Not long ago, I was working on the Boston Globe’s Sunday crossword puzzle while riding the T. A young woman seated next to me kept looking over my shoulder. Eventually, a spot opened up next to her friend on the other side of the car, and the looky-loo took her prying eyes over there.
I’m pretty sure she then made fun of my crossword-solving skills to her companion. I didn’t catch everything the young woman said, but she did murmur something that caused the friend to glance in my direction, and I did hear a follow-up remark along the lines of, “. . . I mean, I’m bad at them too, but I just wanted to be like, ‘Can I help you out?’” And then they both laughed.
This hurt my feelings for several reasons.
First, I was not, in fact, struggling with the puzzle. I was going along just fine, filling in squares at what I would describe as a reasonable speed and showing no visible signs of mental anguish. It’s not like it was the sudoku, after all.
I suspect the young woman simply wanted to impress her friend with an unverifiable claim of mental superiority over someone else (i.e., me), an effort that would be morally suspect even if I were actually bad at crossword puzzles.
Which for some reason I need you to know I am not.
Worse than her lack of morals was her lack of manners. She was rude in her unconcealed puzzle-peeping over my shoulder, and she was rude not to keep her voice low enough to prevent me from hearing her (inaccurate and unjust) criticisms.
As a Southerner, I feel that the proper way to interact with someone you look down upon is to be mushy-gushy, bless-your-heart sweet to the person’s face and then talk bad about the person outside of that person’s hearing. This is what is meant by the term “Southern hospitality.”
I don’t think the incident on the T would have happened in the self-effacing Midwest, either. If the young woman had been a Minnesotan or Wisconsinite, she never would have claimed to know how to finish my crossword more effectively than I did, even if she had created the puzzle herself and every clue had to do with thermal underwear or cheese curds.
I recognize that my getting all butthurt about this episode suggests some insecurity I have about whether people think I’m smart.
I blame the Math Olympics.
That was the name of a yearly arithmetic competition that my elementary school participated in. The top few students in each class would get to go to Little Rock to math it up for a day, bonding over long division with other children from across the state and enjoying celebratory visits to ShowBiz Pizza.
That’s what I imagine anyway. I never got to participate. The closest I came was in sixth grade, when Jonathan S. and I tied with identical scores on the qualifying exam.
To determine which of us would attend the Olympiad, our teacher had the rest of the class vote in a hastily staged election. Popularity among middle schoolers is famously a key attribute of any true math geek.
Needless to say, Jonathan S. won with no trouble, leaving me to feel not just dumb but also disliked.
You can bet the news was delivered in mushy-gushy, bless-your-heart fashion.
Indirect Objects 