Is "Annoying" a Personality Trait?

Grammatically, "to annoy" is an active verb, and "to be annoyed" is a passive verb. I think we need to start seeing it the other way around.

Think about things and people you find "annoying." Their intent is never "to annoy;" their action simply feels annoying to you. For example, in my last post about me singing at the party, the action I had chosen was "to entertain others," or "to make others laugh," but to the party's host, my action was simply "annoying."

The problem with people who use this word is they never say, "Your behavior is annoying to me." They simply say, "You're annoying." They take that feeling, their feeling, and claim that's all you are, not just to them, but to the whole world. Something that should simply describe how you are perceived by one specific person at one moment in time has now become a personality trait that defines you.

At the party in high school (recounted in my last post), I didn't force others to listen to me sing. Nobody asked me to stop singing. Nobody left the room because I was singing. Yet I was supposed to pick up on an unspoken social cue that "singing for no reason is annoying." Note: not "it annoys me, the birthday girl," but rather "it's annoying," implying that everyone feels the same way; she's just the one who had the courage to speak up.

Social media is always awash with comments about "annoying" celebrities. These celebrities' actions have no effect on our lives, but we complain about them as though they are a threat to everything we hold dear. Rather than simply disliking Kanye West's music or Kim Kardashian's reality show, people on Facebook wish death on them and their child.

People who do this are usually compensating for something. They see today's celebrities as inferior, perhaps sometimes for legitimate reasons, but they also see themselves as inferior. They can't say, "I'm a better musician than Kanye and better-looking than Kim Kardashian. Why can't I get a record deal and a reality show?" They know that would be dishonest. So instead, they sit behind the scenes, touting their superiority by ranting, "UGH, can Kanye and Kim just STOP already?" The ranters on Facebook generally aren't talented, aren't famous, aren't attractive, aren't athletic, aren't wealthy or accomplished, but they take solace in the fact that they aren't "annoying," either.

There is a difference between "to annoy" and "to frustrate." The teenage stranger you see at the supermarket with saggy pants is "annoying;" your teenage son who sags his pants is "frustrating." With the stranger, you don't like his fashion choices, but they have no direct impact on your life. You can choose to ignore, or you can choose to criticize a person you don't know. With your own son, it does affect your life. His teachers, his future employers, his college admissions deans will make assumptions about him, and even if you know those assumptions aren't true, you don't want to set your son up for failure. So you tell your son to wear a belt when he leaves the house, and as a result, he gets into college, gets a job, gets his own home, and lets you live out your golden years in peace.

If someone finds me annoying, I put that on them. If someone finds me frustrating, I put that on me.  I reexamine what I am doing and try to make a change. People get annoyed when they feel inconvenienced, but if they've gotten frustrated, it means they actually care about my well-being, not just their own.

The verb "to annoy" assigns motive to person's actions where there often is none, and it can be used to describe virtually any type of action, depending not on the person doing the action, but on the person doing the labeling. If they want to find you annoying, they'll figure out a way.

...and when they do, it frustrates me.

Contradictions, Convenience, and Cynicism

Advice I've gotten (not all from one person, but all from people I respect):

"Don't reinvent the wheel." paired with "Stop copying what the other teachers are doing."

"Give more homework and the lessons will plan themselves" paired with "Homework shouldn't be mandatory."

"If you leave kids to their own devices, how can you expect them to do the right thing?" paired with "If you never place any trust in your students, how can you expect them to do the right thing?"

To a veteran teacher, the statements above don't contradict each other, but to a rookie like me, they do, and it's confusing. How can I stop reinventing the wheel and stop taking ideas from others? How can I frame my lesson plans around homework and make it optional? How do I know where the balance lies between too much trust and too little trust?

It all takes time, but even with time, it doesn't happen on its own. If you wait for it to happen on its own, you will fall into one of two traps: convenience or cynicism. You will grow from neither.

When presented with contradictory advice, we usually pick and choose. We take the advice that's most convenient for us and ignore the advice that's inconvenient. If there is data going both ways, we cling to the data that supports what we believe and immediately look to discredit the other side.

