When Would You Walk Away From The Hero?

Let's get this out of the way: I am not a Feminist. I believe in equal rights and self-esteem and basic mutual respect between the genders (and that means all of them). I believe in holding the door for the person after you, no matter whether they are male or female, young, old, hairy, bald, snooty or friendly. I think it doesn't hurt to be nice to other people on a regular basis, because maybe they'll pass it on to someone else. Maybe you'll change their day for the better with your little gesture. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a niece -- and I don't want to pass on any negative "-isms" if I can help it.

I also happen to think that people learn from what they are exposed to. I do not mean this as a generalization -- surely not everyone who watches horror movies decides to turn into Freddy Kreuger just as not everyone who reads a biography about Mother Theresa gives up their corporate position to go take care of the poor in third world countries -- but I think, in the absence of seeing different aspects of different subjects, impressionable people might feel certain behaviors are normal and what they should aspire to or expect from life. 

Recently I've encountered some "romance" stories with couples -- the hero and heroine, and sometimes even the supporting characters -- who made me cringe. I thought, "Would I want my niece to read this? My son? My daughter?"

The answer was a resounding NO.

This made me wonder -- have any of you ever encountered, or read, a character or even a real person you just had to walk away from? Someone you wanted to tell the heroine/hero to run like hell from? Someone you wouldn't want to introduce to your friends or family? Someone you wouldn't want to be with? And if someone you loved was exposed to this person, how would you deal with it? What are the boundaries that would have to be crossed in order to make you take action?

Real life example: I was dating someone a long time ago that seemed funny and warm. He had a decent job and a home and southern gentleman manners. One day I walked in on him, after being invited over, to find him beating his dog with a bat. I never found out what the dog did to enrage him, but it had no impact on him at all when I shouted for him to stop. On an upswing, I reached out for the bat and grabbed it, and he turned and growled at me to let it go or I would be next.
I do not know where it came from because at the time I was not the most confident person. Those of you who know me personally know I'm not exactly linebacker-sized. I'm more the opposite of linebacker-sized. Maybe it was that I was terrified and upset for the dog. I looked him right in the eye and bluffed. I growled back, "Oh, you really don't want to do that."
And apparently, he did not. Maybe he suddenly worried that I had some inner ninja he hadn't counted on. Maybe he thought with a growl like that I would be willing to act physically and kick his scrawny (okay, at the time I didn't think it was scrawny, but in retrospect...) ass. That was it for us. Everything that had come before was null and void and that sort of cruelty, that threat -- wow. I just got out.
I heard the dog went to his ex-wife. I will never, ever, forget the look on his face when I grabbed the bat. For a long time I wondered how I'd missed signs in how he'd treated me before that. For months I had nightmares about letting go of the bat, and what could have happened when I did.

The heroes that have recently put me off have controlling, demeaning tendencies that their authors have somehow packaged as romantic. Characters do have flaws and secrets, and sometimes those elements drive the story and make you feel for them. But when does behavior go over the line and make you want to sit down with your niece, for instance, and say, "Look. Don't ever let someone treat you like this. It is not romantic and it is not respectful and it is not an example of how people who love each other should treat each other."

Examples extracted from text:

"Shut up and just take off your [article of clothing] like a good girl."

"I am not giving you the key (this said to a newlywed about their home) until I can trust you to behave."

"Why are you so fat?"

"You're going to wear what I like and you're not going to give me any [expletive] about it. And I will know if you take it off and you will be punished."

Heroes insist on carrying their heroines everywhere, and not always because they've been injured. Or they have the heroine's friends spy on her and report back. They begin as attentive and overwhelmingly romantic, too good to be true. The story becomes so focused upon the couple that friends and family are slowly eliminated from the picture.

Does anyone know the classic beginning signs of emotional, physical, or sexual battering? Would you want someone talking to you, or your friend or family member, that way? What would you do?

So there are things I want to know:

Have you ever encountered a character that you could not stand? Are there characters in classics or bestsellers that you couldn't believe other readers thought were wonderful but that you wished had never been published?

