[Editor’s Note: “Your Skeptic Stories” is an ongoing series written by readers like you, people who have, through one means or another, discovered skepticism and critical thinking. These stories remind us that we all started somewhere and some of us are still finding our way as skeptics. Please send your story of around 1000 words, along with a 2-3 line bio, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Today’s story is a follow-up from Jan]
She starts: I wrote the skeptic story back here:
http://www.randi.org/site/
A man to whom I'm very grateful shamed me into growing up. I've been hoping to pass along the favor to someone else. Instead, I now just feel threatened.
I recently moved to a new neighborhood and have been getting to know my neighbors.
One morning I was walking my dog and saw two neighbors engaged in chat. I had met one, didn't know the other. I walked over and we got to chatting about gardening and it was all very amiable.
Then suddenly the man turned on me and remarked "You're really forward. What is your starsign?"
I was in company, so I felt a strong urge to play along, and yet something about his sudden aggressiveness and tone of voice pissed me off. It wasn't a playful question. It was a demand. So I chose to be noncompliant.
I'm female, so you get to call me bitchy and difficult because I didn't submit to a man.
I suggested that if astrology worked the way he thought, he ought to be able to predict what starsign I was from my character.
He got annoyed, visibly red, and insisted that No One in the Know would ever agree with that statement, my theory was total bull, [insert more blather and bluster here].
Then he asked me two more times. I refused, politely, to tell him.
He took a guess and asked if he was close. I expected the question. I've a wicked good poker face.
I remarked that, look, you already had only a 1 in 12 chance of being right. I'm not telling you if you're close. If it's the sign on either side, that's 3 signs, so we're down to 1 in 4. An easy guess.
I think he was feeling humiliation that I was refusing to go along with him. Though I've since learned that every neighbor for blocks around has had confrontations with him. He's simply the token asshole that's a part of every neighborhood.
So at this point his neighbor broke the tension by talking about her gardening and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless her with perfectly cooked pasta for that. Her intrusion was a masterpiece of tact.
Within seconds, he mentioned a recent birthday party and turned to me, very pointedly, and demanded to know whether I'd had a birthday recently. This pissed me off as the neighbor was clearly trying to change the subject and he was blowing her off. Bad form. I was angry at his bad manners.
My reply: "Nice try."
At this, he was so possessed with rage that his hands turned into fists, he began shaking, turned red, and he stormed off into his house.
Wow. A frightening display of instant rage.
So I continued chatting about gardening and went home. Now I realize that his neighbor showed no shock at his bad manners. I tried to dismiss feeling some fear that I now had a neighbor with violent anger issues. I just took to walking the dog when his car wasn't in the driveway.
A week later I got a letter from the city citing my lawn. So I asked around and learned that the city doesn't drive around looking for people to cite. Somebody has to call it in. Then a city mower arrived, one of those massive things you see mowing the highway medians, and it cut my sidewalk grass, which was no taller than anybody else's. It didn't cut anybody else's, just mine. A few days later, I got a second letter, now citing me as a public nuisance, again because my grass is the same height as anybody else's but I'm now a "danger to public health". So I began asking my neighbors whether my lack of mowing until the grass got to about 10 inches tall was a problem, I don't want to offend them and they have to look at it. Three people in a row all said, hell no, I don't care, yet all subtlely turned their head down the street to nod their heads at the guy with whom I'd had the confrontation. I took it as a hint that they believed he was the source of my citation.
So next time I'm confronted with a True Believer who is bigger than me, and I'm a slight woman, I'm probably going to lie because I get physical rage if I disagree with a man. Go read the Skepchick's brave blog. There's a 100 women on there who have faced worse, who want to be skeptics and change people's minds but fear for their physical safety when they do.
--Jan
Jan is a happy, kind, accommodating skeptic atheist. Retired math and science textbook writer/editor. Long-term overthinker. Espionage history groupie. Mom to an elderly Burmese python, a geriatric border[line] collie, and way too many earthworms in the kitchen composter. http://thesnakesmommy.