We do it all the time in politics. There is a slew of contradictory information about what "stimulates" the economy, whether it be tax cuts, tax increases, deregulation, infrastructure projects, austerity, public assistance, etc. We point to evidence that reinforces what we already believe and rarely change our mind when confronted with evidence opposing it. The 1990s were a good period for the American economy. If you're a Democrat, you credit the Democratic president for those years of prosperity. If you're a Republican, you credit the Republican majority in congress. You assume the 90s would have been even better if your political party had controlled both partisan branches of government during that time and assume it would have been worse had it controlled neither.

Same thing in teaching. If you tell a rookie teacher not to "reinvent the wheel," you're telling them that their original ideas aren't important. Someone else has already done it better than they could, so they might as well just see what's out there and take it. Then they run into the other extreme: "Why do you just do whatever your mentor does? It looks lazy and makes the students feel like you don't care." So they start needlessly reinventing the wheel again...because it feels like those are the only two options. Eventually they will either choose the option that's more convenient for them, or they will become cynical and say, "Everything I do is wrong. So why bother? I'm just going to keep kicking the can down the road."

If you tell a rookie teacher to plan lessons around homework, you're telling them that you can quickly and easily plan a complete lesson just by giving excessive homework. So the teacher will give more homework than the students know what to do with, and the results will vary. Some kids will do little to no homework but will then prove on tests that they know the material. So if the homework wasn't worth their time, why should they be punished for not doing it? Some kids will do excellent work on homework assignments but will then show you on tests that they haven't actually memorized or processed any of the material. Why should those kids have been forced to do homework that didn't help their learning?

If you, the teacher, don't like doing homework, this is a dangerous trap to fall into...because rather than empathizing with the kids by giving them less homework, your own unwillingness to put in the necessary planning time outside of class means you've saddled the kids with more homework. It's inconvenient to believe homework doesn't help the kids...because if you believe that, it means you have to loosen the homework requirements, which will mean more homework for you. It's a requirement for you to put in hours of work outside of class so you can be prepared for the lesson. Why can't the kids put in 30-45 minutes of preparation time on their end?

You think like that because it's convenient for you. The kids don't agree because agreeing would be inconvenient for them. If you cave now, you're admitting that you're wrong and the kids are right, which is very inconvenient. So you choose not to believe that, and you once again delve into cynicism.

It takes a lot of patience, assertiveness, and strength to hold kids accountable at every turn, and if you're good at it, then you start to believe that's all there is to teaching...because it's convenient for you to believe that. Watch out, though, because at some point, it's going to look like you're just chest-beating, and that's not helpful to kids.

It takes far more patience, assertiveness, and strength to place trust in your students, but only if it's genuine trust, which needs to come from both sides. Too often, though, we believe trusting our students means saying things like:

"Yes, they're talking, but they're talking about Latin, so it's cool."
"Yes they're really loud, but it's because they're so excited about how awesome Latin is!"
"They can't be this loud forever. Eventually they'll get it out of their system so we can get some learning done."
"They're just kids; they'll grow out of acting this way, but right now, I can't change them. This is just how they are.""

None of these things come from a place of trust; they all come from a place of convenience. Surely we can trust our scholars to do the right thing without turning a blind eye when they do wrong.

When faced with contradictory facts, I try to look at the "inconvenient" facts first. It gives me a much more informed and "fairer" worldview.

Yet every year, in student teaching and in my career, students have asked me what my political views are. When I tell them that's not relevant and we need to move on, they reply, "You're a LIBERAL! All teachers are LIBERAL because it means they make more MONEY!"

They assume I vote exclusively based on my own convenience. If my salary comes from the taxpayers, I must support higher taxes. I've devoted my whole life to helping kids and make less money than people who do comparable work in other professions, but when I get in that ballot box, look out world...because I'm all about ME!

It's my job to purge them of that cynicism, not to reinforce it in a way that's convenient for me.

Being Ironic vs. Being a Joke

I own a Hilary Duff T-Shirt.

Some people ask, "Are you wearing that shirt 'ironically,' or do you actually enjoy her music?" Of course, I'm put in a difficult position there: you've given me two choices, and if I blatantly admit to wearing it 'ironically,' then where's the irony? So I have to admit to enjoying her music, at which point you can either say, "Oh, he's being ironic," and laugh with me, or you can say, "This is a grown man who admits to liking Hilary Duff's music to the point that he wears her T-Shirt in his mid-twenties. What a joke." At that point, you're laughing at me. I know, that's a cliché, but it's important that we recognize the difference.

