How I Became so Bossy

August 30, 2013 — 6 Comments

I was the youngest in all the groups in my childhood.  I was never considered for the key roles such as Davy Crockett, or his wife, when we dramatized that story. I would be lucky to be a horse. The kids in my immediate neighborhood just happened to be older. I played and hung out with a couple of girls who were in the class above me, but our games included the kids who were several years older. Every kid knows that the oldest person gets to choose first..at least that was the standard in our neighborhood.  Like all oppressed people, the youngest one just waits for the tables to turn, and they eventually do.

I know that I am bossy from my career as a fitness instructor; that is exactly what people are paying you to do..boss them around.  What I have never analyzed is the way my youth had an effect on my commanding nature.  I left my neighborhood and school to move to Venezuela where I was the daughter of the boss of all my friends’ parents.  He was even the boss of my teachers in school because the oil company hired the teachers and ran the school. Suddenly my relative underdog position was reversed in a big way.  Much older guys wanted to date me because that was culturally normal in South America.  Virtually everyone I knew sucked up to me with gifts and every privilege I could never have imagined.  I was the capitalist imperialist teenager with everything…and way more than anyone I knew in the states could have dreamed.  Servants, yacht, DC3 with private living room configuration and pilots who let me “land the plane” in Caracas……. I thought it was all just dandy.  I had a large sense of entitlement that came with the territory.

Once you have lived in another country the United States can never be the same.  Once you have been immersed in another culture, you can no longer stay completely within the old cultural bounds.  When I returned to life in the US I never lived east of the Mississippi or north of the line  (Mason/Dixon, that is) ever again.  There is something very powerful about being bilingual, but it is even more empowering to be bicultural.  My life developed from a tight and limited beginning to a progressively wider and higher view of the world.  I crossed more international borders before I was 15 than most Americans do in a lifetime.  I was fully fluent in colloquial Spanish, never missing a beat.  This short lesson in international diplomacy took place when I was 13-15; My confidence and self awareness significantly changed forever.  I took command.

I do not try to convince others to think like I do because I honestly appreciate diverse points of view.  I would not waste my persuasive talents to change anyone’s mind for any reason.  However, when any group lacks leadership I instinctively boss the group around…sort of like a sheepdog.  I sense the inertia and take the situation as a call to action.  Giving orders is an interesting experiment.  I find that people obey me, not so much because they respect my authority as because they know I am not going to stop…sort of like a sheepdog.  I see this model very clearly as I herd my elementary classmates into a video chat with each other.  I am sure that I did not have this nature as a young child, although I do want to ask my class if they remember me as a bossy kid.  I believe that I developed a certain ability to seek and destroy inertia.  We all know that in the end inertia wins, but my life is a symbolic effort to create action from inaction.  Some of us are simply born to herd.