Warbird Doesn’t Like Me

It was a Friday afternoon in a past life, as they say. It was long before anyone had heard of Y2K or 9/11. I was working late. She was part of a catty little clique where I worked. She came into my office, sat herself down, and offered some minor pleasantries—always her style. Then she dropped her cloaking device and hit me head-on like a Romulan Warbird.

“We’ve been talking about you, and we’ve decided that we don’t like you talking about people when they’re not in the room, . . . in particular, we don’t like you talking about Marilyn.” She proceeded to use a good twenty minutes describing everything that was wrong with me as a person, which included a sidebar on why no person on the planet could possibly stand to work with me. I should have seen it coming when I heard that lovely phrase, “It’s probably none of our business, but . . .”

That evening I lived the word stunned. As I sat facing rapid fire, I literally had to restart my brain. I couldn’t process the information. My thinking kept looping around the same question in total amazement. Did she really hear what she had just said? It was a full-out admission that she had been doing exactly what she was shooting me for. In my neighborhood that wasn't fair. Add to that the fact that she was the one—the only one—with whom I had discussed Marilyn, as an editor.

My brain was misfiring. The opening narration from The Outer Limits was being read by Rod Serling as Salvadore Dali painted the scene in my office somewhere in the far reaches of my mind.

This female sitting across from me was an editor. What had she done with the facts? The only plausible answer was: she had no use for the facts. She had been passive-aggressive since I’d arrived at the company, thinking that my job should have been hers. So I don’t suppose that she was predisposed to caring about the facts anyway. I let her say her piece. It was brutal. I went home.

My natural response is to fix things. I looked for ways to resolve this. Every solution that presented itself had me giving up ground. I didn’t want her friendship, but I didn’t need to be bullied again either. It was a miserable weekend. It took self-respect to go to work that Monday.

Wish I’d been wiser then. I wouldn’t have wasted a weekend trying to fix the unfixable. I know now that even if I’d saved Warbird’s life, I’d still be that awful person who’d somehow done a good thing. That's how those things work.

Every now and then I hear about Warbird and occasionally bump into her at conferences. I always stop to talk, and she always seems nervous. I like to think that I’ve changed over time, maybe she will too. Then again, maybe she won’t. She’s still at the old company—in a job she got while I was still there.

Me? I'm long gone from there.

I’ve fixed my overwhelming need to fix things that I can’t fix. I now have a great deal of time and brain space for doing things that are a lot more fun. I’ve also quit flinching when other Warbirds come around. So I suspect they’ve quit thinking it might be fun to torment me. Fascinating how these things reinforce each other.

I've gotten comfortable with the fact that some folks plain aren’t going to like me. Some will have genuine reasons. Reasons I gave them. Others, like Warbird, will make up reasons. Both will see the bad things they’re looking for when they look at me.

Of course it would work that way. My friends have genuine and sweet, imaginary reasons why they like me. They see the good things they’re looking for when they look at me.

Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing that people like Warbird don’t like me.

What would it say about me and my friends if they did?

—me strauss Letting me be