"I'm So Confused"

I once had a friend that would always say that. Sometimes it made sense that she would be confused, but other times...no. It was just baffling. For a while I just thought she was slow on the uptake or something. Like a person you have a conversation with but you can just tell the wheels are going a little slower for them than for you. You know?

Finally I realized what it was. Wether consciously or not, she said it in situations where she was being made to do something she didn't want to do. It was at a sushi restaurant, when they told her they'd have to charge her extra for substituting something, and she tried to argue that they never had before, but when told by our waitress that she had to charge extra, my friend was just like "I'm so confused. What?" That's when I saw the manipulative nature of the phrase. If someone's telling you something you don't want to accept, or telling you you have to do something you don't want to do, you can argue it for a while, and then just cop out and say that you're confused. Sometimes it works, and it causes the other person to do what you want them to do. Other times you just have to accept that the world doesn't work in your favor.

I don't really think my friend has accepted that yet.