It is about 11 days before the Christmas holiday, it is 24 degrees outside, and I am in the local shopping mall.  There are 3 obvious things wrong with this picture and about 50 more that are not so obvious.  All of which cause my unmistakable eye-roll to take over the structure of my face.        Here you can see that Tina Fey has a fantastic eye-roll.  You’ll see mine at the end of this piece and I like to think it’s worth waiting for.  So keep reading……

The holidays are a source of unimaginable stress for most of us.  The picture so often painted of holiday shoppers skipping gleefully down the Christmas decoration aisle at Walmart are completely false.  Anyone who has ventured out to shop for anything, even groceries, at this time of year knows quite well how horrible it can be.  People are impatient, crowds are dense, parking is a bitch.  I don’t know about you but I send a secret thank you to God at this time of year for creating Amazon.

Because of all this, it is fair to say that eye-rolling has become part of my daily December facial expression repertoire.  So much so that my family doesn’t even notice it anymore.  The other day I caught a glance of myself in a mirror as I walked through Nordstrom to get to the bathroom line.  It was astonishing, even to me.  If my eyes had gone any farther back into my head they would have disappeared into my sockets.

To be honest, although this time of year really brings out the extreme eye-roll in me it has always been one of my mainstays.  For me, the “eye-roll” is a little like the “resting bitch face” that I have written about before.       Ah yes, there it is….  (You can read about the beauty of a “resting bitch face” here).

Both of these expressions have been perfected by me over the many years of my unexceptional life and are used pretty much on a daily basis.  They are a unique source of protection for me.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that I consider these simple gifts to be some of my best superpowers.  Here’s how I mastered them and why.

Growing up it took me many years to understand that some people were just plain mean-spirited by nature.  As a little girl, I just felt hurt, sad and embarrassed when someone was mean to me or tried to make fun of me.  I certainly wasn’t alone.  There were always the quiet shy kids like me who made easy targets for those who were overbearing and needed to feel larger than life at the expense of others.  The classic bully.

At first, I didn’t fight back.   I tried to hide my disappointment or hurt when it happened to me.  And yes, sometimes I cried.  But usually, I would just hide under my hair and slink along back to my friends where I knew I was safe and loved.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that the best way to handle these people and the many other idiots, young and old, we are faced with every day is to ignore them and understand that whatever causes their action is their problem, not mine.  Most of the time anyway.  Admittedly, sometimes I’m the idiot.      But when it’s not me I had to figure out how to deal.

As I contemplated how to shake them off, I tried several tactics.  Wise-cracking back at them was never a good idea especially when the bully was bigger than you.  Visibly crying just gave them a success notch in their belt.  Running off to tell a teacher sometimes worked in the moment but these people always came back stronger.  Then one day I accidentally eye-rolled at a particularly obnoxious kid.  And lo and behold, he just stared at me, waiting for a bigger reaction as I walked away shrugging my shoulders.  That was when I realized that the eye-roll, with or without the shrug, shows your indifference to the person or the situation.  This is probably the best way to get to a bully since you are basically telling them that you could care less about them and whatever they happen to be doing or talking about.  At least that’s how it’s worked for me and what I tell my kids when they are facing our local idiots.

Without even trying, I had figured out a way to deal with these mean kids in a way that would not encourage them, would make them think I wasn’t worth the trouble and, at the same time, would somehow empower me.  And that is how my eye-roll was born and perfected.  These days I don’t have the opportunity to use it on bullies, but I sure do have the opportunity to show my exasperation with adult idiots, almost on a daily basis.  And this is what those lucky individuals who happen to be watching get to see……