Strip Poker

When it comes to emotion, people fall in line. One line is haphazard, disorderly, full of seemingly recalcitrant children who giggle behind palms and stick their leg out to make a person trip and fall. This category of emotional people, are out there. Saying it like it is. Speaking their heart out. No pun intended.

And then there is the slightly straight line. If not a straight line at least all angles, no soft curves. This line has an intensity that radiates for miles. But its music is quiet. An opera, a veritable symphony- in sign language. This emotional people feels. But quietly. Cares, but quietly. Wants, but believes in delayed gratification.

Which category feels more. How can that be a question. It is like asking which hurts more, the light of the sun or the light of the moon. Depending on how you are feeling, both cut to the quick.

All of us know both kinds. I know I do. I know a person who leaves you in no doubt that he cares. This is the grand gestures, calls at all hours, songs-that-remind-me-of-you/us kind. And I know a person, who will probably agree with me, when I tell him something emotional. And that will be his contribution, an assent to a statement. And when asked, he might answer, or alternately might ignore the question, till a further convenient time.

And this quiet feeler makes me, the recalcitrant child, feel like I am too out there. Makes me wish for discretion, not for the first time in my life, but more than I have normally wished it.

But I must say, while the first category believes in, to use a metaphor, a quick strip and then getting under the covers, the second group..oh they are masters at the slow strip tease. Revealing emotion like removing each garment bit by bit. A glove here, the hat there. Strip poker, with a poker face. And leaving you wondering.Overwhelmed.Breathless.

I cannot choose, I like both kinds.

No, I do have a kind I prefer.

But that’s another story.