Here's your prescribed dose of toxic people for today--

I haven't been writing, and while the benefits of exercise include a mental clarity that is unmatched on this earth, it is not the same as the soul searching endeavor of putting thoughts on paper...or into the blog-o-sphere, as the case may be.

While I was running today, I thought through an incident I had with a woman in the juror room earlier in the day (yes, I was lucky enough to be called in for jury duty, and was dismissed without even so much as sitting on a panel).

To summarize, we had just finished hearing the first round of panel selectee's and the majority of them had just gotten up and gone.  She tapped me on the shoulder, and as I turned to respond, she asked me if we were finished, to which I said "I don't know."  This woman then launched into me, calling me aggressive, and that it was uncalled for--and at one point said that the problem was my "entire demeanor."  Inserted into this 30 second or so diatribe was a statement that she had previously been assaulted, which carried with it an implication that she associated my demeanor with a precursor to assault.  The three sentences I said to her were the previously mentioned "I don't know," a statement of "I said nothing of the sort" and "You misinterpreted my entire demeanor."   I spent the entire rest of my time in the jury room making sure I was nowhere near this woman.

So, I wonder what this was all about.  Some have mentioned that she could have been staging something to get out of jury duty...which may have actually been the case.  Some have mentioned that she had a bad previous incident and is now "damaged goods"--I have a hard time with this one...mainly because if she were actually in fear, she wouldn't have been the instigator.

My conclusion is that she is likely just a very toxic person.  This episode is an example of social manipulation, and it's a hallmark of people who suffer from what may be a severely underreported rate of psychopathic behavior in today's world.  Before you get all jacked up on the word "psychopath," I am not talking about the stuff that horror movies are made of--I am talking about the condition where a person is incapable of feeling empathy and normal human emotions, and how that drives their behavior to manipulate situations into whatever outcome they have determined they will have.  Doctors have various names for this

Here's a cat meme...this brought me joy today

including Narcissistic personality disorder and Borderline Personality disorder--someone in the mental health field would likely be able to correct me on this, but that misses the point.  The only visible attribute that I saw today was someone creating and manipulating a situation at the expense of others.  I spent years of my life with someone who did this, so I'm a little sensitive to the signs.

The simple fact of the matter is that all I know is that she behaved in a very toxic way--I did not see enough of how she behaved to even be able to form a lay-person's opinion of exactly how mentally ill she is.  What I can say is that if you find yourself in a similar position, the best thing you can do is to get away from it as quickly as possible while suffering the least damage as possible.  Do not engage the person.  I probably went too far by responding that she had misinterpreted my "entire demeanor." People who manipulate situations do so to get a rise out of anyone that they can--and this response was a pushback to the prod that she had given me.   Luckily for me, there was a natural end to this, because we were instructed that we could leave the area where the panel was called.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, and you cannot get away from the person, the best thing that you can do in a crowded room is to clearly state something like "Please stay away from me," loud enough so that others can hear you, but not so loud that you look like a crazy person yourself. Then walk away.

Oh--and I ran 30 minutes today, and swam for an hour and fifteen this morning, both of which left me feeling tired, since I'm still broken down from the Surf City half marathon on Sunday, but helped me process this incident and the generalized crap that always floats through my head.