? Will we be talking about dead family members?

If more than 25% of those in attendance are children, follow your preferences regarding a children's Halloween party from the Peanuts era. People might be a little bit more earnest than usual, and the games might be a little lamer- it's a party with children about nihilism and potential starvation. Either that appeals to you or it doesn't.

When you ask about dead family members, listen very closely. If your potential host says no, you'll probably have to go through some New Agey self actualization crap about facing your shadow self and praising your inner god/goddess for the improvements you've made this year. If it were going to be a fun party with costumes, they'd call it Halloween. I'd skip it.

If the host says anything about the dead in a general sense, or things beyond the veil, there's a better than even chance there will be ghost stories with parallels to ancient* religion. People might say things while lighting candles. I'd skip this too.

*The 1910s are ancient, right?

If they say yes, we will be honoring the dead, go to that party. There will be a supremely uncomfortable half-hour where everyone talks about people who died this year and people they still miss. You will probably have to say one sentence- one sentence- about how you are sad that someone died. Then people will party. There's something about facing morality- and weeping in public- that makes for a great social event. *

*It's probably the drinking.

There will be mead. Mead is a vile liquor, meant to punish the romantic. Avoid it at all costs.

There will be fire. People will have opinions about fire structure. There's always an argument about where to put the next bit of wood. If you want to bring sage or dried flowers to throw in, that's a nice gesture. Don't do the stupid box trick unless you're far away from structures and surrounded by sand or snow.

There will be apples, probably in pie form. It's usually not very good. For some reason, pagans cannot make pastry crust properly. There will also be some sort of pumpkin dish. Someone might even bring a haggis. They will have used insufficient suet and not ground the organs finely enough. If it's a potluck, bring spareribs- very traditional- or a giant salad.

Bring your own chair.

To sum up: make sure you want to go, be very picky about what you eat and drink, and don't do the stupid box trick.