Like Getting Punked By "Desperate Housewives"

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Ashura: 10th Day (Islamic)

Beatle's Appearance Ed Sullivan Show Anniversary

President William Henry Harrison's Birthday (9th President) (and also the one who spent thirty days in office before dropping dead because he caught pneumonia while giving his 3-hour inauguration speech, if you're interested)

Extraterrestrial Culture Day (New Mexico)

 

Ah, there’s nothing like a burst of spirit-crushing cattiness to make a Utah girl feel right at home.

 

I was never much for the soap operatic webs of deceit and dislike that so fuel some other people’s lives, especially in the school years.  I am not very good at lying.  I have this deep-seated belief that if we all just have enough information to work with, we’ll all understand each other and everyone will get along and it’ll all be champagne and potato chips forever and ever.  This means that I’m not only a really lousy liar; I’m also an extremely bad secret-keeper.  I can keep certain things in confidence—certain very sacred things, and things that might be sensitive subjects.  But for the most part, and for most of the time, I have the graceful tact and subtlety of an avalanche.

 

This means that I avoid those turmoil-raisers and their groups like the plague.  I’m okay with drama queens—I can be one myself—as long as they’re honest about it, like my sister.  But the ones who like to spread rumors, smile sweetly whilst they rip you a new asshole in front of a crowd, backstab, and turn people into pawns for their little domination disputes I can do without, because they are unpleasant and—more importantly—too damn complicated.  I would not win at that game.  I do not understand people well enough.  I am quite good with individuals, but put them all together and I am not sure what will happen.  It’s the same way with chess.  I know a lot about the pieces and their individual roles, but put them together and I’m thoroughly at sea.  I don’t like to be at sea.  So I stay out of it.*

 

But every once in a while, I get dragged in.

 

And last night, with Boss Girl from my Group Project, was one of those times.

 

I guess it started on Tuesday in ASL class.  We were doing a crossword in which Teacher would do a sign, and then we would have to figure out which English synonym fit in the boxes.  I thought it was fun.  The rest of the class/mob, which I have concluded has a 3:1 ratio of senseless CLODS to people whose spinal columns are not held up by some sort of Indian rope trick, was making the general panic noises which the internet likes to spell as “OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!1!”  Things on paper scare the Mob.  The Mob fears that the paper will be graded, and then, I don’t know, it will unleash wasps or something.  The Mob does not learn from previous experience that even graded papers in this class are not scary, generally because one or more of them tends to yell out the answers.  But this time was scarier, because the Mob had to figure out specific words instead of just those in the ballpark vicinity of the meaning.

 

By this time I had become cynical about stuff like this, as you could probably tell.  My generalized grumpiness yesterday (it was really strong, for reasons I still can’t quite explain) and headache did not want an outbreak of stupidity to put up with.  I used to not believe the Mob could be this neurotic, but I now was learning to dread it.  So when Teacher said, “Now, this next one you have to pluralize,” and then did a verb, I could foresee all hell breaking loose.  She obviously meant ‘add an S,’ but my faith in the intelligence of this class had dropped to such a level that I figured they would not find any nouns that fit, panic, and burn down an embassy or something.

 

So I said, “You can’t really pluralize a verb.  That’s conjugating.”

 

“Well, you know,” said Teacher.

 

I should have left it at that.  But the Mob was still looking like a candle over a barrel of gunpowder.  So I said it again, just to make sure that they didn’t panic.  I did it playfully, half-joking, to put people at ease.**

 

And that, I figured, was that.  I didn’t even remember it afterward.

 

So last night, at the Sign’n’Dine, Boss Girl was there.  And she was pissed.

 

Boss Girl is one of those people who not only runs things, but makes sure you know she does.  She is an overachiever who must be better than you, and must make sure you know it.  I usually find these people obnoxious, but I leave them alone and figure that they have enough problems on their own without me adding to them.  If somebody has such a desperate need for me to acknowledge her superiority, I generally go along with them and then ignore them and let them get along with flapping their arms at somebody else.

 

Last night I couldn’t though, because the moment teacher left she addressed me directly, with seven people looking on.

 

Boss Girl: I need to talk to you.  There’s something you should know.

Amelia: Okay.

Boss Girl: Teacher has [big life problem].

Amelia: Oh, wow.  That sucks.

Boss Girl: So your arguing with her about pluralizing verbs … that is nothing compared to [big life problem].  I thought it probably bothered people when you did that.

(long, puzzled pause while Amelia tries to make sense of above statement.  She cannot)

Amelia: What?

Boss Girl: It bothered me.

Amelia: Oh.  I was kinda just being playful.   (aside) And I was worried somebody else would go nuts over it, so I was trying to head that off.  Probably I didn’t handle that well.

