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7:28pm August 14, 2013

➸ Urocyon's Jaunts: Not wanting to deal with that awful upstairs neighbor to try to get a...

clatterbane:

Not wanting to deal with that awful upstairs neighbor to try to get a package reminded me, Mr. C and I both had to laugh at him over the weekend. As I’ve mentioned before, anytime it’s not pouring rain he likes to take his phone out on the deck right over our back door. Sometimes he’ll put it on…

Regarding stereotypical burly guys…

My dad looks big and burly to most people. People tell me he “looks like a lumberjack”. I guess I never notice.

Anyway he brought a baby squirrel to a wildlife rescue place. And the woman there wrote an email to my mom about how great it was to see “this big burly man with so much compassion in his eyes for this tiny creature”.

But that’s my dad in a nutshell. He’s mostly really sweet and kind of shy and gentle. But people (at least middle class people and up?) seem to rarely expect that based on his size and muscles and hairiness and clothing.

I’m not sure quite why people tend to expect him to be different from who he is, but they do. Like I kind of know the stereotypes but I also know HIM, not the way people see him at first glance. It’s always startled me the expectations people have.

Meanwhile my mom (who was tall in her youth) has shrunk down pretty short and looks, and generally is, just like a “nice woman”, to most people. But you don’t want to cross her.

There are stories of her being approached by a group of men with bad intent in the woods, and fending them off just by sliding her hand onto her Bowie knife whenever they tried to approach her. And I’ve seen her intimidate men over a foot taller than her and decades younger and stronger by sheer force of personality. Not that she’s always like that, but she’s capable of it when she needs to be.