Be Quiet!

by Donna Schoenkopf

When I was about four years old my mother wrote in my Baby Book, “At four and a half years Donna goes to the store for me. She seems above average in being capable of doing these things.... She is pretty noisy, though, and much too bossy toward other children.”

She hit the nail on the head.

Although I only remember my mother criticizing me twice in all my life, my bossiness, my loudness, bothered her. I could tell. I am sure she was worried that I would be shunned or disliked.

Well, she was right. It does bother a lot of people.

Now don’t get me wrong. My mother loved me with all her heart. She was proud of me. She would welcome me home every day from school, from the first grade all the way through the twelfth grade, with “Oh, I’m so GLAD you’re home!!” And hug me and kiss me. She often told me I was her best friend. She confided in me. She loved me. A lot.

This story is about the conflict I have over a major flaw in my personality—my Big Mouth.

I’d like to begin by saying that I have an excuse—I was the Firstborn. When you are the Firstborn, your job is to help your little brothers and sisters do things like tie shoes or play games. A Firstborn then begins to feel like an authority. This makes for bossiness.

It is the cross I bear.

I have a Big Mouth and I blurt stuff out, so why not embarrass myself here and now? You will feel my pain and embarrassment and maybe even be on my side in some instances. But to all those whom I have offended, please understand that I do love you, you know, and that I KNOW I am a pain in the ass. But also please understand that my feelings were hurt when you told me outright or silently wished me to ...

Be Quiet!!!

I was not particularly liked when I was little. That bossiness thing. All the way through school I would be the one in class raising her hand. (I knew the answer. I felt excited! I wanted the teacher to like me and kids to think I was great.) Eventually, I got it ... that my hand-raising was obnoxious. But I couldn’t stop. I had become habituated to raising my hand when I knew the answer. Which was most of the time.

Back in the day, hand-raising wasn’t such a social faux pas. A kid could get away with it, more or less. But today? If you raise your hand for anything in class, everybody in the room hates you. I found this out when I went back to college at the age of 45. That didn’t stop me, though. Naaaaaaah. Once a know-it-all, always a know-it-all. Yes, I am able to sense the disapproval in the room. But I can’t help it. My hand just shoots up.

(Lest you not recognize that I am truly aware of the Continually Raised Hand of the Eager Student, please know that eventually I became a teacher and that there is always a student who raises his/her hand all the time. It IS annoying to most. But I am not annoyed. I feel the excitement of the student, the involvement of the child, the LOVE of learning. My problem was that the other students didn’t get to answer and they began to tune out. So I always complimented those students on their intelligence and told them that truly, truly I know that they know the answer, but that we have to involve the rest of the kids.

But that wasn’t good enough. Usually that student was the only one who did know the answer and everyone else sat there, mute.

I eventually solved this particular problem by using the number system. I assigned each student a personal number, put it on cardstock, put them in a basket and drew them out all day. A number was picked for EVERYTHING. Opening the door. Answering the question. Getting the prize. Going to the office. The numbers made partners in study, picked teams, and assigned projects. It didn’t take long before everyone felt involved. And the Know-It-All—and I mean that in a GOOD way—got to be part of the group on an equal footing.)

But it’s not that way in life, is it?

So here are some experiences I’ve had, being a loud, bossy, know-it-all.

High School: I was sort of popular. But not with the girls. The boys liked me because I was a girl. And my particular circle of boy-friends (friends who were boys) were smart and appreciated my brain. But the girls hated me. Years and years later one of those boy-friends made a casual remark about that.

“Boy, those girls HATED you in high school,” he said with a chuckle. I knew this, of course. And was glad that finally someone said something about it so that I didn’t feel as though I were crazy or paranoid. But it still hurt.

“You either love her or you hate her,” another boy-friend said. That was true, too. Still hurt. But at least some people loved me.

Another friend from the past said, “I would NEVER marry anyone like you!” Fuck you, I said silently. I wouldn’t marry you either. But oddly enough, we really do love each other.

Husband Number One and I fought continually. We were both Firstborns and would argue for dominance. We never could figure out what our place was with each other. Leader? Follower? Uhhhhhhh.

Husband Number Two, a Firstborn. Same problem, although he was more pliable, being a Jewish man and recognizing a woman’s right to have a mouth and a brain. But still, when he said, “You ALWAYS think you know everything!” I recognized a theme.

