The Imposition

Last night I had a friend over to watch t.v. and knit. She’s been having a rough time lately and needed some TLC.

She lives, I swear, at a house that should be on reality t.v. Gossip Girl pales in comparison to the amount of drama that goes on in that house. It’s a 3-flat and all the tenants are friends. Or siblings. Or in relationships with each other. And they aren’t necessarily roommates. It’s like a knotted snarl of personal connections. The amount of arguing, arm yanking, side taking, texting, frustrated head-holding, storming, and door slamming is unheard of. She, being newest to the building, was at one time neutral. But when her own best friend and roommate suddenly moved back to Ohio, her flat became the central council for the rest of the flats inhabitants. Soon her apartment door was left unlocked so that the dramatists could make their way in and out unhindered. Pets were left to her care on a smile and an IOU. Conferences of crying and scheming and consoling were held into the wee hours of the morning. Her flat rang with the tinny music of Guitar Hero, the stomping upstairs, the muffled hip-hop wafting up from downstairs, the yipping of small dogs and the intermittent vvvvring of her cell phone vibrating on a wooden floor. It wasn’t long before the one or the other of the buildings owners, both tenants themselves, moved in to her recently vacated extra bedroom. And the mental headache isn’t the only injury she’s gotten from this. Lack of sleep due to a constant barrage of house guests has left her exhausted. Her foot was run over, literally run over, by a taxi cab when she escorted one belligerently sad tenent home from the bar. And finally, while walking with crutches home from the train in a blissful moment of solitude and relative city silence, she was mugged.

So, naturally, I had my friend over for a cup of calm and spot of quiet.

I had relatively recently taught her just the knit stitch and she was making, therefore, a garter stitch scarf. The mistake I made was to teach her how to knit lefthanded. Truly left handed, not Continentally, which in the long run can be quite a pain in the ass. Last night I was trying to get her to want to learn to purl. And then I decided that if she was going to advance any further, she needed to learn to knit the English way. I kept putting down my knitting to show her how to purl, and then how to knit in the English way. She would just quietly nod and return to her awkward and crippled looking way of holding the needles and yarn and knit her scarf. Before long, as I was clicking away, totally immersed in Law & Order: CI, she went back to furiously texting and sighing and promptly made her exit. I was shocked at the abruptness of her departure and sat wondering for awhile why she had left so suddenly, if I had offended her or if I was that incredibly boring.

Today it occurred to me it was just a matter of different preference of atmosphere. What is wonderful to me, a night of knitting and tea or maybe wine, with the background of either NPR or Law & Order was probably a nightmare to her. Some people thrive on chaos. Maybe her environment provides enough of a distraction that lets her mind work out its kinks subconciously. Maybe the concentrated quiet that I crave, stymies her mental energy. And probably, my pressuring her to knit a certain way left her feeling more uncomfortable than when various household inhabitants impose on her space and time.

In the end I find it’s pretty interesting that one persons ‘bananas’ is anothers mental stimulation and in the same vein, one persons pleasant contentment is the others sheer and unadulterated boredom. And I suppose the moral of this story is not to assume that what works for yourself will automatically work for others. Imposition bothersome in all it’s forms, loud or quiet.