You don’t have to be frightened and call the cops to report me for felony menacing. Not even a misdemeanor. In all my vast arsenal of trusted means of contention against any enemy combatant, it’s my capacity continual propensity to have said enemy underestimate me that I like best of all. So I do what a girl can, under the particular circumstances, to distract and misdirect and generally confuse to the best of my ability. The best of my ability – as you might guess – is pretty damned good, after all of these years.
Speaking of weaponry and misdirection, I made a page a few days ago, Beauty Snob. I’ve had these pictures of my beauty products and my makeup collection for some time, and have been trying to figure out where to put them. But I think I had a sixth sense when I made that page that I was going to have to marshal the troops for battle on Friday. And I did.
Incidentally, if you are brave and look through all of those pictures, you can see that the possibilities are endless. Depending upon my mood and the situation, I can be an ingenue, a sexpot, a firecracker, I can look completely natural, like your best friend or your guiltiest fantasy. And that’s just going from the neck up.
When people who don’t know me (especially men, but women are guilty of it too) see me, they see a beautiful face, lovely clothing, and drop-dead shoes. Unless I’m running out for a Starbucks in my pjs. And so most of them are caught off guard – or more frequently floored - by what comes out of my mouth when I open it. The insightful, probing questions, the extremely intelligent, specialty-focused terminology, the constant demand to know the method behind things – not the dumbed-down layman’s method, but the ‘You might confuse me with another specialist in your field (except I dress much better)’ method. I wrote about the psychiatrist who acted as though I had to be hiding an advanced degree from some prestigious university in my back pocket, as opposed to me having fled dropped out of high school. Yeah. It’s like that.
Even my primary still treats me this way on occasion, to a lesser degree. Facts in this world are, unfortunately, facts. People are intellectual snobs and they are taken in by looks. I don’t happen to consider this unfortunate, though, because it means things are “Advantage, Ruby” from the get-go. And by the time folks realize their error in judgment (if they do), I have usually left with that for which I came.
I know we’re all hating on the neurologist who wrote my assessment right now, and grateful though I am for that support, I may not have painted the clearest picture of him.
He is a genuinely nice guy, a slightly shy guy, a very easily led and distracted guy. I think it’s a combination of a genuine fascination with the brain – such that he was happy to just let mine do its thing and not redirect it, because he wanted to know where it would go (and I truly appreciate that novelty of perspective) – combined with the above factors. Advantage, Ruby.
I had my follow-up consult with him Friday. I know I said next week, but I realized with enough time to spare that I had the date wrong. I wore my Gunmetal Primer Shadow, a dash of Venus eye color, and a Dark. Black. Eyeliner. Many people reading this (especially the men) may be confused by that. After all, black eyeliner is black eyeliner, right? Ha! It is to laugh! There is black eyeliner and then there is BE Black Diamond. That one has the most incredible effect on men, I don’t know why. The last time I wore it was Whoring Myself For Charity - and “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” If you are a man and I am wearing Black Diamond, it’s because I’m there either to slaughter or seduce you. In either case, be very afraid.
My poor neurologist never saw it coming, he never had a chance. I was running him ’round in circles before we even made it to the consult room. At one point during the appointment, and only one, he did actually stop me to say, “Wait, you’re throwing out all of my ideas and suggestions before I can even make them!” (as in I was throwing them out into the conversation, not dismissing them).
Poor guy. He really did want to help me. And as I briefly mentioned, it’s very nice and refreshing to have someone who is as completely fascinated by my brain and the way it works as I am, and who is not trying to keep me focused so he can move on to his next “case” (in his report he actually referred to me as “this interesting woman,” and I wasn’t insulted, I was complimented).
And I gained some insight from this process. Not much, but some is better than none. I could write about it here, but it gets highly technical. It isn’t that I don’t think you all could grasp it, you could, but wasn’t the above account thoroughly more interesting?
Moral of the story: There are all sorts of ways of being smart. And I am. ;P
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