I always thought it’d be cool to be a psychology major, but I never really wanted to pursue a psych-related career, so I never went for it.
I think I’d be a pretty good psychologist. I like to psycho-analyze people (read: I like judging people). Getting paid to judge people and point out their flaws? Sign me up!
Well, I happen to have dissected a new breed of people and would like to share my new information with you as I’m sure you all have run into this kind of person before.
I call it: The Back-Handed Bitch, or BHB for short.
As we’ve all been outside our house, it’s easy to assume we’ve encountered some serious beeyotches in the universe, like the psycho lady cussing out the cashier at Walmart, or those scary-ghetto girls who always picked fights with people in high school if you looked at them the wrong way.
These people are just bitches. Nothing more, nothing less. In a way, you should be thankful for their bitchiness. They’re up-front about it–no gimmicks or niceties here. Just pure beeyatch. For more examples, see Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a high school campus, or Walmart during the holiday season.
But the BHB works in more mysterious ways. She’s covert in her bitchiness–mostly by using super-secret-bitch tactics to hide her true feelings and crazy-bitch sneak attacks. But she can’t out-smart me, since I got trained (undercover) by experience from a BHB myself.
See, in one of my classes last semester, I had this girl–we’ll call her Seagull Sally, since she takes on physical bird-like qualities.
EVERYONE was obsessed with Seagull Sally for some reason. Literally EV-ER-Y-ONE. It was obnoxious because she was only so-so, yet everyone was constantly praising her work and how smart and creative and artsy and genius she was and I was the odd man out in this public obsession. It’s how a parent must feel at a Justin Bieber themed birthday party, standing there, alone, as the crowd engulfs you in obsessive chants, conversations and borderline-cult-like worshipping.
Just plain weird.
Anyways, Seagull Sally–for all her birdliness and hipster clothing–deserved a chance. So I was nice to her, would compliment her work, and engage in conversation with her. Yet I quickly found she was just a BHB in disguise, but everyone else was too busy making shrines of her in their closets to notice.
(To protect the not-so-innocent, I won’t give exact incidents, but I will try my best to recreate them)
BHB would say things like, “You’re very colorful today” and gesture toward a colorful outfit I was wearing. Of course, I’d respond, “yeah, I sure love color!” or “I really love the color of this sweater” or something generic. And here’s where the BHB comes in. Seagull Sally would say, “yeah, I find that lots of bright colors kind of look garish and tacky.”
Um, wait. Did you just back-handedly call me tacky?
Or an incident similar to when we first met:
BHB Seagull Sally asked me what kinds of cupcakes I make, so I responded “all flavors, all kinds, starting with a box of cake mix.” To which she responded: “Oh, you use cake mix? I feel like the flavor is so artificial. See, I’m more into pastry, so I like making things along those lines.”
If there’s one thing I CAN’T STAND, it’s when people get all high and mighty about “pastry.” Just because I use cake mix does NOT mean I’m a sub-human baker or anything. Take your “pastry” and shove it up your beak, BHB!
Or, like one time, when we were having a mini-“bonding” moment until she whipped out her super-human BHB moves:
We were discussing our class homework assignment and I’d mentioned I’d had trouble with it since the prompt was kind of difficult AND I was struggling with homework assignments from my other hard classes. She tossed her hair and replied, “yeah, I just found it really easy because I’m used to writing like this, and I’m only taking this class so it was like, really simple. I was done in like an hour and then went shopping.”
Speaking of shopping:
BHB SS: “Did you get that top at Forever 21?”
ME: “Yeah I did.”
BHB SS: “I totally thought about getting that, but when I tried it on, it made me look really fat and disgusting. The waist was all awkward and it just looked so frumpy.”
….
Ugh! Need I say more?
The BHB is an awful bitch to encounter–she masks her bitchy ways in between weird, pseudo compliments so you’re not really sure what just happened. Unfortunately, all the people I liked in my class were too blinded by their weird infatuations with Seagull Sally to notice, so I’m the anomaly–and that’s okay. I have you–my cake mix-loving friends–to laugh with me about this insecure girl and bring awareness to your life before you encounter a BHB yourself.
Also, I made Snowball Cookies. They helped me get through my brutal days of being par-bitched out by Seagull Sally. And they served as a wonderful celebratory snack that Seagull Sally has flown away to other endeavors, possibly to BHB someone else and will never see me again.
The end.
If you’ve never had a snowball cookie, I’m sorry. They’re the most amazing cookie EVER. They’re light in texture, coated in powdered sugar, and are perfectly reminiscent of the holidays. You must bake these ASAP!
Snowball Cookies *adapted from The Great American Cookie Cookbook’s Snowball Cookies recipe
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (can substitute almond if desired)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 & 1/2 cups finely ground pecans (I bought chopped pecans and ground mine in my food processor with a little flour and sugar. Make sure you add the flour and/or sugar while grinding or else you’ll end up with pecan butter!)
1/4 tsp salt
About 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets with cooking spray, and blot excess spray with a paper towel. Set sheets aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and vanilla until blended, about 1 minute, or until creamy. Blend in the flour, ground pecans and salt until combined. Refrigerate (uncovered’s fine) for an hour.
3. Shape dough into 1″-sized balls with a teaspoon-sized cookie dough scoop or your hands. Place dough about 2″ apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for approx. 10-12 minutes, rotating pans halfway through baking time, or until cookies are set and edges are lightly browned. Cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Place your powdered sugar in a sifter and dust cookies with powdered sugar, or roll the cookies in a bowl of powdered sugar to coat. Store airtight.
Just be warned: every time I make these, I get sooo eager to eat them that I inhale it and of course, inhale a mouthful of powdered sugar. This creates an unpleasant, unattractive coughing fit. Just saying. Also, you’ll eat about 100 of these, so you should probably make a few batches for yourself, then one or two for the neighbors or something.
I hope you never have to encounter a BHB, but if you do–make her these cookies and watch her eat one. After she proclaims they’re “so good!” tell her they’re made with dog food so she’ll never get all “pastry” on you again.
Have a great weekend! More treats to come!
xo, Hayley
MJ, Nonstepmom says
Every so often you’ll run into the BHB, but you’re a clever girl – once you’ve identified one, you cna now work on not getting baited into a set up for her insults and then turning the tables. Like the bright colors being tacky…add “not everyone can pull it off, like those people with no imagination that wear black everyday”. And the pastry comment, I would have totally called her on it. “I wish I had the time,between catering & school…. so what is your favorite puff pastry? How many times do you sift the flour ?” Go get her!
The Domestic Rebel says
Lol… I totally wish I would have thought of that! I should just research really hard, complicated ways of doing “pastry-like” things so I have weird questions at the ready to fire off at people who get all “pastry” on me. So funny! You need to be my BHB-reponse wingwoman 🙂
Heather@DieteticSinners says
I recreated your story in my mind as scenes from Mean Girls. Seagull Sally reminds me Regina from that movie. And why do we always come up with good comebacks AFTER the conversation occurred when it’s too late to say anything back? In my case I thinks it because I was taught if I don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it at all. May you never encounter a BHB again;)
The Domestic Rebel says
You’re right–totally reminds me of Mean Girls!!