Tuesday, July 15, 2008

On grudges

I have a tendency to hold grudges for a long time. But only for certain people. Usually it's someone I know I'm never going to see ever again. This probably makes it easier for me to hold on to them. And 99% of my grudges are from when I was a little kid.

For example(s)

-When I was about 7 I accidentally knocked over a 3 or 4 year old girl. I was on a swing going very fast and she just ran in front of me before I could stop or slow down. Needless to say, I hit her pretty hard with my feet and she fell down crying. Of course I felt awful. Her mom yelled at me in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese so obviously I don't know what she yelled to me but I'm pretty sure it was in the ballpark area of," You stupid little girl, why did you kick my child!" She yelled at me so loud and angrily that I started crying. Looking back though, that woman should have been paying better attention to her child instead of blaming me, a 7 year old. They were walking right in front of me, they HAD to have seen me swinging since I was the only one on the damn swing. So yeah, I don't forgive that lady for yelling at me.

-I have a tablet that I used when I was in the first grade for spelling tests and grammar. My teacher, whose name I remember, Mrs. Nishii, marked one of my answers wrong that I know for sure is right. And it's not so much that she just made an innocent mistake, it's that she crossed out the entire answer with her red marker and did not give me a happy face stamp next to all the correct answers like she usually did and made me rewrite my sentence with the wrong answers circa Dan Quayle and the way he spelled "potatoe". So I'm still mad at you, Mrs. Nishii.

-Someone, and you know who you are, was "worried" about how bad my handwriting was. This same person, who I will not name, promised to give me 50dollars at the end of the 3rd grade school year if I kept a promise to hold my pencil differently. So long-story-short, basically I did change the way I held a pencil, now have even worse handwriting to this day, and I still never saw my 50 dollars. Yup, mad about that too.

-Oh yeah, same person who ripped me off on the 50 dollars, 3 years before had pretended to write me a check for a million dollars for my birthday when I was 5. I totally believed it for a few minutes only to be disappointed that, no, I was not actually a millionaire on my birthday. You'd think that would have taught me.

-And one more for the road. We had just moved from Hawaii to Florida into a new house and all of us were in new schools. It was understandably an adjustment for everyone. So my dad took the whole family to see a counselor. The counselor started with her speech about how all families have sore spots and we need to work together to communicate with love. I remember this very well. So she went around asking everyone what issue they would like to address and told us beforehand that we had to be respectful to whatever everyone's answer was. So when it came time for me, I said I was sick of being picked on all the time just because I was the youngest. She wanted me to be more specific and asked exactly how I was getting picked on, tell how it made me feel and explore what I , a effing 8 year old, could do to help my attitude about being the brunt of everyone's jokes. So I said I wanted everyone to stop laughing at my hair and calling me "afro-head," or"poodle girl," and that it hurt my feelings. Yes I was vain about my hair even then. I had just got a perm, a Christmas gift from my grandma and at times it was a little on the poofy side in the Florida humidity. So what happened after this came out of my mouth? After all the BS that woman fed us about respecting everyone's answers and communicating with love? LAUGHTER. The whole room, including, that bitch counselor. And she did not stick up for me nor remind everyone that I had stayed silent during everyone else's discussion. Utter laughter. OK I don't blame my family, that's why we were there. To learn. And she didn't do her job, she laughed at me with everyone else, thus encouraging the getting picked on and laughed at. Yeah, so she's forever in the I hate you club.



Want more? Oh I have more, I promise. But all this injustice has made me tired. Do you have any grudges? Tell me here, after all it is Tuesday.

7 comments:

SUEB0B said...

I am not even sure I want to get started. Grinding my teeth even now.

Unknown said...

I don't think there's enough comment space for my grudges. I like that you hold them, too, though! :)

Miss Awesome said...

1. Why the hell did you move anywhere from Hawaii?

2. I believe that it's the responsibility of the person walking near the swings to watch out since it's very hard for the person swinging to stop or avoid people.

3. I can't seem to get past this grudge that I'm holding against baby's daddy. I just cannot help but hating him. There's no one else in the world that I really bother holding a grudge against and I'd like it to stop but I really just can't.

LittlePea said...

Well 1. we had to because my dad was in the Navy. I could have stayed there all me life but Florida is ok with me too.

2. See! You get it.

3. Yeah, I think I would too if I were in your shoes.

Unknown said...

When I read this, I could not help wondering how many people I have pissed off over the years and how many fo them hate me for it. The woman who's child walked in front of you while you were swinging was most likely mad at herself for letting her child get hurt but she took out on you. We all do things that hurt or anger others and sometimes we don't even know it. That therapist was really out of line, though.

Maurey Pierce said...

The pencil-grip story is great.

You know what? I don't really have any grudges. I tend to get really, ragingly angry for about ten minutes, and then I get over it. I'm VERY hard on the person for that timeframe - then I let a big exhale and it's done.

BrightBoy said...

I try to let go of my grudges, but I'm not always successful.