On being misunderstood

I've pretty much run out of stories about my career in high tech in the federal government, so I've created a more generalized blog where I can comment on any aspect of life viewed from what I have experienced and learned.

The first thing I want to talk about is how difficult it is, at times, to communicate clearly and how easily we can be misunderstood. One of my earliest memories is of a time when I could not have been older than three. I know we are not supposed to be able to remember events from that young, but I have memories that I am sure must be even older. As far back as being fed while in a diaper sitting in a high chair. Be that as it may, I lived with my parents at that time in a one-room shack just outside of Fergus, Ontario. We moved to a "war-time" house in the village proper in 1948 and this memory is from before that time. My mother and I had attended a Christmas party at the Beatty factory where my father worked at the time. I don't remember the party except that Santa must have been there and had handed out presents. I had a small bag of gifts, most of which I was not interested in. But one thing had caught my fancy: a dump truck. I was looking forward to playing with it in the dirt around our home. It seemed a magical thing, as though this was something I had been waiting for all my life. We were walking with another woman and her son. Apparently she and my mother knew each other. The other woman complained that her son had not received a gift and was disappointed. Without saying a word my mother snatched the truck from my hand and handed it to the other boy. I howled in protest. I would not have minded sharing some of my other presents, but, the truck was special. I didn't know how to tell her that the boy could have all my other presents: I just wanted the truck. I did the only thing I could: screamed bloody murder. My mother assumed that I was being selfish and smacked me hard across the bottom, chastising me for being so greedy. I am sure that the blow must have shut me up.

In kindergarten, which I began at the age of four, I had some trouble always understanding what the teacher expected us to do. I was given to day-dreaming and not paying very close attention. For example, we were supposed to show up at the school on a Saturday to rehearse a play we were putting on. I went to the school at the appointed time and tried to get in the door we usually used to enter the kindergarten. It was locked. So, I went home. Turned out that the teacher had told us to go to the "janitor's door" to gain entrance on that day. I am certain that the teacher must have spoken to my mother about it because I have a vague memory of my teacher and mother talking very earnestly. I recall one day the teacher had pictures of different fruits pasted up and we were asked to copy them. When it came to an orange I decided that I really didn't like that colour, preferring, instead, the vividness of red. So, I coloured my orange fruit red. My mother took me to the doctor to find out if I was colour-blind. I wasn't. I could have told them the reason why I used the colour red instead of orange had anyone asked. But, they never did.

Another time I was to meet my mother at the doctor's office after school. She had an appointment for my younger sister. While I waited the doctor casually asked my mother if I had had the small-pox vaccine yet. No, she said, and they agreed that they might as well get it over with, seeing as I was already there. The doctor prepared the syringe while I cowered, not quite believing what was happening. I tried protesting. Yes, I was afraid of the needle, but, even more so, I felt that I had been tricked; this was not at all what I had expected. So when the doctor squirted the vaccine into the air then approached I was doubly anxious. I don't know which weighed more: my fear, or my sense that I had been betrayed. I howled and tried to get away, but my mother held me firm, calling me a big baby. The doctor scratched my arm with the needle and it was over with. But, how could I, at the age of 4 or 5 explained to them what was really behind my anxiety? I had no way to express concepts like "betrayed" and "conned." So, I guess the doctor and my mother went on with their lives believing that I was a coward when it came to getting needles.

My parents separated then divorced when I was eight and my brother, sister, and I were under our father's custody. We boarded with a family in Elora, just a mile or so away from Fergus. Ethyl and Brian Moynahan were the couple who looked after my little brother and me while my sister stayed with Grandma Moynahan across the road. One day at school the teacher told us that children needed 10 hours sleep at night. I quickly calculated that, seeing as we got up for school at 8:00 am, then our 8:00 pm bedtime was unreasonable. I tried explaining this to Ethyl. She would not listen and insisted that it was ten hours from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am, end of discussion. I recall trying to get her to count the numbers around the clock, but she just got angry with me. That is a scary memory because it marked the first time that I recall an adult being wrong about something factual that was obvious to me.

It is not just as children when we are misunderstood. More recently I was working in a tax preparation office. Though usually polite and friendly, there were times when I had to get tough with clients. For example, a young woman might be insisting to me that she made no tips while working in a local restaurant where tipping was the rule. I could not call her a liar. But, I could tell her firmly that if she lived in Quebec the government would calculate her tips for her and that they would range between 100% of her earned income and 400%.

Another examples: every summer the tax department asks to see certain documents to back up claims made on returns. A common request was to see rent receipts, as there was a tax credit for rent in Ontario. Many times I was told that the landlord lived thousands of miles away and couldn’t be contacted, or the landlord simply refused to hand out receipts, and other such excuses. In such cases I would tell them they could come to our office to pick up a form to fill out the required information and have their landlord sign it. Sometimes they would balk at doing even that much. In those cases I’d put on my sternest most authoritarian tone and tell them that if they didn’t comply that their tax returns would be reassessed, disallowing the claim for rent, and the result would be that that would have to pay part or all of their refund back to the government.

People didn’t like to hear that, even though it was a concise description of what would really happen. So, sometimes, my boss would subsequently get a phone call from such a person complaining that I had been rude and threatening. I never considered tell people in a firm voice what would happen if they did not assume responsibility for their claims as something rude; I saw it in much the same light as a lawyer telling a client what would happen if they robbed a bank. It’s reality; deal with it.

We see each other through prisms that distort images and behaviours, making them unfocused, blurry, with enough ambiguity that they can be transformed into whatever assumptions or demons live inside us. We need to know that before assuming that we know what the intent is behind another’s actions. As I have been misunderstood, I am certain that I have misunderstood others.