It hasn’t been a great week…or month, come to think of it.
Last night I was at the emergency room with my son, who had slammed his pinky in
his bedroom door after a particularly rough dinner time. My husband, Sean, has been sick for
a month, and I was sick for the past week with a cold. We’re run down. We need
respite, but it’s not gonna happen.
So today I arrive at the kiss & ride pick up my daughter after school, and I’m a little early. As I’m pondering last night’s visit to the E.R. and how much I want to minimize future visits to the E.R., I pull too far forward so that I’m partially blocking the crosswalk. It was that, or block the intersection, so that’s where I end up. I’m too stressed to put a lot of thought into it.
Next thing I know, the crossing guard, a woman about my age, is standing next to my car, gesturing sarcastically that I am, indeed, blocking “her crosswalk”. She is pretty pissed off. The car behind me has pulled all the way up, so I can’t back up even if I want to. I attempt a guilty, “sorry, I’m a doofus” gesture in the crossing guard’s direction, but she isn’t satisfied, and motions for me to roll down my window.
Now let me say here, I have quite a lot of back-sass in me in general, and at this point I feel that her attitude is way over the mark of appropriate. But I am not going to make a scene in the kiss & ride line at my kid’s school, and I actually do appreciate that the crossing guard takes her job very, VERY seriously. So I roll down my window, and I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pull up so far. I didn’t realize so many people would be coming through here before school let out.”
“Well you’re blocking my whole crosswalk. People have been doing it all week, and it’s RIDICULOUS,” she sputters.
“I think people are probably very frazzled,” I say.
Her exasperated expression softens. “WELL…it’s ok,” she mutters, and walks away.
What is it about a word of understanding that releases the flood gates? Have you ever been fighting back tears, until someone says “It’s ok…” and then it’s all over? Well that, plus the effort of putting on my big-girl pants and not telling the crossing guard she isn’t “the boss of me” pushed me over the edge. Reach for the sunglasses because here come the waterworks.
And then I’m thinking about The Feelings. The feelings without proper thoughts to support them, that people act on.
Another example:
A few weeks ago, I had been at stuck at home for two days for a 48-hour EEG. I had 21 electrodes glued to my head to monitor my brain waves. To get them removed, I had to go back to the neurologist’s office. Sean was driving me there through a construction zone, looking pretty pathetic, when we found we needed to merge into the left-turn lane to get to where we needed to go. The guy who needed to let us in didn’t want to, so Sean pulled some of his New York City driving moves and nosed our van into the lane.
We ended up very lightly bumping the car in front of us. The guy had to get out and make sure his car was ok, indignant looks were exchanged, etc, all while I sit there with electrodes sticking to my head, attached to a battery pack at my waist. I considered hopping out of the car looking like a mental science experiment to let them all stare and consider whether they had used their best manners that day. I didn’t.
So today I arrive at the kiss & ride pick up my daughter after school, and I’m a little early. As I’m pondering last night’s visit to the E.R. and how much I want to minimize future visits to the E.R., I pull too far forward so that I’m partially blocking the crosswalk. It was that, or block the intersection, so that’s where I end up. I’m too stressed to put a lot of thought into it.
Next thing I know, the crossing guard, a woman about my age, is standing next to my car, gesturing sarcastically that I am, indeed, blocking “her crosswalk”. She is pretty pissed off. The car behind me has pulled all the way up, so I can’t back up even if I want to. I attempt a guilty, “sorry, I’m a doofus” gesture in the crossing guard’s direction, but she isn’t satisfied, and motions for me to roll down my window.
Now let me say here, I have quite a lot of back-sass in me in general, and at this point I feel that her attitude is way over the mark of appropriate. But I am not going to make a scene in the kiss & ride line at my kid’s school, and I actually do appreciate that the crossing guard takes her job very, VERY seriously. So I roll down my window, and I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pull up so far. I didn’t realize so many people would be coming through here before school let out.”
“Well you’re blocking my whole crosswalk. People have been doing it all week, and it’s RIDICULOUS,” she sputters.
“I think people are probably very frazzled,” I say.
Her exasperated expression softens. “WELL…it’s ok,” she mutters, and walks away.
What is it about a word of understanding that releases the flood gates? Have you ever been fighting back tears, until someone says “It’s ok…” and then it’s all over? Well that, plus the effort of putting on my big-girl pants and not telling the crossing guard she isn’t “the boss of me” pushed me over the edge. Reach for the sunglasses because here come the waterworks.
And then I’m thinking about The Feelings. The feelings without proper thoughts to support them, that people act on.
Another example:
A few weeks ago, I had been at stuck at home for two days for a 48-hour EEG. I had 21 electrodes glued to my head to monitor my brain waves. To get them removed, I had to go back to the neurologist’s office. Sean was driving me there through a construction zone, looking pretty pathetic, when we found we needed to merge into the left-turn lane to get to where we needed to go. The guy who needed to let us in didn’t want to, so Sean pulled some of his New York City driving moves and nosed our van into the lane.
We ended up very lightly bumping the car in front of us. The guy had to get out and make sure his car was ok, indignant looks were exchanged, etc, all while I sit there with electrodes sticking to my head, attached to a battery pack at my waist. I considered hopping out of the car looking like a mental science experiment to let them all stare and consider whether they had used their best manners that day. I didn’t.
Now I’m not one of those people who believe that everything
is getting worse, that people are more selfish, that kids today are more rotten,
that humanity is going down the tubes. There’s lots of evidence to the
contrary, if you’re looking for it. And I am aware that I can be very
self-centered…after all, what’s more self-centered than a blog?
I do think, however, that we are all so busy and so stressed with our modern, over-scheduled lives, that we tend to think our own problems are the most profound and the most challenging, and we give ourselves license to hold our neighbor accountable while we find reasons to justify our own reactive, petty behavior. I wish that people would give me the benefit of the doubt when I slip up and lose my cool. I’ll try to do the same for them.
I do think, however, that we are all so busy and so stressed with our modern, over-scheduled lives, that we tend to think our own problems are the most profound and the most challenging, and we give ourselves license to hold our neighbor accountable while we find reasons to justify our own reactive, petty behavior. I wish that people would give me the benefit of the doubt when I slip up and lose my cool. I’ll try to do the same for them.
