Thanks to a friend of mine I now have a business card. I keep a handful of them in the pocket of a green tweed jacket and it makes me feel a bit smug knowing they are there. It also helps me take on the world.
They inform people that I am an ordinary human going about my day and details all the kinds of help people have offered me in the past that I could do without. For example: being told I am an inspiration, unsolicited prayers, propulsion, and life advice.
This was the tidiest of ideas collected from a Facebook thread where I surveyed (vented at) my friends about having been stopped in the rain so a stranger could tell me they were inspired by the simple fact I’d done my supermarket shopping. This is a mundane, day-to-day thing that happens so often I should be unsurprised. But every time I am torn between wanting to impress upon them that my life isn’t as bad as they think, and wanting to tell them to leave me alone.
Difference and different bodies seem to make us public property. The lines of social etiquette are not quite as invisible if you prompt questions for the person looking at you. Politeness makes it hard for me to know how to respond and I find myself often putting their curiosity before my right to just get on with life. It has taken a while to settle on something that strikes the balance between “thanks but no thanks” and “f*** off.” This solution makes me smile. Any other tactics out there?