What's the most unfair situation you've ever been in?

In My Humble Opinion
22

I remember once being tricked into going to someone’s house, having them tell me that they wanted to talk to me, and make up-friendly like, since we never got along.

Of course, I get there and they start threatening to beat the shit out of me. I admit I did call this one girl a slut-yeah, I shouldn’t have. Of course, for years she had been making fun of me, pointing at me, laughing at me, getting the other people in the neighborhood against me. And then one day, in a big argument with my ex-friend who was now friends with her, I said, “Yeah, so? She’s a big slut-who cares!”
However, in one case, I was one of the perpetrators. This was a few years before the above happened. My and three of my friends, I’ll call them Mara, Jan, and Sally.

Sally had told us that her mother MIGHT be able to take us swimming. Mara misunderstood and thought she said she’d definitely be taking us. When we didn’t go, she called Sally a liar.

Sally tried to say that her mother never said at ALL that she would take us. I knew now Mara was telling the truth, but the thing is, Jan and Sally were the “cool” girls in the neighborhood, so I wanted to hang out with them and took their side. Mara left crying.

That night, Jan’s mom took us to the Tastee Freeze and while there, I said, “Wouldn’t it be a cool idea to write Mara a really nasty letter?”

And did we? Oh you bet we did! On the outside, we wrote “Friends!” And “We’re sorry!”

On the inside…

Oh horrible. It was so nasty. We wrote how she was a loser, a whore, that she screwed this one mental case in the neighborhood. The worst part was the poems like
“Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. You fucked your brother so fuck you.”

And we dropped it off in her mailbox.

And her parents read it. And she read it. And her LITTLE BROTHER read it. Her mother called all of our mothers, and we were all grounded.

Sally and Jan ditched me, so I lost three friends instead of just one.

I still regret it to this day.

23

Da’HELL???

Is this a JOKE???

:rolleyes:

24

Coldfire says:

Coldfire, have you been reading my mind?

I actually had a three page rant but I decided not to print it because I didn’t want my blood pressure to skyrocket. Suffice to say that I foolishly signed a bad performance appraisal because I was too shocked to think clearly. It wasn’t till a year afterwards, talking with my new supervisor, that I got a handle on what happened. My supervisor from hell, got his job through nepotism. His own father supervised his employees through threats and intimidation. Mick did the same thing. He was smart enough not to be overheard by anyone else, but he constantly put me down and belittled me.

It seems Mick was insecure because he didn’t have a college degree and I did. He was nudged out of his position and I’m slowly getting my confidence back. I’m getting glowing evaluations and cash awards, but I lost about 9 months of higher pay. What I should have done was refused to sign the bad evaluation and taken my case to my internal EEO board for adjudication. What I didn’t know at the time, was that Mick was rude to other department supervisors and got caught up in lies and generally being a jerk.

Life sucks, doesn’t it?

25

no, It isn"t a joke. What needs to be cleared up and I will happily try. I did actually readwhat I posted and didn’t realize how it looked. I’m not saying I was put in prison over reverse discrimination. What I’m saying is the circumstances surrounding the assault were blown out of proportion. I was made into some neo nazi elderly beating scum bag. I didn’t get a chance to speak to the media undre the advice of my attourney. The man and his friends were interviewed on the 6 o clock news, spewed their lies and made me out to be some monster that should be locked away for life.
The last sentence was dumb, but I mean it. I have heard it said plenty oftimes that white sown everything and know nothing of how it feels to be discriminated against. Well, afterthat ordeal I truly know the feeling. I know how it feels to be chased by blacks with bats and bottels wanting to bash your skull in.
My post was weak and left out many details. I didn’t realize how stupid it looked until I rereda it. i’m sorry. If you have any questions, i’ll happily give more detail…

26

Howsabout a series of unfair events starting in that special hell known as public school :slight_smile:

Learning how to write was for me an incredibly painful experience. I’m left handed, my first grade teacher was rather opposed to the idea of anyone using their left hand to write with. Fortunatly my parents already stepped in to make sure she wouldn’t try to force me to write with my right hand (thanks mom, dad!) but that didn’t do much to deter her from treating me like crap and refusing to assist me with my handwriting in any way.

Basically I had to learn to do the opposite of what she did on the board when demonstrating how to draw the letters of the alphabet, I often had problems working this out. I’d ask for help when we were doing our practice lessons and she’d usually just blow me off stating that she didn’t know how to help a left handed person write so I was on my own. Of course I got low marks on all of handwriting assignments. I also got screamed at a fair bit for my failings too. To this day my handwriting sucks.

