Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get wat you’ve always got.”
So I’m just going to put some ideas down and leave them here. It can’t do any harm.
I was having a bit of a laugh about my tallest brother’s quirky ways. Spencer P. Jones wants to teach him how to play guitar. He’s never played a guitar in his life, so the expectation would be that they start from the very beginning. My goofy brother however has confided that he’s planning to have secret ‘other’ lessons with someone he doesn’t know or care about so he won’t be embarrassed about not knowing how to play the guitar when it comes to the ‘real’ lessons.
Is this kind of behaviour genetic? That exact thing hasn’t happened to me, but I know what he means and have avoided the ‘real’ lesson so many times for the same reason.
Genetics interests me because I’m adopted. I feel perfectly qualified to discuss the tired old nature vs. nurture discussion. I’m not tired of it. We all know biology is genetic, but is behaviour? I reckon it is.
I didn’t grow up with this particular brother and there’s also another older brother and sister. We’re all so very similar though. Our use of words, our sense of humour (humour?), the stupidity of the everyday, our addictions- not all at once and not all the same, and Jesus is an addiction- I’m declaring it.
We have a 90 year old aunt. She says every day at about 4pm she suddenly panics because food has to be prepared for dinner and she’s got no idea what to do. I do that, except I sort of worry about it most of the day before the deadline hits. It’s only been recently recognised we’re all crap at food.
The nurture side has had an impact of course. I have two brothers from that family and a mum and a dad (up until 2011 for dear darling Jingo, loved to bits by all).
We learned that you should make everything from nothing, the original up-cyclers (TV in the cupboard and don’t tell the visitors). Grow your own food, eat the animals. We learned that money was something we didn’t need. We’re all now so totally embarrassed by money and somehow we morphed this philosophy into not deserving anything. If money comes our way, we freak out and waste it, give it away or hang onto it never to be spent ever ever just in case.
If I make a cake (don’t do it much -nature) and it’s not from scratch with the eggs from our own chooks (nurture) I feel like a cheat, same with all food, except I’m pretty lazy with food as we now know (nature) and we have to eat so packaging wins.
The other thing about all these brothers is that, being the youngest and a girl, I felt the need to prove I could do whatever it is those bigger boys were doing and that whatever girls were like was not my bag. No one really mentioned it was a thing, I just made it a thing and wouldn’t do ‘girly’ from a very small age. That’s caused some internal struggle in my later years because somehow it made me a reverse sexist. Like girls are less than.
I did a welding course in my 20’s and made some furniture (1 x chair, 1 x table, 1 x lamp), then while I was working at a bar in Richmond with all the old blokes (I loved them, so many favourites with the best stories), I got a ‘scaffolding appreciation’ (appreciation?) certificate, then onto bob cats, front end loaders and I wound up being a ‘forky’ at the exhibition centre for 5 years. I loved it. I was on a team of women and we got lots of attention for ‘giving it a go’, (and actually we were very good, we had our heads in the paper with a giant article even) and the blokes thought we were all a bit mad but cute. It made us separate from them but not like ‘other girls’. Those girls, whoever they were, were always a bit piss weak in my view.
I’ve been working in a feminist women’s health organisation for a number of years now, nearly 6, and boy (girl?) have I learned some things.
It’s always those that you’re not like that teach you the best lessons eh. Twenty or so women over these years, young and less young, educated, fervent, friendly and fun. And so it is, women can be however they like (which I’ve always thought), not realising they can do it while they wear the highest heels they want or the flattest, having babies, not having babies, painting those nails, having them extended even or get the dirt under them, wear make-up if you want, glitter, glam, bare face, boob jobs, pants, skirts, beige business suits…. go for it.
Anyway, which ever family I was going to grow up in, I would’ve been free to be however I liked in that regard, that’s just how I decided I was going to do it. Trying to be different to fit in.
I do need to add a little political commentary about how women are actually underrated in our very own ‘lucky country’ and there is a lot of work to be done to achieve equality. The deaths, the violence, the sexism, the stereotyping, the bullshit. The total lack of regard.
My point was really about myself and judging books by covers and not being my own self in entirety.
A woman today was talking about female friendships and investigating them more in her own work. That interests me because I really feel like I’m missing something in my own world there. I’ve got some favourites for sure, but as a blanket rule I mean. I’ve been having the ‘other’ class to avoid the real one for a while.