Boss Girl: Well, think about it.  Teacher has enough stress without you arguing with her.

Amelia: (aside) I wasn’t arguing.  I was just trying to fix it.  (to Boss Girl)  All right.  Sorry if I made you mad.  … What’s going on with [big life problem]?

(Boss Girl gives me look of disgust)

Boss Girl: (righteously) Well, she doesn’t talk about [big life problem] with just anybody.  So I don’t know how much I should say.

Amelia: (aside)  Then why did you tell me in the first place?!  (to Boss Girl)  I understand. (aside) I understand a whole lot, you loathsome insinuating twit.

 

And with that I stomped out, managing to get halfway back to the dorm before I started to do that pouty half-blubber thing that is the sound of Wounded Amelia.  It wasn’t so much Boss Girl.  Opinions like hers I can take and leave.  It wasn’t Teacher, who I think is not particularly concerned with my kidding—I am going to ask her today, and apologize if I did hurt her feelings.  It was that I really, really want to get involved in more ASL, and if I want to do so I’m going to have to work with this person who is not worth my time of day.  She does not like me, and that will make things unpleasant.  It’s disappointing.

 

So I felt like the world hated me, and threw a short tantrum and called Josh and then called Cody and wished I could call Mom, but Mom is in the hospital and stoned out of her mind on painkillers.***  So I bitched about it to Ally, who always manages to catch me in my really sour moods.  Poor Ally.

 

And then, as always happens, I started to analyze.

 

First of all, I can still find no connection between [big life problem], which I didn’t know about, and what I was doing.  The way in which Boss Girl told me off made it sound very much like I was in fact exacerbating [big life problem].  Which is patently ridiculous because of the nature of [big life problem].  And secondly, I was puzzled as to why I was told off for asking for a bit more on [big life problem], when in fact she brought it up.  After much analysis, I have translated said illogical statements into a rough idea of what she was trying to say.  I believe she was telling me that Teacher is hers, and my rapport with teacher means nothing because Teacher will tell her about having [big life problem] and will not tell me, so I’m not in Teacher’s confidence.  By trying to be friends with Teacher, (and from other messages, I gather that this also extends to trying to say I know a bit of ASL), I appear to be treading on thoroughly pissed-on territory.

 

And now that she’s warned me, I’m going to deliver to Boss Girl, in a very heartfelt fashion, one of the few signs that everyone knows, and I’m going to do the worst thing I possibly can to her after this rant is over.

 

I’m going to ignore her.

 

How will it end, you ask?  I do not know.  I hate this game.  I don’t wanna play anymore.

 

 

*This is one of the many reasons I didn’t have friends at age 11-16, because at that age that’s all being friends is.  And even after I started being sociable, it was only with extreme reluctance that I was ever dragged into the social meat grinder.  I can think of two instances offhand, both instigated by the same two Exciting Individuals who I learned quickly to tread carefully around.  There was the Locker Fiasco, and then the memorable time when I, without actually doing anything, was informed that I had ruined six people’s junior prom night.  I’m still not sure what happened in that latter.

 

**Because I’m so good at that.

 

***More on this later, if it escalates into something horrible, but for now it just sounds like one of those painful inconvenient abdominal things that happens from time to time.

Comments

[mile-high-death.livejournal.com]

::stunned silence::...ok first things first. I sent off to nasa to have their super computers try to figure out the cosmic jackassery* and utter confusion of that situation...They said it might take a while it needs a new kind of math to be invented. Second if a teacher cant handle being corrected then I have ruiened a few...no a lot of lives...OH GOD Dr. Kelleher I didnt mean it! Allegories do work for The stranger::sob::...anywho you need an inspirational quote of some sort to make you smile...It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?
Feel better
*its a word now!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Nothing like a happy and uplifting story about cephalopods to lift my spirits, especially when it comes from Death. Sorry I bitched to you about it yesterday. Some days I get like that.

I asked the teacher if she was angry with me for my comment in class. She replied, "What? Huh? Oh, I didn't mind."

And that ended that.

I always thought college was for shedding the stupid pettiness of childhood to enter into whole new higher echelons of stupid. But it appears to be the same ~ thus fueling my theory that, in the basic core of their being, nobody ever makes it past about two years old.

Ah, what children will teach you ...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

My beliefs about religious fanatics who get easily offended by things said aobut their God is generally that God wouldn't mind much more than your teache minded what you said, and Boss Girl was far more insulting than you were to imagine she'd have such a fragile ego.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

No, college is for seeing the petty backstabbing, manipulation, and schemeing that is Real Life in miniature, where you can learn to recognize it for what it is and figure out how to deal with it without, say, getting fired in the process.

People who think that a college education comes from attending classes are *sorely* mistaken.