That was my first exposure to an unfair world ruled arbitrarily by idiots who take petty delight in what small amount of power they have.

Next up is in Jr. High, 7th grade I think. My geography teacher is a bitter old (and fat) hag of a woman with temper issues. For reasons I still don’t understand on the first day of class she was explaining to us how the earth revolves on it’s axis and rotates around the sun. She repeated the above mistake a few times and I for some reason felt the need to point out that she had revolve and rotate mixed up. She argued with me about it for a bit until I pulled out my science book and proved her wrong. From this point forward she had a grudge against me.

In this class we had to write weekly essays as part of our homework and turn them in on Mondays or whatever. For me this meant getting called up in front the class to be screamed at (literally. other teachers complained about how loud she was) every Tuesday for my piss poor handwriting. I was frequently joined by another classmate, also a southpaw IIRC. Now at this time we already had a computer at home ('89 or '90 we had a Commodore 128!) and a pritner. I offered to turn in all my homework typed up, since I typed faster than I wrote and it would be more legible - all of my other teachers were fine with this. She refused the offer, giving some silly excuse I’ve since forgotten. The points I lost on those essays were the only thing that prevented me from getting straight A’s that semester. I aced everyone of her tests, yet somehow always managed to loose just enough points on those essays based on handwriting for my grade to never rise above an 89% To this day I believe she had a grudge against me for the whole rotate/revolve thing and used my handwriting as an excuse to keep me from getting an A. Bitch.

Alright fast foward to modern times, and my last tale of petty unfairness for the night.

So after I graduate college I go out and get a job as the Unix Sysadmin at a small ISP in Anchorage. For my first 6 months or so I’m very busy getting all their servers upgraded, patched and in general brought up to proper working order. When that’s done I really don’t have a full 8 hours of work to do so I start looking for other things to do.

About the time I was hired the company won contract to deal with the IT issues involved in a rennovation of the local federal building. Basically as the contruction crews came in the occupents had to move to temporary offices, and then back again when the work was done. Our job was to make sure they had proper network access in the temp offices and to break down and rebuild their PC’s and all related stuff. All of this work had to take place over the weekend. We’d go in on Friday night, break down computers, the movers would move 'em, we’d go back saturday and put 'em together. There was a lot of planning, a lot of meetings and a lot of headaches invovled in coordinating all of this.

My immediate supervisor was put in charge basically because he’d been at the company longest (3 years) and was a CCNA, so he could do the network work. Six months of trying to manage this project almost gave him a nervous breakdown, he’s a router guy not a manager, and had no training or experience with anything like this. I had orignally not been involved with this project at all, since I don’t do Cisco work and was too expensive to be used as grunt labor over the weekends. Finally about the time I’m looking for other things to do we come up short handed one weekend and I get pressed into service. Once I see what’s involved I know that I can do the job far better than my boss. This is close to what I went to college for, I have a BBA in Management, I’m trained for meetings, reports and BS paperwork.

He gratefully hands over control of the project to me. It was a mess. We had a horrible churn rate on part time staff (grunts on the weekends) we were turning in reports late, getting into stupid pissing contests with the other subcontractors on the job and (I found out later) the two PM’s in charge of the whole shebang were actually worried about my boss’s mental health! For good reason, he was working two weekends a month and tended to stay 3-4 hours after he dismissed the part timers. His management style was apparently save all managerial and troubleshooting (fixing problems noted by the grunts) work until the end of the day when he sent people home. That meant he was working 18 hour days two Saturdays a month.

Anyway I take over and immediatly start getting things properly organized. After about a month we’re no longer late on our reports, I’ve worked out the communications issues with the movers and other contractors. The two head PM’s love me and don’t fear for my health. I’m getting in and out on the weekends much faster than my boss ever did. Then I’m put in charge of all the billing issues on the project. The system I inherit is a nightmare and I spend a full week coming up with a better system to track invoices and costs (we had to bill to each agency we worked with, usually 2-5 different billing codes per weekend move) which reduced the time spent per week on invoices down from close to five to around one hour a week. When it comes time to replace some of the losers on the part time crew I get invited to sit in on the interview since I’ll be managing these people. That’s how I discovered the source of our churn problems.

My boss interviewed for these jobs by explaining the duties and the hours to the candidate and then asking them if they thought they could do it. If they said yes, they were hired. Arghhh! I redesign the interview process and suggest we ask actual questions. I’m put in charge of interviewing for this project. The first weekend I worked with the new staff I hired we finished in record time, and with the fewest problems reported on monday.

