I mentioned assertiveness in a couple of my previous pieces. I thought I’d revisit the topic one more time and briefly describe my journey from a shy, reticent kid to a acceptably assertive adult…with one glaring exception.
Assertiveness was not a quality in great supply when I was a kid. The system suppressed - often violently - any attempts to break the mold. Trying to do so on the political level would have been suicidal. But even in everyday life, the norm was obsequiousness to anyone in authority. This included supermarket clerks, train conductors and above all wait staff. You ate what was in front of you and never complained about lousy service or substandard food. Upon exiting the establishment, you could express your displeasure by inscribing the “Book of Complaints” which every business was required to have - but that was neither helpful not assertive. The “customer is king” notion would have been laughable. The store clerk was king and the customer was satisfied with whatever the clerk could - or wanted - to serve. If you came in for potatoes but all they had was rotten turnips, you bought the turnips. No amount of assertiveness would have helped you.
(As an aside to my readers in the Czech Republic: I am describing the 1950’s and the 1960’s. I realize things on the economic front improved substantially in the 80’s)
Overall, the individual was taught to grin and bear it, or just bear it without grinning. Neither the waiters, nor the government gave a damn. After the “fall of the wall” in Berlin and the Velvet Revolution in Prague, both in 1989, I started visiting the old stomping grounds. I noticed even as late as 2004 that old habits had persisted - certainly in folks over 40 or 50. One night, I was dining with a friend, a book editor who was helping my mother and I edit and publish my late father’s literary estate. She ordered onion soup which was served in a carved out loaf of rye bread. She specifically asked the surly waiter (there was no other kind) to serve her soup in a regular soup bowl. Surprise surprise, a few minutes later the waiter - who acted as if he had been greatly insulted, nose up, no eye contact - slammed a giant carved out loaf in front of my friend and disappeared. She sighed, lifted her spoon and was about to start eating. “Wait a minute,” I said, “you specifically told “his lordship” you wanted a bowl. Send it back!” “Oh no, that’s fine. I don’t really mind” I was getting a bit upset now. “Of course you mind. You asked for a bowl and the waiter who acts like a vexed princeling, brought you a loaf. I’ll call him and we’ll send it back” She had started eating her soup and said what was then a typical Czech thing: “That’s not how it works here” I let it go. I understood that is what happens to people who have no meaningful input into the running of their own lives for forty years.
I had been raised essentially the same way: making waves only led to trouble. But unlike my late dad’s editor, I was lucky enough to leave the culture of tortuous acquiescence behind at the age of 15 and escape to freedom. It took time but as years passed, I have learned to be a fairly assertive guy. I can stand up to pushy sales people, I know how to advocate for myself in doctors’ offices (health professionals are famous for wearing you down to agree to procedures you may not need) and for the most part I can stand my ground in debates - though I do retreat rapidly when encountering that special category of bonehead: the woke champagne socialist.
The one person with whom my assertiveness used to vanish the instant she walked into the room was my mother, may she rest in peace. There is no way you can win an argument with a Jewish mother and “standing your ground” just makes you look like you’re throwing a tantrum. “Here, let me contribute to the dinner,” my mother would say, slipping me a $100 note, as we were wrapping up a meal to celebrate her birthday. “Mom, you were our guest, this was for your birthday!” “Take the money, I know you can use it,” at this point she’s raising her voice. It was time to slip the cash into my pocket and shut up. Once her mind was made up, you could dance a czardas on your head, it wouldn’t help. “Assertiveness” didn’t come into it.
We often took her with us on road trips and regretted it every time. Everything had to run according to her script: where and what we ate, how long we stayed on a beach or in a park, and, of course, what we talked about while on the road. My will was a walnut and my mother was the nutcracker. She was a social tornado that sucked the oxygen out of any room. I can talk my doctor out of doing a colonoscopy but I couldn’t talk my mother out of buying me a couple of ill-fitting shirts. I can sit in a car dealership for three hours and haggle my ass off, ending up with a decent deal, but I couldn’t sit in my mother’s kitchen and refuse “just one more” helping of soup. May her memory be a blessing - she died at 96 after surviving Hitler, Stalin, Brezhnev and a slew of personal mishaps and tragedies. No amount of opposition made a dent in her will of steel.