My mode of adaptation is from living in very stimulating environments. My childhood environment was especially intense like that, with the war going on, so people didn’t really get into the normal apelike behavior of too much preening or sending irrelevant information around the gossip mill. The news we dealt with was always pretty serious.
But then with my father’s semi-emotional breakdown, which became more serious as time went on, it became advisable not to express any emotion at all, for he would misinterpret it inevitably and overreact with violence. Those were my teenage years, when I learned to be very stoical.
Now, I find I have always been at odds with the roles I am expected to play, especially with regard to gender, because I don’t do the grooming behavior of picking fleas out of the other apes’ fur. This is precisely what bores me and drives me crazy. I find it insane when people touch me or comment on what I’m wearing as a way to suggest I ought to make myself more comfortable, or make me hold an infant. I consider the people around me who make me do this to be out of their trees.
In all, I don’t identify with the community of apes, which doesn’t bother me at all, except when it is the requirement for getting on or getting ahead in work.
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