The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: behavior

  • One Slap at a Time

    I am convinced that the reason so many violent and/or abusive people in this world get away with their bad behavior is that we have a tendency to break things down into separate incidents. If you look at a wife beater’s conduct one slap at a time, for example, it should still be considered unacceptable,…

  • Bullies

    There’s nothing I hate more on this earth than a bully. And I happen to interact with one regularly. Her aggression really intimidated me at first. But over time when she realized I wasn’t going to budge about certain things, she then had to get increasingly nit-picky until now the things that she blows up…

  • Adult Bullies

    The psychiatric community does not like to place the label of psychopath on children. I suppose that is understandable, because there’s no known cure for psychopathy, and if you get that diagnosis wrong, you could drastically damage that child’s life. No one wants to give up on a child. But the theory is that one…

  • Alternate Realities

    As a bridgetender I get ample opportunity to observe people. I sit up here in my not-exactly-ivory tower, watching them come and go. Most of them don’t even know I exist. That can be lonely, but it also gives me a certain amount of power, and it’s power that I haven’t earned, so I’ve never…

  • A Real Stand-Up Guy

    I know this guy with severe ADHD who is extremely socially awkward. In fact, most people consider him rather weird. He doesn’t pick up on social cues. He doesn’t get when he takes a joke too far. He doesn’t see when he’s making people uncomfortable. And he can’t tell when people are embarrassed for him.…

  • Getting Older

    Today is my 49th birthday. Happy birthday to me. Given that the average life expectancy of the white American female these days is 81 years, I am definitely on the downhill slope. And it’s a rare woman in my family who makes it that far, so I could very well be further down the slope…

  • “We Accept the Love We Think We Deserve”

    That is one of the main messages in the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and it really hits home for me. My whole life, I’ve had a problem with boundaries, or, actually, a lack of boundaries. In essence, I’ve allowed people to step all over me because I was obsessed with being a…

  • A Rare Gift from a Dolphin

    I am a bridgetender at a bridge that spans the intracoastal waterway in Florida. This job gives me a front row seat to observe nature. The other night at around midnight, I was walking on the bridge to check if all the navigation lights were functioning properly. As often happens, I startled a blue heron,…