There’s more but I think everyone gets the point that I seriously reformed our internal processes for this project. The customers loved the work we were doing and everything was going well. One thing I’ve left out is that I had an assistant of sorts. One of my workers was pressed into service to do the hands on work every other weekend we had a move, so I wasn’t giving up two weekends in a row (and accumulating too much OT) Still I’m doing the bulk of the work and am the most intimately involved with the whole affair.

After the October the workload on the project fell off by more than half and would get slower as the end (august) approached. Some months had no moves at all. I knew this and assumed that my coworker would be reassigned so he could go back to doing Cisco work like he wanted. Nada. What happened was that they eliminated my position.

Everything was running smoothly and on autopilot. They didn’t feel they needed me around full time to work on the Unix servers or to run the project anymore because everything was working so well. One hour before I was given the bad news I had handed a stack of invoices to my boss worth just a hair under half my annual wages, for the work I’d done in October. It’d been a busy month and included my longest day, sixteen hours on a Saturday, yet worked on the project. To further increase the unfairness, they gave me no severence pay and didn’t buy out my vacation time. I was scheduled to take that vacation time ten days later.

Well those are my best (worst) stories for the most unfair things to happen to me. Oddly I’m a bit more bitter about the whole not making straight A’s thing than I am about the layoff thing.

27

{{{{{{{{{{{{{Ranchoth}}}}}}}}}}}: That’s how you do a hug!

And here’s one for {{{{{{{{{{{{{{C3}}}}}}}}}}}}. Sorry you lost your baby. But hey, be glad you don’t have a child who has scum like that for a dad!

blue_poop: You don’t need friends like that!

belladonna and SpaceCowboy: Some people just shouldn’t teach. No offense to teachers on this board: I just said some people. Some people, if you give them a little authority, they will just roll in it like pigs in slop. Also, SpaceCowboy, some teachers, and beyond that, school systems, want everyone to march in lockstep. It never occurs to them that something like left-handedness is to be accommodated, not fixed. Did she think if she yelled at you guys loudly and for long enough, that you would eventually become right-handed? :wally: (her, I mean, not you).

panache: I bet “Casey” just hated women, and couldn’t bear the thought of a girl (ew!) becoming certified. Sorry that happened to you.

Chimera: It’s possible that what your Director “couldn’t afford” was the lawsuit that Judy the Skank would have brought against the company. I know it’s too late now, but it’s a shame you didn’t file suit against them.

medstar: When I was fired from Denny’s, I refused to sign their statement. After reading what you and Coldfire posted, I’m very glad that I didn’t sign. Probably saved myself a lot of grief. (Not lording it over you!)

minor7: That’s awful. Bindrah: Jesus Christ, that’s awful! And I don’t think your post was stupid at all.

Cranky: I’m glad you and Other Woman were able to communicate afterwards. As much as you were hurting, and I can tell you were, I bet he ended up hurting her just as bad. A guy who will ditch you for someone else will end up ditching that someone else for another someone else.

Guin: I’m a little unclear on your second story.

Whose mom was going to take you swimming—Mara’s or Sally’s?

Re: your other story. Yes, I know what it’s like to be provoked beyond bearing, until you finally say one thing—and have everyone defend the supposedly “innocent” subject of your remark.

StGermain and Tristan: What I said to Coldfire. They must have been jealous. Take heart in the knowledge that you’re too mature and sure of yourselves to take insecurity out on others. Karma will come back to smack those people.

Maxxxie and kung fu lola: This post is long enough, so I’ll address yours as soon as I send this.

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  1. I think the most unfair situation I’ve ever been in was when I was born. The whole world was extremely strange. I was completely helpless. I couldn’t communicate. Sometimes it was very frightening. I’ve blocked out the whole thing.

  2. I remember one particular afternoon when I was a young child, I think about 7 years old. From time to time, my own mother went into a high volume rant and rage that typically went on for at least a half hour. We were the only two people in the house when she did this. Near the end of the rant, I realized she wasn’t talking about me, but about what was happening at work. This absolutely stunned me. It began to dawn on me that my mother was not always rational.

  3. Third grade; Mrs. Seligman refused to take my handwritten composition because of the penmanship (neatness of the handwriting). I was told to go home and re-write it more neatly. I took it home, did my best, and handed it in the next day. It was rejected again. I took it home and re-re-wrote it and handed it in the next day. Of course, it was rejected; I was simply unable to write more clearly. I guess my nervous system developed at a different rate than the other kids. I broke down completely. I went on strike. Refused to do any schoolwork. I got angry and stayed angry for a long long time. I think I’m not angry anymore.

