Pecan Wasted Catfish

Sometimes I just can’t see what is really there. Like when the Chef I am working with gave me the following note:

I was profoundly convinced it read: “Pecan Wasted Catfish.” Sure, it sounded weird but I figured there might be a fine dish where “wasted” does not mean “drunk” or “squandered.” I mean, if there can be a “Vegetable Medley” which doesn’t have anything to do with music, and a “Jerk Seasoned Snapper” that is anything but unlikable or rude, then there could be a “Wasted Catfish” that does not have anything to do with alcohol or squandering, right?

Wrong.

After I put it on the menu and made buffet signs for everyone to see, the Sous Chef came to me with a twinkle in his eye. In a matter of seconds he had me in stitches (and educated!) about the fact that there was no WASTED Catfish – neither fine nor ordinary. Chef’s note actually said: “Pecan Crusted Catfish.”

That I misread someone’s handwriting is one thing. But what about my “psychological lens” that can tend to misread people?

For example, let’s look at my husband and me:

We both come from broken homes. Albeit, before my parents got divorced, my childhood was quite happy. My husband, on the other hand, endured his early years with an alcoholic, violent father.

What followed was even more different:

– After high school, I went to university. He was drafted.

– I explored foreign countries walking, flying, or driving. He got to know other cultures docked at naval bases.

– I skinny-dipped in the Pacific while on vacation. He experienced that same ocean in uniform during two tours on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam.

– I participated in peace rallies and the women’s rights movement. He joined the Los Angeles Police Department.

Suffice to say, our viewpoints and attitudes are as different as our psychological makeups which were shaped in our childhood and thereafter. Guess which one of us walks our dog with a golf club and faces the entrance door when dining in a restaurant? 🤔 😉

But there is more!

Our different upbringings not only affect our seating and dog walking habits, they also define our outlook on life and how we experience our everyday world.

I remember discussing a hypothetical encounter in a group setting. The question was:

“What do you think is going on if you see a friend on the other side of the street and you wave at him but he is not waving back?”

Unsurprisingly, we had as many different explanations as we had people in our group: 

– He probably didn’t see me.

– He was lost in thought.

– I must have done something that offended him and now he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.

– Maybe he was with someone else and he didn’t want to introduce us to each other and so he deliberately looked the other way.

– He was in a hurry and did not want to risk having to brush me off in case I wanted to chat.

– He wasn’t sure it was me, so he didn’t want to embarrass himself by waving at a stranger.

And one person said:

– I don’t know what he did, much less why. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I did not see him wave. Everything else is just an assumption, a story I am making up around the wave.

It is very unsettling to admit to myself that things are not as they appear to me, that in fact, my perception is tainted by my interpretation – an interpretation in great part composed of my own, unique psychological lens and not by the absolute truth. In other words, more often than not, I assign all kinds of motives to somebody and then run with it – positive as well as negative.

Sugarcoating someone’s behavior can be just as erroneous and damaging as alleging negative reasons. I don’t want to put lipstick on a pig, nor do I wish to be like the man in Paul Watzlawick’s story about the hammer from his book The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious: 

The Story of the Hammer

A man wants to hang a picture. He has a nail, but no hammer. The neighbor has one and our man decides to ask to borrow it. But then a doubt occurs to him: “What if the neighbor won’t let me have it? Yesterday he barely nodded when I greeted him. Perhaps he was in a hurry. But perhaps he pretended to be in a hurry because he does not like me. And why would he not like me? I have always been nice to him; he obviously imagines something. If someone wanted to borrow one of my tools, I would of course give it to him. So why doesn’t he want to lend me his hammer? How can one refuse such a simple request? People like him really poison one’s life. He probably even imagines that I depend on him just because he has a hammer. I’ll give him a piece of my mind!” And so our man storms over to the neighbor’s apartment and rings the bell. The neighbor opens the door, but before he can even say, “Good morning,” our man shouts, “And you can keep your damned hammer, you oaf!”

That’s why I want to remind myself that wasted or crusted, a catfish is just a catfish. I just might not be able to see it because of all the nuttiness – sorry, pecans I’m tossing at it. 😁

Brigitte Schneider
aka Ms. Paulina Watzlawick

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