Here is the story of how I obtained said Hilary Duff T-Shirt:

When I was in 10th grade, my dad opened a restaurant in Las Vegas, which he decided to name after his eldest son "Giorgio." The restaurant was located between the Luxor and Mandalay Bay hotels on the Las Vegas strip, and, because the restaurant was named after me, I was given partial ownership. In Los Angeles, I was just a short, scrawny high school sophomore who still collected comic books, but in Vegas, I had my own restaurant. It's impossible to bring that up and not sound arrogant, so you have to milk the irony: "Oh yes, they decided to make me co-owner of the restaurant at age 15 because I'm just that awesome."

The restaurant ended up being a very big deal for my dad. There was a movement of "celebrity chefs" and "celebrity restaurateurs" that were beginning to dominate the Vegas strip, and by opening a second restaurant there, he had proven he could play in the major leagues. Of course, to anyone who actually knows anything about restaurants, my dad has always been a major league player, but Vegas was a whole different ballpark, the scrutiny of which went beyond food and hospitality. The hotel made trading cards with photos of my dad and gave them to hotel guests. Sometimes parents of my classmates would come to my dad at school events and ask him to autograph a trading card.

...and my dad attained that level of celebrity through this restaurant, which was named after me, and which I was "co-owner" of.

Around this same time, my brother Giampiero met Hilary Duff at a screening of Agent Cody Banks. He claimed that he had dropped trou in front of her and had asked her to sign his boxers. Oh, hell no. My brother was NOT about to move in on Hilary Duff. He could have Lindsay Lohan or one of those Olsen sisters, but Hilary was MINE. Besides, did my brother have a restaurant in Vegas named after him? No, only I did. So I figured, whenever Hilary performed in Vegas, I would work my connections and get backstage passes to her show. I would NOT walk up to her and drop trou (I didn't have game like my brother). Instead, I would invite her to my restaurant, which I owned.

So I got the tickets and the backstage passes, along with a round trip plane ticket from LAX to Vegas. The show was in February, four months away. That meant I would have to wait 1/3 of a year before I got to meet Hilary and make my move.

In the life of a teenager, a lot can change in 4 months. I matured emotionally and became (slightly) more rational, so when the time actually came to see the concert, I had accepted there was no way Hilary Duff was going to go out with me, and at this point, I didn't really care. I was dating Celia Hollander now, the coolest girl in school. Plus, Hilary Duff was kind of played out. Lindsay Lohan was poised to make a big comeback with Mean Girls. It was all about Lindsay now. Oh, and even with all the connections that came from being a 15-year-old Las Vegas restaurateur, it turned out I still couldn't get backstage.

Whatever, though. I would still go to the concert...ironically. And I would buy a T-Shirt and wear it...ironically. And when people would ask me why, I would reply, "I just really like her music. It's just so real to me. The lyrics just speak to me in a way that no other musician can." If you couldn't hear the irony in that, you weren't listening. If you didn't get the joke, that was your problem.

...but in reality, I was the joke, and even though I eventually accepted reality, the fact remained: there was a time in my life when I actually thought I had a chance with Hilary Duff. I thought that my newly acquired Vegas swagger meant I was a star, just the same as she was. I could play it off like I was "being ironic," but kidding aside, when I was 15 years old, I thought that the biggest teenage star of 2003, who had dated the likes of Frankie Muniz and Aaron Carter, might have dinner with me if I just went to her concert, told her who I was, and asked her out. For that, I deserved to be laughed at, not laughed with, and to honor that, I have kept the t-shirt and still wear it today.

Retcon vs. Plot Twist

Retcons mostly happen in an ongoing series like a TV show or a comic book. Films, instead, have plot twists. They are basically the same thing: you go through the story with one understanding of the facts, and then your mind is blown as you realize those facts weren't true. The difference is the motive and context.

Movies like Fight Club, Planet of the Apes, Saw, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Usual Suspects, Primal Fear, and pretty much every M. Night Shyamalan movie have plot twists. You go through the movie presented with one set of facts, and then you are surprised later by one new piece of information that changes your interpretation of the entire movie. The plot twist is part of the experience of the movie. Revealing it to you before you see the movie ruins the experience.