  4. I was volunteering, doing office work for a community organization for poor Mexicans, with some left leaning members (and some left leaning leaders). For no apparent reason, they organized a harrassment committee that would require attendence at an after-work meeting at 6 or 7 PM. Everybody got a turn in front of the commitee. So I went, not completely understanding. Well, they lit into me like a pit bull on a steak. I was accused of the most outrageous things (thief, spy, slacker, liar, racist, elitist…). Lucky for me, they didn’t know what they were talking about, and were not organized very well. They apparently depended on people just folding before the massed onslaught. In my case, the massed onslaught, though intimidating at first, and very loud, became a Keystone Kops affair, as they started saying the stupidist things. One of the guys on the commitee was a finely muscled specimen with the look of a career criminal (he was carpenter) excellent for intimidation, but an idiot. Eventually I just started ignoring him when he fired questions at me. One of the guys had a much more civilized approach, but said the most horrible things, that I was a thief and things like that. I just started swearing at him with the most horrible and filthy invective I knew. Then I escalated, every time they started up with some new insulting lie, I’d talk over their voice, so that they were unable to speak. Except for the carpenter, I’d let him rant and say “Next!”. Eventually they gave up on me, I never did figure out what they were trying to accomplish. I pity the people who folded. This has been quite cathartic for me. I started out remembering being humiliated, but ended up remembering how very angry I got.

  5. I was taking an advanced assembler programming course at night. For the last (big) assignment, we had to write a program. When we got our papers back, the prof announced a surprise, there was to be special recognition of the person who had handed in the smallest program. A sweet relatively young woman in the class was brought up for group praise and respect. So, after the programs were handed back, I looked at mine to figure out how much larger mine was. Mine was smaller! I pointed out the discepancy to the prof. He wouldn’t acknowledge me. Finally he temporized – “She’s a girl, and she’s younger”. True, but mine was smaller! The prof wouldn’t budge. Nothing to complain about, my final grade was good, but boy was I upset!

  6. I was seeing a personal counselor about some problems I was having. At the end, she recommended I take a course in “Assertiveness” to polish off. So I signed up at a local school, responding to an ad in a community paper. First night, we are all sitting there as the first class begins, and one of the young women in the class gets up and starts to explain how she had thought “Assertiveness” training was for women, that by definition it really was “Assertiveness training for women”, and all the men had to leave. Well, we guys just sort of listened, figuring that in a course like this there are bound to be some odd ducks. The sign up had said nothing about any gender rules. They let us sign up, didn’t they? The teacher agreed with her! We all had to leave. And we did. I don’t know if the teacher of the course had planned to abuse us in this way as an object lesson to the rest of the class (the odd duck student would have been a shill), or they were just blind to what they were doing. That’s been my life lesson on Assertiveness. You can imagine what I think of feminism.

This is enough for now.

29

**

Sounds like me. I couldn’t afford to dress trendy, and considering that it was the '80s, I don’t regret the missed opportunity. I was also shy. And the main problem was, I just didn’t know how to play the game.

I said in my OP that “Brenda” accused me of “just trying to act different”. I firmly believe that I was born ten years too early: I would have fit right in in the '90s. I wasn’t afraid to try new things. Or to make mistakes. I mean, I did make some mistakes, but AFAIC, that just means that I learned earlier. :stuck_out_tongue:

**

That’s what was so frustrating about the Europe trip. I was fully aware at that age that you can’t force people to like you if they’re not so inclined. I wanted to accept it and move on, but I wasn’t allowed to do that. I won’t go into all that happened between the confrontation with Brenda and the Night of the Wrong Key, but suffice to say, Amy and her cabal made sure that I was out of the loop from having been chewed up and spat out, not by choice.

**

Gah! You can’t just decide that you’re going to conform and then do it! You have to have permission! If you start dressing like them, they’ll crowd around and demand to know who you think you are. If you act friendly and interested, they act like you’re harassing them. If teenagers decide they don’t want someone to fit, that person will never fit.

**

I just shouldn’t have gone on that trip at all. I got all the good stories out of the way before I told my mom about this. When I did, she said sadly, “I had thought you would get a chance to explore a world beyond the suburbs. I should have known that it wouldn’t be any different from the everyday school experience.”

What I’d really like to know is why Mrs. H. couldn’t have taken me seriously while school was still in. I don’t remember if I told her exactly what Amy said…but the main thing is, I complain against Amy, she believes Amy. Amy complains against me, she believes Amy. Mrs. H. couldn’t take the pre-emptive step of making sure we weren’t assigned to a room together so that I would feel safe, but she could arrange a separate room for me, halfway through the journey, to shut the other girls up. I hope it came out of her pocket.