Have you ever encountered someone like that in real life and what did you do about it? Have you encountered someone like that and not done anything?

I am truly curious about how people feel about certain kinds of actions within relationships, both real and fictional. I wonder how we help or teach those around us to understand that some forms of behavior -- negative, disparaging, physically or emotionally uncomfortable or hurtful -- are just not right.

Please let me know what you think. 

Making Lattes out of Language

Years ago, part of my training at a major coffee retailer was to understand coffee as a process -- how it went from bean to that seemingly essential liquid that many of us need to get through any given day.  From its early harvesting, as a bean from a plant, or (ew) as digested material from an animal that had eaten the beans from the plant, it went through several steps until it became the processed grind that is now the root of all lattes.

I wondered on a semi-regular basis who had come up with these steps and how: at what point did someone say, "hey, let's take this mountainside bean, dry it in the sun, sort it by size, color, weight, origin, then mash it up, then put it in not-quite-boiling water for a certain amount of time, then add cow juice and sugarcane, then ...." Coffee's been around a long time -- how did it go from something chewed on as a stimulant to being combined, in its liquid form, with caramel syrup and whipped cream?

The process evolved over years and years, from the first guy who experimentally gnawed on a bean and found it made him feel more energetic, through many stages and many people later -- all the way to the eventual group in a conference room discussing the addition of pumpkin spice or peppermint syrup for the holidays.

Sometimes I feel that way about words. Lately in my profession, I see a lot of words that are simply not in any dictionary I have access to. People are making stuff up, changing the way words are used, making language evolve.

Admittedly, sometimes I get an education. Lost in Brooklyn on Sunday, we drove through some pretty sketchy areas. We wondered about "tenement". For the record, it's a 14th-century word. It's Middle English from Middle French from Medieval Latin, the Latin term "tenere" being the root, and meaning "to hold". "Tenement" came to mean "property held from one person to another".  Last week I had to copy edit an historical romance, where one of the heroes complained of his "bastardy". Since "bastard" is still a fairly common term, you might easily derive the meaning: This is a 15th-century word, indicating the quality or state of being of illegitimate birth. 

But what about more recent additions to our language? Here are three I've encountered: 

Badassery -- this refers to when someone is tough, full of bravado and able to back it up with physical or psychological superiority. "His badassery was legendary: he could take on any guy in the bar with his right  hand and win without even spilling the beer in his left."

Defecacious -- this term basically means one is full of feces, or the state of being a bullshit artist. "Dude, you are such a liar -- that's totally defecacious!"

Ballin' -- Now I know that some people will say this term has been around for a long time. It has; but it is the evolution of its usage that causes me to list it here. Rather than its implied sexual indications, the term is presently used as an adjective to mean something that's interesting, relaxing, or just great to be a part of.  "It was a ballin' party, especially after they handed out the Jell-o shots."

In our house, we've recently made up one or two: There's "frenchtoastinated", which is the pleasant state of being after you've been served some delicious, hot, egg-battered toast, usually on a weekend, with or without syrup and butter or jam or cinnamon. This is similar to the joy of being "waffleinated", except it's better because you don't have to clean the waffle maker afterward. 

I also sometimes use the word "shdrool", for which I must credit my ex-boyfriend Steve, who wore Capezios (so you know how long ago that was) and liked to name lobsters and let them "play" together on the kitchen floor before tossing them into a pot of boiling water and then serving them whole. I still have an aversion to eating anything in a shell, previously named Spike or Lucy, that might make me feel guilty about it by seeming to be looking at me, but I kept this word. It means, in essence, "extraneous stuff". He used it most frequently to tell me, when we got into his battered Mustang, "There's plenty of room for your feet if you just push the shdrool to the side." 

Usually that "shdrool" involved discarded and smelly coffee cups. 

So, language evolves and changes and adds on. What words have you discovered lately? What words have you just plain made up?

Addendum: I have been reminded, off-post, of the word "scrudja". I've asked my reminderer (yes, I made that one up, too -- take that, etymologists!) to give me his definition. But what do you think? Prize to whoever comes closest in a comment, and to whoever comes up with the most unusual guess.