Tough Crowd

The professional gardening world appears comprised mostly of ex-Marines and middle-aged women, and it's unclear which group harbors the most rage.

The common thread seems to be psyches shaped by long-term emotional abuse, and a cheery but hostile defensiveness that we use to unsettle others. Passive aggressively.

On one side, we have young men chewed up and spat out of a military system of emotional sadism that promised them camaraderie and loyalty. I worked with one very muscular jiu-jitsu practitioner whose inscrutable stone face made me want to either hug him, or talk to him gently while I sloooowly took the garden shears from his hands.  In my last job, another ex-Marine was so furiously anal about how we restocked tools that I would not hang so much as a rake without his permission, while wondering how I could get him to smoke a LOT more weed.

On the other side is the 50-something mom who does heavy gardening all day (including heavy tarps, wheebarrows, and tools), who anxiously measures out portions of food in tiny plastic containers (her 10am yogurt break is like a one-woman Running of the Bulls, and God help anyone who gets in the way), and who goes to a cardio class afterwards. She also routinely runs in the morning, and discusses in detail a half-dozen low-cal dinners with chicken as the base ingredient, and she does NOT approve of my abstinence from meat, white or otherwise.

She will not pee outdoors. Ever.

Like me, she is the child of an alcoholic, and I empathize with the control issues; however, once I realized I could say "Screw you!" to those issues, I've spent the time since cultivating a liberating, almost taunting "so what?" approach to most everything. I have realized that there is rarely only one right way.   I realized it's a lot more fun to not constantly self-edit.

This attitude, and my clear disregard for whether others approve of me, drives this poor woman straight up the wall.

And if we're being honest here, I get a kick out of that.

The third middle-aged woman is emotionally needy and chronically depressed, so they hit it off like a house on fire. (My most sympathetic response to her lament about a recent ex was to say, "He's a fucking loser. Move on.")  At one point Needy Woman complained of a headache, and I looked up to see Apotheosis of Mom standing in front of her with a Tylenol and a glass of water.  It was horrifying.

The excuse I gave for my notice was family reasons, because there was no need to say, "I'm bored, I am NOT bonding with the team, and if I'm going to work this hard, it will be for real money for myself."

Nobody misses me.

And if we're being honest here, I'm fine with that.