Then
I was always destined to be a reader. My parents read to me. My parents read around me. And as soon as I could read, it was what I wanted to do with most of my time.
So I developed a feel for language and an unusually sophisticated vocabulary for a child.
Which, you know, was something all the other kids admired and never made fun of me for.
Looking back I can see that yes, people absolutely felt threatened by my use of ‘big words’ because they assumed it was performative: that I was doing it to show them up, or that I was judging them for not using big words. In fact, I was just talking the way my imaginary friends talked. It had nothing to do with anyone else.
Now
I like to handwrite. I find it soothing. And when I write, I like to write with a fountain pen.
People feel compelled to comment on this, and when they do I hear that faint echo of the playground: “ooo, look at you with your fancy words and your fancy pen. You think you’re so special. You think you’re better than everyone else.”
That’s my issue, not theirs.
I laugh it off by telling them I went to a very old-fashioned school (true) where you weren’t allowed to write with pen at all unless it was a fountain pen (also true) and that your pencil handwriting had to be approved by your teacher before you were allowed to ‘graduate’ to using a pen at all (also true). When you did, you had to care for your own pen and make sure you remembered to bring it to school and take it home again otherwise you’d suffer the indignity of a, having to use a scratchy, crappy school pen or b, (horrors!) going back to using a pencil, like a baby!
So yeah, maybe there is something deep-seated about my love of the fountain pen. It represented ‘being one of the big kids’, but not just because you had aged out of Infant-class activities, but because you’d worked to earn the right to use it, to be someone who could be trusted with a fancy and fragile pen.
But I don’t use a pen to impress anyone, and I don’t have a collection of fancy pens.
I have one pen I use every day. I refill it from a glass bottle of ink, quietly (except for this post) patting myself on the back for being as eco-conscious as I can be.
And when I occasionally want a change, I use one of the disposable plastic pens that find their way into my house…and my hand hurts.
See, this is why I really use a fountain pen: because you can hold a fountain pen loosely and let its nib glide lightly across the page in one fluid movement without suffering from hand cramps.
(I even had someone comment on the way I write, once, when we were 12. Apparently I move my whole hand/arm after every word. I wrote so much — at school and at home — that apparently I developed this easy handwriting style. All I wanted to do–when I wasn’t reading–was write, so I found a comfortable way to do it. I hadn’t even noticed I’d done it until Lorraine, aged 12, commented on my style.)
I don’t use big words to be performative. I don’t use a fountain pen to say ‘I’m better than you’.
Heck, I don’t even wear clothes with logos on them, because that’s how not-performative I am.
Now +1
But I did knit a Melt the ICE hat to send a message about who I stand with and where I’d like to put my money — MN immigration organizations, BTW. All proceeds from the pattern.
Because I think 4389 knitters (and counting) making the same hat, for the same ideological reason is the RIGHT kind of performance.
Dumping tea in Boston Harbor was performative.
Storming the Bastille was performative.
I will wear my tasselled, red hat in public and be judged as the performative, outraged white middle class lady I am.
And you will know that you are not alone.