I don’t know, but I think it might have a lot to do with their own insecurity. If you don’t want to be in, they take that as a rejection or an insult. You don’t look up to them, so you’re not taking them seriously, and by god, you are either going to worship them or fear them.

{{{{{{{{{lola}}}}}}}}}}

Yeah, that’s why I was alone in the room when Brenda came in: it was just what I was used to. I still don’t know what to make of that scene: “We don’t like you, so why don’t you want to hang out with us?”?

I was the target of a lot of bullying my junior year. The girl who threatened the “whuppin’” was just one of many (and one of the few who was dumb enough to threaten me in front of witnesses, so I could file a complaint against her). But as I said, it was the '80s, and “kids will be kids”. Meaning, there was little need to supervise high-school students, even if they exhibited the maturity of kindergartners. If what happened to me then happened today, I think the administration would take me a lot more seriously. It’s just a shame that 19 people had to die to get people to take bullying seriously as an issue.

I think that you were a victim of the herd mentality. If person A doesn’t like you, and person B is neutral, it’s easier for them to join person A than to give you a chance. Then person C notices that two people already don’t like you, and figures it’s justified. Then person D joins in, and pretty soon you’ve got people L, M and O forming a negative opinion before they’ve even met you.

I’ve heard of a psych experiment. Take 30 people and tell one of them “I love you.” Tell them to say it to someone else, who will then have to say it to another person, and continue the chain until everyone has had it said to them.

It will take a long time.

Now do the same thing with “I hate you.”

It will take two minutes, tops.

What I should have said to Mrs. H. was, “I don’t know why they don’t like me. I also don’t know why 6 million Jews were exterminated over here in the 1940s. Do you think they deserved that?”

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{Maxxxie}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

30

Radon:

2: Do you and I have the same mom?

4: I’m glad you didn’t let them intimidate you!

5: That’s such bull. He said smallest program, full stop. What did “girl and younger” have to do with programming?! If you had a disability, would he then have given you the pity recognition (which this seems to have been)?

6: That’s an even bigger load of bull. I can’t imagine the women learned much from that course. Men and women have to live in the same society: if you’re going to train women to be assertive, you can’t do so unless you figure men into the equation. And if the “odd duck” was not a shill, and the instructor just caved in to her, then s/he should not have been training people in assertiveness! :wally

(And since when do only women need “assertiveness training”?! Someone recommended you for it, didn’t they? :smack: )

31

There are two incidents I can think of right at the top of my head. Not huge incidents, but weird, nonetheless.

I was always known for my artwork in school. Carried a sketch pad everywhere, etc. etc. Didn’t always mean I got any attention from teachers (I was “invisible” to art teachers) but fellow students knew me as the “arty kid”.

I got in an art class in my (I think) Junior year with Mrs. Rose, who had a reputation of being “tough but good”. I thought this was great. I wanted someone who was challenging. I determined to do my best, and not be invisible. I came into the class with eager anticipation. Mrs. Rose would challenge me. I wanted that.

But Mrs. Rose had “issues”. She singled me out and treated me like a delinquent. I was a “good kid”, never caused anyone any trouble. Never a discipline problem. But she treated me like untalented scum. We’d have “group critques” in class (where she’d go through everyone’s work one-by-one during class, and say what she liked and disliked about it). She trashed my work, every time. Other students laughed—I think they enjoyed seeing the “arty kid” get knocked down. But the thing is, I knew I did good work. And besides, in these sorts of classes, effort counts more than actual results (or so they told us).

And I definitely put in the effort. A lot of effort. And I wasn’t a snotty “I-know-I’m-arty-and-brilliant” little shithead, I was just trying to get along and do her assignments her way, and be as well-behaved as I could. Which is saying a lot, because I was generally a good kid anyway. But nothing helped. Other kids around me put in a lot less effort, acted up more, and she looked the other way. Gave them good grades. I got Cs at best. I kept on trying harder, she got meaner.

In the middle of the semester, she was absent for a long time. I was transferred to a different art class, with a different teacher. All of a sudden, I get As! High praise from the teacher! Amazing! I learned later on (through the grapevine, don’t know how accurate it was) that Mrs. Rose had a brain tumor and that’s why she was away. It is sad that she got so sick, and of course I have to wonder if the brain tumor was turning her into a first class bitch.

