Silence is golden. That’s what they say. I was a tempestuous child. Hard to believe, I’m sure, when considering the stable young woman that I am today. But in my younger years, when I was a toddler, I was known to throw some very serious temper tantrums.
I threw temper tantrums in the halls of our Mississippi home. I threw them on the kitchen floor during dinner. I threw them in the front yard if I did not want to come in from playing. I even threw temper tantrums in public – once, my mom loves to tell people who ask about my childhood, I laid down on the tile floor of a shopping mall and kicked and screamed, red-faced, until my mom could persuade me to calm down.
Do you know how my mom calmed me down? She hugged me. I was a lucky child, I know. It’s difficult to remain angry when you are wrapped up in a hug.
After I outgrew my temper tantrums, I learned a better way to let people know I was unhappy with them: the silent treatment. Oh yes, there is nothing like the silent treatment to make people think about how sorry they are that … they ever met you. No! The silent treatment makes people think how sorry they are to have ever crossed you. Yes of course it does.
I am not yet above dishing out the silent treatment, and, as it turns out, many of my friends are not done with the silent treatment either. It is an effective, if slightly immature, way to deal with anger issues. At 22, however, I know that a revised version of the punishment is necessary. When you are 4- and 5-years-old, the silent treatment requires full devotion of all your body-language skills. A smile must never appear across your pouting lips, and arms-crossed-over-the-chest look is a very telling way of communicating your disdain with the offender. As a child, you want the loudest silent treatment possible, if you will. You want everyone to know there’s a reason you’re not talking.
As you get older, you become more responsible in the administration of your silent treatments. Only the offending party should be on the receiving end of your shut-down, and a skilled practitioner can appear to be light-hearted and carefree to others who may be present.
The other day, my friend was driving me home from her apartment in South Boston. She had been highly irritable all night, and I had been irritated at her irritability. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, and I wouldn’t stop asking her what was wrong. So we stopped talking to each other. Luckily, we were part of a large group of friends, and we were able to converse to our hearts’ delight with everyone but each other. At one point, we were both smiling and laughing at someone else’s story. When we caught each others’ eye, we stopped smiling and laughing. Sometimes personal pleasure must be sacrificed to accomplish loftier goals.
In order to preserve the quality of the treatment, all superfluous words must be eliminated, and words that cannot be avoided must be spoken in the tone of absolute disgust. For example, when my friend offered to help me with the pile of things I was carrying to the car, she did so in such a way that I knew she was only asking to make me feel stupid. I responded in the negative while stooping to pick up what had fallen from my pile. When I stooped to pick up a sock, one of my shoes slid to the ground. When I reached for my shoe, my book slid into a puddle.
“Are you sure you don’t want any help with that?” (Translation of tone: idiot.)
“I’m sure.” (Translation of tone: I’m not talking to you – I’m being unreasonable. If I were being reasonable, I’d want your help.)
My roommate and I often disagree. Our arguments escalate and escalate until, at the crescendo of our disharmony, we drop our interaction to absolute zero. That’s right. We just stop talking. She turns away from me and starts playing on her computer and I turn on my heel and walk out of the room.
One hot Boston summer while we were living together and training for soccer, we had one of our famous altercations in our un-air-conditioned apartment. But we had to work out together that day (and every day) as well. We walked to West Campus without speaking to each other (I walked five feet in front of her the whole way) and we finished our entire session in silence. If you think running 120-yard sprints is bad, try doing it without any encouragement from your partner.
Silence is scathing – that’s what they should say.
Rupturing the silence requires even more skill than maintaining it. There are two ways to go about doing this – confronting the root issue or beginning some casual conversation to get the love flowing again. In either case, you must appear to be completely unaffected by the silence – I don’t have to do this, but because I’m more mature than you, I will – right?
The best thing about being an adult is all the ways you can act like a child and still get away with it.
Rebecca Beyer, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press.
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