A retcon, on the other hand, is a "plot twist" that undoes events in an already completed work, thereby creating a plot twist where none was necessary. Here are some examples of retcons:

The most famous retcon is the TV show Dallas undoing years of continuity by revealing that it was "all a dream," which then gave any TV show license to do the exact same thing and claim they were just parodying and/or paying tribute to Dallas. Roseanne, Married with Children, Newhart, and others followed suit. Other examples of TV Show retcons: Fraiser claiming a prior mention of his dad's death was a "euphemism," as was the "magic box" in Lost. Topanga in Boy Meets World had a hippie dad at the beginning of the series who, several seasons later, magically transformed into a conservative traditionalist played by Michael McKean. George Costanza cheated in the contest. Eric Cartman's mother is actually his father...no, wait, she's his mother, and you'll never guess who his father is!

In the Marvel Universe, Wolverine's metal claws were originally part of his gloves. Then they were skeletal implants lodged inside his forearms. Then they were bones. Also, Jean Grey. She died. Then she came back as Phoenix, and then she died again. Then it turned out Jean Grey and Phoenix were different people, and Jean was still alive. Oh, and Spider-Man. They cloned him back in the 70s and quickly killed off the clone to avoid complications. Then they found out the clone wasn't a clone: the geneticist injected his lab assistant with a virus to look like Peter Parker. No, actually, there was a clone, and he didn't die, and guess what? That guy whose adventures you've been following for the past 20 years? THAT was the clone, and the real Spider-Man has been hiding somewhere for all this time. No, actually, scratch that: everything was exactly how you thought it was. Let's pretend this whole thing this never happened...

This is the problem with retcons. Most of the time, they are cop-outs. The writers make a bold choice, the fans overreact, and the writers come up with a lazy way to undo their bold choice. It punishes the fans who trust the writers and rewards the fans who complain. Yes, the writers have a responsibility to give consumers what they want, but as consumers, we should wait to see the writer's original vision before we judge.

With movies, we don't question the artistic vision in this same way. We might fight it before it's been made, but when it's done, we're done fighting. With the finished product, we either like it or don't like it. We don't feel like we have the power to complain to the artist to get what we want. We move on. I imagine there were many pre-1983 Star Wars fans who wanted Luke & Leia to end up together, but when it was revealed they were brother and sister, those fans went, "Ew," and understood her decision to settle down with Han Solo. There was no "Official Petition to Lucasfilms: Please Retcon the Revelation that Luke & Leia are Brother and Sister So They End Up Together While Sleazy Douchebag Han Solo Dies Alone."

Plot twists are usually an artist's attempt to deceive fans (albeit in an entertaining way). Retcons, instead, are usually an artist's attempt to appease fans...except that fans inevitably hate the execution of the retcon more than they hate the thing that was being retconned.

Example: "Wow, Spider-Man is getting really boring to write now that his identity has been revealed to the word and he's married to a supermodel. Let's undo those things...BY HAVING THE DEVIL ERASE HIS MARRIAGE FROM HISTORY AND HAVING A SORCERER RELEASE A MAGICAL FORCE THAT ERASES ANY MEMORY THAT PETER IS OR EVER WAS SPIDER-MAN."

If that idiotic idea was painful enough to read when summed up in a paragraph, imagine what it was like for the fans who followed the series for years. My guess is fans of Dallas felt similarly. When comparing the "It was all a dream" retcon to the "We changed the past and erased everyone's memory" retcon, the former wins in the laziness department, the latter in the stupidity department., and they both tie in the "disappointment to highly invested fans" department.

...but let's be honest: the idea that we can add information to the past that completely changes it in a way that's more convenient? That adds to the escapist fantasy of entertainment. I waited all through high school for that radioactive spider to bite me and give me superpowers (didn't happen). I waited even longer to meet the hot supermodel and marry her (did happen). But I'm still holding out for that one moment that erases literally everything bad about my past, present, and future while leaving the good things intact.

So, adoring fans, when are you going to write angry letters to the editorial board of my life until they cave in?

Where is my Dr. Strange?

Control

One of the first things I learned when I started my teaching career: "Don't come at kids from a position of power."