If I had to take Mrs. Rose’s class all over again, I would have been well-behaved, and I would have coasted. Because obviously, all the effort to please her made no difference. And if she’d given me anything less than a C, I would have gone to a counselor or someone and showed them my work (which, most assuredly would have been adequate) and asked to have something done. And to be transferred to another class.

The other “unfair” situation happened a while ago, when a bunch of friends and I were on a vacation to Florida together. Two sisters travelled together (all the way from L.A.) in the middle of summer in a car with no air conditioning. So they were half-crazy anyway. The other friend was the Passive Agressive Queen, and the stress of the vacation brought out the worst in her. I’d taken the Greyhound bus to Florida from the middle of the country (came from L.A. too, but had a stopover so I could rest) and I was also half-insane. (Greyhound will do that to you.) During this vacation, we shared a hotel room. Which of course made things even worse.

All I remember is that the two heat-stroked sisters and the Passive Agressive Queen decided to gang up on me in a lot of ways. Not all the time (we didn’t have any knock-down drag-out cat fights) but a lot of petty stuff. (“She sat on my bed!!! Do you BELIEVE she did that?!?!”) But Passive-Agressive Queen could sit on anyone’s bed and that was OK. All sorts of shit. I remember calling Passive-Agressive Queen a few times on her antics, and all I got was eye-rolling and “See what abuse poor little me has to endure?” Argh. And it was all so petty. The two heat-stroked sisters sided with Passive-Agressive Queen, because they didn’t realize (yet) that she was a Passive-Agressive Queen. I’d known her longer, I’d already started to figure it out.

Fast-foward several years. I was out of town (had moved to Hooterville) and the (not anymore) heat-stroked sisters have a big falling out with Passive-Agressive Queen. Turns out she showed her true colors to them, in a spectacular crash-and-burn kind of way. All ties are severed. It was really sad, actually, because when were weren’t so stressed out, we were a fun gang.

32

yosemitebabe: I totally hear you, on both counts.

(Didn’t want you to think I was being unfair to you, by acknowedging everyone’s post except yours!)

33

Rilchiam, kudos to you for keeping your head and not signing.

Rilchiam says:

I was just so shocked that I signed without thinking. Mick (not his real name, anyway) had me whipped. I was so ashamed and depressed I actually believed that I was stupid. Now, I’m running important processes and will get a large cash bonus. Isn’t it amazing how smart I got in just a year?

34

Sally’s mom. (Oh, and the ex-friend I was talking to about the “slut” was Jan. She always ditched me for this girl and her sister. Even though they treated her like dirt).

Oh, and Rilchiam? The nineties were no better. Trust me.

Things got better for me around 10th grade, but before then-MEOW!!!

Young pubescent girls are probably the most viscious, nasty, backstabbing creatures on the planet.

35

They are that.

But I still don’t get this:

On which of these points am I wrong?

  1. Sally says her mom might be able to take you guys swimming.

  2. Mara tells you and Jan that Sally’s mom will take you swimming.

  3. Sally’s mom doesn’t take you anywhere, because she never made a firm promise.

  4. You and Jan and Mara get angry at Sally and call her a liar.

  5. Mara is the one telling the truth. You mean Sally’s mom really did promise, and Sally is the one who let you guys down?

  6. Sally and Jan are the “cool girls”.

Then why did you side against Sally and with Mara? And why did Jan side against Sally?

  1. Mara leaves crying.

But I thought you, she and Jan were yelling at Sally? Was Mara upset because she’d been telling the truth as she saw it? But weren’t you and Jan backing Mara up? Or is Mara the one who escalated things by calling Sally a liar?

Look, I’m not trying to give you grief about this, but this is what I’m talking about. Flying off the handle over something so simple. Like not listening to someone when they’re trying to reassure you that they didn’t use your toothbrush, and they just made a misguided attempt at hospitality. (Amy also got fed up with me because I climbed over “her” bed—the hostel bed, which she didn’t own and didn’t have any of her stuff on—because suitcases blocked any other path to “my” bed. Much like Passive-Aggressive Queen in yosemitebabe’s story.

Life is short, that’s all. (Unlike this post!)

36

Another sports story:

I had respect for every coach I ever had…except one. He was my sophomore year basketball coach. For some reason, he thought I was a hot-dogger. I honestly think it was the shoes. I’ve always needed good arch and ankle support, so shoes were not cheap for me. Since my feet hadn’t grown since 7th grade or so, I figured I could save up to get a good pair of sneakers that I would use for basketball only and last the rest of my high school career. I worked a summer job until I had about $200 saved up to buy a good pair of Air Jordans (best shoes I ever owned).

