Tag: insight | A Banana Peeled

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Not that you’ll listen, anyway

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I was talking to my brother about dating (because he currently is), and he was joking that I should meet the women he liked before he got serious because I’m good at reading people. I laughed and said that it would be futile because NRE (New Relationship Energy) is strong and nobody listens to someone who warns them about a partner.

He demurred, saying he would listen to me because he trusted me. Which, flattering, but I knew better. I said to him that no one listened to their friends when they were in the throes of passion. I wasn’t throwing shade because I had done the same thing myself. It was just human nature to be flooded with pheromones and not thinking straight.

My brother laughed. We moved on to talking about me doing a service for people where I read their dates like a fortuneteller, which, again, there’s no money in that. I mean, not only because it takes time for people’s personalities to fully out (and maybe years before what I predicted would happened actually came true). I said that there was like 5% of people I could not accurately read. My brother asked if I’d even know that I couldn’t read the person accurately. I said yes, so he said I could turned them down from the outset, but thinking about it more, I’m not sure I could. The one kind of person that slips by me at times are charming narcissists. I can peg them most of the time, but those few times I can’t, it’s disastrous.

I am Cassandra. I am extremely adept at reading people, but I am not believed. I gave my brother two instances of me reading someone accurately, but the people around me not believing me. In the first instance, when the person was found out to be rat bastard (for a completely different reason), people were shocked. “Who could have predicted?” they said. “No one!”

Me sitting over there like:: “Uh, me?”

It’s weird to have a revulsion for someone who is held in high esteem by those around you. I thought I was crazy for not liking or trusting this guy. When it was validated, but for the wrong reason, it was even worse. Others thought he was terrible, but the specific reason in that case was not him being terrible. In other words, people suddenly saw him for who he really was, but at the wrong time.

I have mentioned before that I don’t like telling people about themselves. I don’t mind doing it with my brother because he accepts it without getting defensive. Most of the time. THere are a few sore points for him, too, as there are with anyone, but in general ,he’s eager to hear what I know about him.

Know myself

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I know myself pretty well. That’s not a humblebrag; it’s just a flat-out brag. Heh. I kid. It’s just reality. I have a pretty clear view on my negatives and a little less strong grasp on my positives. For example, there’s a famous survey that says 80% of the people surveyed think they’re better-than-average drivers. Which, as you can note, is statistically impossible. What I did not know was that all the respondents had been in a car accident at some point. Also, there’s another study that said fewer than 1% of the people surveyed believed they were worse-than-average drivers. Basically, people think they are above average in everything. An interesting corollary effect is that being around people who are overconfident makes you overconfident as well. All of this is from an article in Inc., by the way.

I am part of that fewer than 1%. I know that I’m a bad driver and I have no difficulty saying so .I also know that I am very bad at spatial recognizing, and I am not a patient person. I am not great with money (paying bills and such. Good at not spending it) and I’m very weird compared to normies.

I don’t like kids in general. I don’t think babies are cute and I would rather not spend time with them if I don’t have to. There are individual exceptions, of course, but in general, I’m not a fan of babies. Don’t much like toddlers, either. I find them boring and their need for repetition irritating–probably because it rubs up against my own need for repetition. I like kids starting around nine or ten, when they can talk about real-world things rather than just kid stuff. Funnily enough, kids love me. I think it’s precisely because I treat them like human beings and not kids. I don’t talk to them in any special voice (I save that for my cat), nor do I treat them like babies. It’s just not my style. I don’t talk over their heads, obviously, but that’s because I’m not a jerk. Not in that sense, anyway.

It’s how I treat everyone, really. I meet them where they are and don’t expect them to be something they’re not. There’s a cashier at my local grocery store that loves me. The other day, she told me that I was her favorite, which was flattering. I think it’s because she’s Native American and thinks I am, too. We bonded over Wes Studi (a hot indigenous actor) who was on the cover of a magazine, which prompted her to tell me that she was Native American. She’s also disclosed that she loves masa tortillas, that she’s been having car trouble, and her son had to leave his sick puppy with her. I think the fact that we are both BIPOC and female-presenting added to the bond.