WHEN IN ROME

If I ever hear those three words again, I’m going to go postal. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love “The Promise” and all things 80’s pop. It has nothing to do with such lovely melodies. What my rage has to do with is “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

Now, anyone who has ever worked with me is familiar with my disdain of the phrase “Take one for the team.” You see, “Take one for the team” is a popular phrase amongst male New York film PA’s when they don’t feel like doing something and want the chick they’re working with to carry extra weight. Make no mistake about it; film is the most misogynistic workplace I have ever been in and the thing about true misogyny is not that the men are angry (that’s the women) but that the men are beyond lazy. A dude will tell a girl “Come on, take one for the team.” If she says agrees, she’s bled dry. If she tells him to suck it up and carry his own weight, she’s labeled a bitch. As it was a lose-lose situation, I always opted for “bitch” because boys on film sets whine too much and there’s something to being the only gal I know who has told another male PA to “suck it.” You see, “Suck it” has become my reflexive response to anything even remotely resembling “Take one for the team.”

Apparently China has its own version of “Take one for the team.” They have co-opted, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Everyone consistently says, (when I am told to do something I have no interest in doing) “Do you know there is a phrase called ‘When in Rome’? Well, be like in Rome.”

Now, I am doing everything I can to be agreeable and up for anything. As cranky and stubborn as I can be, I can be equally accommodating. However, upon the (literally) 19th declaration of the AFTERNOON that I should, “Be like in Rome. When in Rome” it becomes a feat of mammoth proportions not to scream “SUCK IT!” It’s really hard to remind myself that what is, in reality, the umpteenth ‘little’ infringement on my day, voice, sense of humor, body or smiling photo face, is to them the first and only of the day. They will never be “foreign” so there is no drive for them to even remotely understand what that mantel might mean to someone in said context. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t all think that “When in Rome” was not only cute and get-out-of-jail infringement card but appropriate as well.

I almost explained what “When in Rome” means to my boss today as he informed me that I needed to “Be like in Rome.” I have always taken “When in Rome” to be a comment on embracing the debauched nature of a place where you don’t fully belong… the operative element of all of this being the “debauched nature of Rome” in her full bacchanalian, anything-goes orgy and vomitorium glory. PRC communists who have outlawed pornography and lumped anything more revealing than a ball gown in with it, are telling me, essentially, I need to embrace the debauched customs of their land. I may have never said it before because it seems like stating the obvious but “I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH ANYONE IN POSSESSION OF BLACK TEETH.” Beyond that, there’s not much debauchery to be had.

So, when my boss blew me off today because the fact that I ran out of drinking water on Saturday (it’s now Monday night and I was booked solid with classes all day) is less important than his leaving his office right at 5pm on the dot and the only response he offered was “Be like in Rome. When in Rome” I actually hung up on him. Frankly, pretending we got cutoff due to bad cell reception was safer than the things that flew out of my mouth a moment after I hung up.

He called back and informed me that I needed to come to his office in the morning to discuss my new schedule. (Keep in mind, every week and occasionally every 15 minutes I am given the new “permanent” schedule.) Now, normally I would be free Tuesday morning but he decided to add on to my work load another few hours of teaching in the Kindergarten, some of which take up all my free time on Tuesday mornings.

I reminded him of my schedule and he said, “Oh, okay. Come in tomorrow morning.”

“But I teach in the Kindergarten.”

“Then come this afternoon.”

“I did, you weren’t there. That’s why we’re talking on your cell.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye.”

*Click*

And, as my boss hung up on me, one of the wonderfully kind neighbor girls just informed me that the building’s power will be out tomorrow.

Fantastic