Napoleon Bonaparte was a short French Emperor who compensated for his lack of height through war, conquest and a starvation for power. A Napoleon complex is when you are vertically challenged and you spend your life making up for it…or trying to (while onlookers attribute it to your deficiencies in height).
I've got a Napoleon in my life. His philosophies are as archaic, he sees himself to be just as grande and his starvation for superiority is sickening and a bit exhausting. He has an epic case of short-man complex and boy is he mad about it.
He is rarely challenged. He tears you down for his own elevation and he revels in proving himself to be the smartest, wisest, strongest, most handsome guy in the room. NO he is not my boyfriend (and thank God for it because I think we’d kill each other) but he does get under my skin in the same way a boyfriend might because he’s always got something to prove and I am often compelled to prove him wrong. Most of us know a guy or two like this too – they are not always small in stature but they are always small in our view of them. He’s a jockey on a pony – their isn’t even a prize-winning horse (you know where) to boast of – although he’d say differently.
If snow-white were a real person and her fairy-tale turned reality show she’d have renamed the seven dwarves. There’d be Stupid, Imbecile, Cheater, Liar, Napoleon, Prick, and D***head – and they wouldn’t be her friends. Friendship with these dwarves never works.
Before you write me off as a cynic – let me explain….
My friend was cheated on this week. I don’t know how tall her ex-boyfriend was but I do know he is a very small man.
If a mirror, mirror on the wall was sought for advice, I’m adamant it would have called out the aforementioned names (Stupid, Imbecile, Cheater, Liar, Napoleon, Prick, and D***head) at him and it would have been justified in doing so.
I’m not just saying this because she is my friend, but my friend IS snow-white: the fairest of them all. She is truly the sweetest person I’ve ever met. No one could ever say a bad thing about her. She is what every man dreams for himself in looks, health, education and heart but this man made her life a nightmare. It will always puzzle me how a man so small, could get a girl so great and then be the one to sabotage his own happiness with her. Sadly, it’s not the only story of heartbreak I’ll meet with – she’s not the only sweet girl to be broken and he’s neither the first nor the last of men to tear a woman’s heart apart.
This man was the guy that TLC would have sung about. He was a scrub in all sense of the word. “Always thinking about what he wants, he just sits on his broke ass.” So she launched herself into a protective, providing and almost maternal role that nursed him back to a testosterone fuelled future….without her. She knows it’s for the best but the days ahead will be filled with questions of why, if she was so great, he could not see it.
The problem with these little men is that in their weakness, they don’t search to rise above their status or give thanks when they are punching above their weight, they redefine masculinity through cheating, through abuse, through verbal taunts that are aimed to assert to those around them that they are still “men.” Wrong little boy….so very wrong.
These men are rarely challenged and are a little bit Veruca Salt without her ‘golden egg’ when stood up to. He didn’t even apologise when he got caught.
Thank you Napoleon for giving us a phrase to categorise these dummies but my God why is there no other solution than being slapped around before ditching them or being ditched by them?
I’m someone who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt so like my friend, need a house to fall on my head before I realise the errors in my judgement. I’m not calling it stupidity, or naivety, I’d much rather label it kindness and understanding.
Obviously these small fellows are uncomfortable with having their heads that much closer to their backsides. I’d be cranky about that too.
I needed this. Thanks.
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