I didn't get it at first. Wasn't I supposed to be in a "position of power" to these kids? Wasn't that how I was supposed to get their respect, get them to mellow out, get them to start learning?

Then I thought harder about it. Actually, when I hear the term "Position of Power," the first thing that it triggers in my mind is the 50 Cent song, "Position of Power." It's on his second album, The Massacre, the liner notes of which feature a different photo for each song. For the song "Position of Power," 50 Cent is standing up, hanging out of the sunroof of a Porsche Boxster, wearing a wife beater, a white doo rag and a black stocking cap, wielding a sawed-off pump-action shotgun. Oh, also, there are palm trees in the background, even though all the lyrics are about how he "runs New York." Odd.

Anyway, whenever people at my first teaching job used to talk to me about "coming at kids from a Position of Power," I pictured myself as 50 Cent, who most of the boys in my class thought was a straight up boss. I didn't see the problem. I wanted them to look up to me, the same way I looked up to 50 when I was their age. That was how they would learn Latin. Why didn't anyone else get that?

Eventually, I went back and found that picture of 50 Cent in the Porsche, and that picture looked very different to me when viewing it from an adult's perspective. What kind of man wants everyone to see him with his shirt off, brandishing an illegally modified firearm while driving an expensive car through what looks like an upscale Miami or Southern California neighborhood? Was that how I looked to my students? Was I 50 Cent in the Boxster with the shotgun? (This is starting to sound like a bad variant of Clue.) If so, to half my kids, I looked scary, and to the other half, I looked ridiculous, but to all of them, I just looked like I was in it for myself, not for them. 50 Cent doesn't care about other people's success. Somewhere, his heart turned cold...

It was one of many productive conversations I had with fellow educators about "coming at kids from a position of power." Along the way, here are some specific things I learned never to do:

1) Don't remind people of your superiority by saying things like "I'm the teacher," "Because I said so," "Hate to say I told you so, but...I told you so," "Whose fault is that?" and "Not my problem." When a kid hears any of those things, they assume you don't care about them. All of those expressions are meant to reinforce the kid's subservience to you rather than reinforcing your belief in the kid's success.

2) Don't "escalate situations." If a kid all the way in the back of the classroom punches another kid, do you scream across the room at him? No, you walk to the back of the room, continuing instruction as you do, and then you whisper to that kid, "Please leave." If they push back, just calmly say, "You clearly aren't able to be in my classroom. So, for your safety and everyone else's, go tell [school administrator] what you just did, and they'll help you prepare yourself to rejoin class." Then go right back into instruction. Don't miss a beat. If you yell across the room, the kid will yell back, and the other kids will join in. If you stop instruction, kids will take advantage of the downtime. Your job is to diffuse the situation, not to punish impulsively.

3) Don't ignore anything. Addressing disruptive behavior doesn't magically stop it, but tuning it out doesn't, either. Just because you've tuned it out doesn't mean the other students have. Often times, doing nothing is a passive way of "escalating the situation." The kid sees that they can get away with a certain level of disruptive behavior, so they go farther, wondering how far they can go before you snap. If a kid is acting that way, they want something, and it's your job to find out what. In fact, at the school where I currently work, the first thing any kid sent out of a classroom is asked is "What did you want?" The kid almost always answers, "Nothing." The administrator replies, "What did you do?" The kid answers. The administrator replies, "You did that because you wanted something. What did you want?"

50 Cent doesn't care what you want. 50 Cent only cares about what 50 Cent wants. 50 Cent likes to escalate situations. That's why he mugged Ja Rule, humiliated Rick Ross's ex-girlfriend by showing a questionable video of her on his website, bumrushed the VMAs stage in 2005 trying to fight Fat Joe on live television, had Eminem fire DJ Green Lantern in the middle of a national tour, had Styles P's contract with Interscope Records nullified, and got into lyrical mixtape feuds with countless other rappers. What kind of man does these things? Clearly, a man who's insecure about his own "Position of Power."

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: as a teacher, your job is to be the authority figure without declaring your authority, to get respect without demanding respect, and to control the learning environment without appearing like you're trying to control people. You are an authority figure, you deserve respect, and the learning environment can't function without you monitoring it…but if you lord that authority over kids, they will respect you less, and you will ultimately lose control of the learning process.