My coach routinely went out of his way to make fun of my shoes. Apparently, he thought I was a spoiled brat and didn’t realized that those shoes were the first items I had ever really worked hard to buy. I was proud of them.

I never really had much of a complaint for how he used me in games…I was the six guy. That means I got plenty of playing time, but was not a starter. I relished the role simply because I knew there were situations where I was the guy who was needed to accomplish a certain task. In fact, I led the team in assists.

I did get to start one game, though. Our starting All-Conference point guard was out with the flu. I played the whole game…and I had the best game of my life. Scoring wasn’t really in my repertoire…I was in there because I knew how to play defense and I knew how to pass. However, my dad always taught me to play “smart” basketball; meaning that if the shot is open, take it.

I didn’t take the shot very often. In fact, every time I did take a shot, the coach reprimanded me (“you are not a shooter”).

We were getting killed about fourth quarter-time and I had done nothing really spectacular except a smattering of assists. We had earned a 12 point deficit with about a minute to go. In our conference, a 12 point deficit was usualy insurmountable even if it wasn’t in the fourth quarter.

Lo and behold, we got the ball back. The set play was a pass by me to the inside for a supposed easy shot. The pass wasn’t open, and I picked up my dribble. I had to make a split second decision…I shot from 3-point land. It went in.

I distinctly heard my coach cheer at that point…the first time I ever really heard him cheer for me. The cheer motivated me. I only had to move 2-3 steps to steal the ensuing inbound pass and sink another three. I was on fire…a feeling I’ve never felt before or since.

The sparse crowd had, by this time, gotten a little riley. The coach’s voice was drowned out by the 30 or so people in the stands who were cheering. I was further motivated…

This time, a teammate deflected the inbound pass into the corner…and I was the closest man to the ball. I picked it up and…swish…another three pointer. By sinking three consecutvie threes, I had eclipsed my two highest one-game-point-totals combined. After seeing his 12 point lead diminished to just 3 points in less than ten game seconds, the opponent’s coach called time out.

I was in euphoria. I was on fire. The high I felt was nothing compared to any drug man has ever tried. I wanted so bad to go back out there. I knew the ball was in our court (no pun intended). The other team had to view me as a shooting threat now, so I would get a double team. I love double teams…they always open a passing lane. I didn’t count on shooting the rest of the game…I had my fun. It was time for the rest of the team to do their work and for me to do what I was best at.

The coach had different ideas. I must admit I made a mistake when I didn’t listen to the roster of players going out on the floor. I was a bit miffed when the play didn’t include me. However, I still had no idea that I was not going to be out on the floor…not even a conception of how that could be possible.

I ran back out when the time out buzzer sounded. I didn’t realize we had six men on the court. No one else seemed to notice either…except the referee. We got called for a technical foul.

I actually started to cry at that point. I was so embarassed, I wanted to sink into my Air Jordans and disappear.

But the coach didn’t let it go like he should have. I was humiliated to the point where anger started to well inside my chest. He kept yelling and yelling…he didn’t even pay attention to the game. He even went so far as to say we had lost the game (with still about 40 seconds left and only a 3 point deficit) because of me. He said his pride was at stake.

Every frustration I ever had in high school welled up inside me at that point. I shot back at him. I can’t even remember what I said, but it earned me an expulsion from the team and a one-day in-school suspension penalty.

That reputation that episode gave me haunted me all the way through high school.

BTW…we lost the game. No one score a single point the rest of the way.

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{{{{{{{{{{{{{bjohn}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

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Fifth grade. Esther S. Jackson Elementary School. Roswell, Georgia. Circa 1982.

Spelling bee.

We had a substitute that day. She was guiding the class spelling bee, the winner of which would go on to the fifth grade spelling bee and later the school (4-7) competition.

It’s down to me and one other person, Spencer Somebodyorother (a really nice guy whom I liked a lot). It’s my turn. The substitute gives me my word. “Alley,” she says. I stand up.

“Alley. A-L-L-E-Y. Alley.”

“Wrong,” she says.

What? Not only am I dumbfounded because I know I’m right, I’m dismayed by the fists that shoot into the air in victory from people I hadn’t known disliked me (Jody R., I’m looking in your direction…).

“Could you use it in a sentence, please?” I ask.

She replies, “In World War Two, the Russians were our alleys.”

That’s right. I’m not making this up. She was teaching us, and was mispronouncing “ally.” I protested, tried to explain, etc., to no avail. I lost the spelling bee and Spencer won, because my substitute teacher–teacher!–was ignorant enough to pronounce “ally” as “alley.”

Bitter? Me? No, not a bit, why do you ask?

