Brooke Baldwin

It was Fall 1999, the West Village, New York. My friend Liza was having a party and my date and I arrived as the party was in full swing. She greeted me at the door with, “Holy shit, Taye Diggs is at my party.” You know, the actor from ‘Stella Got her Groove Back’? At least that was his biggest role back then.

That was my first party with a famous person and so I had to get a look at him.

My impression: very handsome, very fit, very short. Seriously. Not an inch over 5′4″ and that might be generous.  How do I know this? I’m 5′6″ without a slouch and when he walked right past me I had to look down a little bit to meet his eyes.

So I was surprised to see this bit of biography information on Mr. Diggs today. Seriously, I need an agent - I’ve always wanted to be 5′10″ too!

When I let this stuff percolate in my brain alongside some of the other things in there  like this, this, and this I start to think about perception.

What is perception? A simple definition from dictionary.com

immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment: an artist of rare perception. 

If Taye Diggs says that he’s 5′10″ and I say that he’s 5′4″ why does the difference exist? Let’s ignore the simple explanation that all actors want to seem taller than they are. Instead let’s turn to a more nuanced discussion of difference. Oh wait, nuance schmuance.

Maybe it is just a case of me being an unreliable witness, an issue being discussed at length by the judicial community.

But I’m confident in my ability to discern the difference of 6 inches in the height of a man. What then?

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The funniest thing happened to me at work long ago.

I got yelled at for being unprofessional.

So let’s look at that sentence. I got yelled at for being unprofessional.

According to my pal, dictionary.com,

The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs.

Let’s call him Pedro, the fella who did the yelling. Pedro didn’t seem to be that interested in hearing what I had to say, discovering if there was additional context, or (I’m guessing) in me breathing.  I think it even made him madder that I stayed calm.

Question: If that’s how he shared this kind of criticism, how was I supposed to take him seriously? Anyone?

Pedro told me, among other things, that I talk down to people. In my defense it’s generally not on purpose. I think I was feeling the backlash of what is called anti-intellectualism.

Then I was told to not use “those 10 dollar words”.

Which is kinda funny, because I grew up in a house where discovering new words, words that were more specific and descriptive, more accurate, was encouraged. Why would someone be so afraid of something they didn’t know but is easily learn-able? (Side-bar: is cogent really that fancy of a word?)

And then he called me arrogant. I didn’t really respond to him when he said that except in my head.  And it went something like this, “No, it’s not arrogant if I am actually able to do or backup what I say.”

But I figured that wouldn’t really help push him towards calm-landia.

Anyway, underneath all this criticism I actually don’t want people to feel dumb around me.  What kernels of complaint are valid and should be examined?

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