Sticks and Stones

The first time I ever felt ashamed of who I was, or was aware that other people didn't "approve" of me, I was in the first grade. Before this day I was blissfully unaware that others were judging me. I don't even remember who started the snickering, but it spread rapidly through the huddled group of older boys standing in the hallway leading to my classroom. Until one of them pointed directly at me I hadn't realized that the laughter was at my expense. I will save you the gory details but just know that from that moment on I was painfully aware of every inch of my body and all of the reasons that chubby little girls should NOT wear elastic waisted, corduroy pants. The good news is the class picture was taken that day, so I will always have a little memento of exactly how I looked that day..... yippee...

The rest of elementary school, save several vivid memories (accidentally squirting my fifth grade teacher in the face with ketchup while stomping packets of the stuff on the playground, to name one) pretty much all blends together into one big awkward jumble. Middle school was no day at the beach, either. By the time I was in eighth grade the boys would tell me one of their friends liked me and wanted me to ask him out, specifically so the little jackass could tell me no, in front of all his buddies no less, all the while laughing as loudly as possible to drive home how insane I must be to think that he would EVER consider holding hands with someone like me. I would love to tell you I only fell for that once but I'd be lying. Of course, I get no satisfaction in the fact that the little schmuck was shipped off to military school the next year...... OK, maybe I do a little.

High School....... it's never easy. It doesn't matter if you were the quarterback, the class clown, the Prom Queen, or...I don't know....me (the short, chunky, drama geek), those four years tend to be quite a roller coaster. Add an insatiable need for approval and acceptance to normal teenage angst and you get a fairly miserable high school experience.

Having finally reached adulthood, I thought I had moved past much of the self-consciousness of my adolescence. It took a very long time, but I found I was finally able to walk past a group of teenagers without my stomach churning for fear of name calling. I had even begun to entertain the notion that, to some, I might even be considered pretty. For the very first time in my life I finally felt comfortable in my own skin. It's funny how little it can take to turn your opinion, of how far you think you have come, upside down.

A short while back I received an instant message from someone I had never met. There was no "hello", or any other greeting for that matter. Only a short, to the point description of just how undesirable I was in his eyes. At first I shrugged it off, chalking the whole thing up to him being an immature asshole (an opinion I still hold, by the way). But, the more I thought of it the more it bothered me. The more it bothered me, the more pissed I got at myself for letting him get to me in the first place. Shortly thereafter I decided not to dignify his stupidity with any more of my time, as I am sure he hadn't given his actions towards me a second thought. Try as I might, I wasn't able to follow through with that goal.

As I thought back I was blown away at just how much our actions affect others. Not only can the smallest thing you do or say to someone today stay with them for years(my fifth grade teacher says she can't see ketchup packets without wincing to this day), but it can also have an impact on the way that person then treats someone else. For visualizations sake, it's like dominoes. One tiny bump to the first tile sets off an incredible chain reaction. Whatever happened to piss off the guy that cut me off in traffic yesterday could have been set in motion by someone in Prague for all we know. It made it's way across the ocean, to him, then me and now you.

I guess the point to all of this is to say, you are not living if you are living for the betterment of no one but yourself. Everyone you meet is going to have something about them that gets on your nerves, that you don't like or that you downright detest. The trick is remembering that there are things about you that others find loathsome as well. Keeping that in mind makes it a little easier to smile and say it's not a problem when your server brings your dinner to you loaded with the onions that you asked to be removed in the first place. Who knows, just that one gracious gesture could save the servers job that had been threatened by just ONE more screw up, thus keeping him from throwing in the towel on living overseas and telling his girlfriend that he's moving home, causing her to go in to her job as a flight attendant quite upset and distracted which was the reason for her spilling an entire soda in a passengers lap, who was on his way to a job interview to which he was late for after having to mop soda from his crotch in an airport bathroom, causing him to drive like a maniac to try and make up time and subsequently nearly running me off the road.

My friends in Blogville, if you would grant me one favor I would ask it to be this - be kind, be very kind, be ridiculously kind. Teach your children to be kind (especially to chubby little girls wearing corduroy or dejected drama geeks). For granting me this, I will thank you in advance for making my drive home just a little nicer. :-)


Until next time.....
and as always - be kind,
me