I didn't know the definition of a 'cynic' when I was ten years old. I just knew I was one. How? I had submitted an essay about First World War poetry to my English teacher, in which at the end I couldn't help questioning a few things: why was there so much poetry during World War One and not so much in other wars, how did they write them all down and how did they manage to find publishers while everybody was rotting in the trenches? (Yes, shameful I know!) My teacher had marked the essay, eloquently answering my stupid questions and then, right at the bottom, he'd written "you cynic" in pencil, which he'd duly rubbed out. But the deep impression of the pencil had remained; he was particularly heavy-handed with such instruments, and even at my young age I knew he'd meant for me to read that.
I hadn't wanted to ask anybody what the word meant; it must be bad because it had been rubbed out! So I looked it up in the dictionary. From this, I inferred that I was "a person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative". And I wasn't even a teenager yet.
But I must admit that my teacher had been right (though at the time I didn't like him for calling me that and viewed him with suspicion from then on, just as a true cynic might have done). I'm the sort of person who questions and dissects just about everything until it all becomes meaningless; the sort of person who is able belittle someone's hard work with a tiny twitch of my eyebrow. But it's not intentional behaviour (really it isn't!). It's just ingrained (I blame my Nan actually, whose sceptical eyebrow raises are legendary in our family...and beyond).
Once, when I was twenty and working in a cable television call centre, there was a lady in the upper echelons of management whom everybody feared. She strode through the office like a wartime general; fifty-five, tall and with a stern, make-up free face. You didn't approach her for assistance unless you were feeling in a particularly kamikaze sort of mood; she could demolish your confidence in seconds by immediately getting to the root of a problem and identifying its solution so swiftly that it made you feel incredibly stupid for not thinking of it yourself. She was also the company's unofficial disciplinarian...people would routinely come out of her office not speaking, as if, in the manner of a hard-bitten veteran of grisly battle, what had taken place in there had been so harrowing that they couldn't bring themselves to actually talk about it. That might make it real...it might keep them awake at night, screaming for it all to be over.
On my last day working there, this lady called me into her office. I was petrified; I'd kept my head down and hadn't had much to do with her during my two-year tenure at the call centre, and I wondered what the hell I'd done. Shaking slightly, I sat down, she fixed me with a steely gaze...and then her face cracked itself into a smile and she said "I just wanted to say goodbye, and wish you well for the future. I actually see a lot of myself in you; you remind me of when I first started out at work"
I was mortified at the time, but now I'm older I don't think that's such a bad thing any more. Like a rabid alcoholic forced to finally confront her demons, these days I can admit that yes, I am a cynic and I do have high standards (most of which I fail to meet myself on a daily basis). But I still own a pink Sleeping Beauty jewellery box that I wouldn't part with for the world, and I still get a bit nostalgic and wistful whenever I listen to the 'Late Night Love' slot on the radio at night. Oh, and for some reason I have a penchant for ridiculously stupid films, such as 'White Chicks' which was on last night and made me laugh like a drain. Without questioning how idiotic it is. And it is idiotic.
So that must mean I actually have a lovely, finely balanced personality, right? (Right?!!)
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