And yeah, it’s not nearly as bad as some of these stories; I’ve had a charmed life, I think. But that one still rankles.

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jackelope that is so weird. One of my stories is also about a spelling bee.

I have always been fairly good at spelling, but in third grade, I was extremely good at it, in comparison to others my age. We had in-class bees once a week, in preparation for a state spelling bee. I won, week after week, for months. It became a challenge for the teachers to find a word I couldn’t spell. As we got to the preliminary finals stage, my teacher gave me the word “catalog” and used it in a sentence thusly: “I looked at the Sears catalog.” Now, I looked at the Sears catalog ALL THE TIME - I was nine, and back then Sears was putting out those marvelous wish books every year, so I was intimately familiar with every page of it.

C-A-T-A-L-O-G

Nope. Teacher looks at me with pity and says “Try again, dear.”

C-A-T-A-L-O-G

Nope again. Now I am baffled. I have seen this word, a lot. I KNOW I am spelling it correctly. And I’m getting upset at this point, because I am very close to winning my school’s bee and going on to the district level.

The teacher tells me to sit down, I am out. I sit, disappointed and hurt, as the rest of the class LAUGHS at me (yeah, as if any of them had a chance… but that’s a whole 'nother story.) After class, I ask the teacher to spell the word for me.

C-A-T-A-L-O-G-U-E

I explain to the teacher that her usage of the word (the Sears catalog) is indeed spelled C-A-T-A-L-O-G. I further explain that her spelling of this word is a verb and it means “to sort.” She tells me that, while I am technically correct, I am still not going to be in the spelling bee, because it wouldn’t be fair to the other children, who saw me spell it incorrectly. Never mind the facts that no one else in the class could spell as well as I could, that I was acknowledged - even by my peers who didn’t like me - to be an excellent speller, that she, an adult, had had to WORK to find a word that a nine-year-old would be unable to spell (one that was NOT on the required list.)

A small incident, but utterly unfair and one I still get grumpy about. What annoyed me most was that I felt then, and still feel, like the teacher went out of her way to ensure that I would fail.

40

When I was no more than 5 years old, the neighbors had this toy which was a little plastic duckie that sat atop the lawn sprinkler. When the water current was running through it, the duckie spun around and sprayed the water out of its mouth. Or something like that.

One day it was discovered to be broken. I had been the last person seen near it. So of course I was accused of breaking it. But I had never touched it. I was innocent.

To be innocent and wrongly accused of a crime gave me the oddest feeling inside. It was a strangely good feeling, a private pleasure deep within me. To know that I was vindicated in fact, but I was the only one to know it when everybody else was wrong. This sort of situation recurred on several more occasions when I was a child. I never quite understood why I got this feeling.

When I was a teenager and once a group of the other teenagers I hung out with planned an all-day outing but left me out, and alone, I was thrown out of the house where I was staying as a guest that summer by the owners because they too had other plans so I had nowhere to go, I was miserable. I hated being excluded unfairly.

41

ah, the unjustness of the world.
when i was about 20, i got into a program for women and minorities for carpentry. having spent many happy days with my grandfather in his cabinet shop, i thought that this would be great.
it turns out that this is “form” carpentry, building concrete forms for commercial buildings. but i’m learning neat stuff, so i stay with it.
after 6 months of riding the bus for an hour each was to the tech. school, our class is apprenticed to local construction companies. i get a job on a large commercial job site as the “hoist operator”-running the cage elevator that is on the outside of the building to haul supplies. “a start” i think.
i make friends with the various groups (plumbers, electricians, etc.) and enjoy what i see. (never seen a parking deck poured? an awesome thing.) however, i am still going to school at night and want to progress to the real thing. there are “finish” carpenters on the job and while i know a female couldn’t cut it as a form carpenter (requires carrying full sheets of plywood at a time-the measurement and math i could do fine) i would love to get on with the finish guys. i complain to my teacher and he takes up for me and has a talk with the guy who heads up the women and minorities program (1/2 subsidised by uncle sam-they HAVE to have X% women and minorities by law) and this guy comes out on the job site and raises holy h*ll with me-what am i complaining about…i’ve got a good job here…and finally…because i run the elevator and carry the carpenters tools and equiptment on it i an technically a CARPENTERS HELPER. i was stunned. i quit going to school. and would you believe, two years TO THE DAY if my hire, i was let go. thats when the govenment subsidy (they paid half my salary, the construction company paid half) ended.
bitter, nah. learned something about people and construction. still have the t shirt someone gave me-“Southern Form-Fast Hard Erections”!