Husband Number Three was a Youngest and so we lasted almost twenty years till I just couldn’t take his Bad Boy ways anymore and he couldn‘t take my continual carping.

Oddly enough, all three of my dear husbands and I actually like each other. Just not as spouses.

Some embarrassing moments:

Once I took Phen-Fen, trying to lose weight. That was before it was known how horrible and dangerous it was. So I was racing around and having a wonderful time. One day I went to an all day teachers’ union meeting (I was the union rep for my school) and, even though my doctor said not to drink coffee, I did. I became the pure essence of the loud know-it-all, one of the most horrible moments of my life. I took the microphone and began an emotional soliloquy about how much I loved the union and what it meant to me. And then ... I realized ... that everyone ... all two hundred people ... were looking at me in total embarrassment and horror. I had gone over the edge. And I was standing alone, in front of them, looking like a maniac. Which I was.

Ai yi yi. I still get the willies thinking about it.

And then there was the time I was elected as a delegate for Jerry Brown to the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York. I was full of excitement and love and joy and hallelujah feelings and bounced and hollered and cried, “LET JERRY SPEAK!! LET JERRY SPEAK!!” And made such a spectacle of myself that footage of my shenanigans got into The War Room, a movie made about the Clinton campaign. In the movie the camera pans over all the regular folks and then stops on me, my mouth wide open, hollering. The next frame shows the front page of the New York Daily News (I think) with the headline, “Party Pooper!”

Uhhhhh.

And then there’s the time I made Esmeralda cry. She is the dearest of the dear. She is the most thoughtful and kind person in the world. And she was a new teacher.

I was the Union Rep and I was castigating our principal in front of the staff about her illegal maneuvering of the matrix (don’t ask, but I WAS right!) and it was a free-for- all and everybody was anxious and nervous, except me, of course, because I was in my element. And then I turned around and Esmeralda was sobbing. The whole thing was a nightmare for her. I had scared her and assaulted her senses and I couldn’t have been more horrified and ashamed of myself.

And then there was the eternally raised hand of mine at staff meetings after school. Every meeting, good old Donna’s hand, waving in the air. Finally, one of my dear and darling teacher friends said, “Donna, don’t you DARE raise your hand today. We want to go home.”

I loved her for that actually. And I didn’t even raise a fingertip.

Cultural differences include the following:

Women really wish I would shut up but men seem to like my brassiness. At least most of them do. They are amused. Some seek me out at parties just to stir the pot and argue. My pleasure, sirs.

I have somewhat more trouble in Oklahoma than I did I California. I guess because the diversity of California lets just about anyone mosey on through life without too much hassle. But Oklahoma has a homogeneity that regards with suspicion certain differences in people and my personality rankles plenty of people here. Some of my dear friends from forty years ago who still live here in Oklahoma tend to roll their eyes when I get too “TOO.” And it hurts my feelings. But I understand. I really, really do.

I belong to a club here and at a particular meeting the president walked over to me before the meeting started and whispered in my ear, “Donna, we have some teenagers here whose parents could be offended by your comments so could you please watch your words?” Or something to that effect.

No problem. But it hurt.

And I rub most (but not all!) women in committee groups the wrong way. Some STILL haven’t forgiven me. It makes me ashamed and sad. And kind of pissed off.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, my Big Mouth HAS paid off occasionally.

Once at a union meeting when I was complaining about standardized testing and getting all emotional about it, a bunch of teachers came up to me and told me that they were glad that SOMEONE had said something; that NO one EVER spoke up, and that they were grateful for my voice.

Sometimes, when I mouth off in front of a large group, people applaud and smile and cheer. That’s really nice. I feel like I’m a good person.

Sometimes teachers at my school would come to my classroom in secret and ask me to PLEASE speak to the principal about one thing or another because they couldn’t and they knew I wasn’t afraid to. “Speaking Truth to Power” is something my Big Mouth is happy to do.

Finally, the best thing about my Big Mouth is that all my children are Hand-Raising Know-It-Alls in class and in life, and, oddly, it has nothing to do with their birth order.

I am proud that they speak out. I know their struggle and the cross they are bearing. I know their courage and the absolute inability on their parts to just keep their mouths shut. I know how intensely they feel, and how right they think they are and how much they care.

So, even though I embarrass my OWN self, there is something so good and wonderful about my kids that ... oh, I just can’t explain it.

For once.

Comments

Comments closed.