"Coming at a kid from a position of power" is something that a person in an actual "Position of Power" would never do. If you have to remind someone you're in charge, you're obviously not in charge. Cute Porsche, though. It matches your shotgun!

How I Met the Woman in the Refrigerator

http://lby3.com/wir/

"Women in Refrigerators" Syndrome is a phenomenon occurring mostly in Bronze & Modern Age superhero stories where women are added into the story specifically for the purpose of being killed off so that a male character can learn a valuable lesson and/or so that the male writer can write stories that help him live out his fantasies.

It started in 1973 with a comic book series called The Amazing Spider-Man. The series was going on eleven years, and the hero had the same girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, for most of those years. However, shortly before 1973, the series changed writers, and the new writer, Gerry Conway, thought Gwen was a boring character. So he killed her. He never entertained the idea of writing more interesting stories about her, deepening her past to make her more interesting, or even just having the two characters break up. No, he had to kill her. In a reprinted edition of the story, Conway reflects on the choice in an editorial note, saying that the character's blond hair was a major motivating factor. "I had a thing for redheads at the time. Gwen had to go."

I have a thing for redheads, too. In high school, I dated a girl who was blonde. I never thought about KILLING HER so I could be with a redhead.

When I met Sam Raimi (director of the first 3 Spider-Man films) at the Los Angeles Comics Convention in 2002, I asked him why he didn't put Gwen Stacy in the first film. He told me that the most significant thing about Gwen Stacy is the fact that she dies.

Well, Sam, whose fault is that?

There is no rule saying that, if you put Gwen in your Spider-Man story, she has to die. In Ultimate Spider-Man, the modern re-imagining of the series, it's Spider-Man who dies...WHILE SAVING GWEN. I've been saying for 2 years that I hope they choose to end the new Spider-Man film series the same way. Some are saying Gwen will die in the new film so the story can be true to the comics. I think that would be cheap and predictable.

Speaking of cheap and predictable, did anyone catch the "How I Met Your Mother" finale?

Let's just put it this way: the mother, Tracy, is Gwen Stacy.

Robin is Mary Jane Watson, the red-headed supermodel that Spider-Man dates after Gwen's death. She's been a familiar face for a long time, longer than Tracy/Gwen has been around, even, and the fans have always liked her. They appreciate her wit, her bluntness, her charm, and her resilience in overcoming a troubled past. Yet when the series first started, she was none of those things. Her past was revealed piece by piece, and her personality changed throughout the series...just like regular people do. The fans welcomed the character development and found it interesting, even if it meant that in the end, she was slated to end up with the hero's wealthy, materialistic, playboy best friend, Harry Osb---I mean Barney Stinson.

With Tracy/Gwen, the writers put minimal effort into getting the fans acquainted with her. They kept misleading the fans, telling us she was his soulmate, but in the end, she wasn't even a person. She was just a lesson he learned that made him a deeper, more self-reflective male character.

It wasn't her death that bothered fans; it was how and why the writers chose to kill her. They didn't feel she was interesting enough to write about, so they cut her story short and replaced her with a supermodel (or in this case, a Canadian Pop Star) to serve as the goodhearted nerd's prize. Then they turned around and said, "Well, of course we didn't feature her character more throughout the series. The only significant thing about her is that she dies." Yes, because that's how YOU CHOSE to write her story.

The only redeeming thing about the story of Gwen Stacy's death is that, at the end, Peter, no longer Spider-Man, goes back to his apartment to grieve for the woman he has just lost. Mary Jane is waiting for him there, also in mourning, but Peter tells her to leave, saying that she's just a happy-go-lucky social butterfly who "wouldn't be sorry if your own mother died." MJ storms out in tears, but then, standing in the doorway, she stops, and the last frame we see is her closing the door in front of her, not behind her. She doesn't forgive him, but she decides to stay because she knows she is not the person he thinks she is. The scene doesn't continue in the following month's comic, and no writer has ever elaborated on what happened after she closed the door. They didn't have to. The message speaks for itself: Spider-Man can climb buildings, lift cars, and dodge bullets, but MJ is the stronger person, and he needs her strength, not the other way around.

In the closing scene of Spider-Man, fans got that; in the closing scene of How I Met Your Mother, fans got a fake gray hairpiece and a smurf you-know-what .