Apologies and Such

I've been neglecting my blog lately.  What can I say?  Life has kept me quite busy.  Though I've had several thoughts and quite a few rants come to mind, I couldn't quite find both the time AND energy to commit anything to the electronic page.

A couple of housekeeping notices, first:

(1). Congratulations to my brother and his wife, who were married last week in Michigan (this lady got to be in the wedding party!!)

(2). Congratulations also to A & G, whose wedding I am currently in the process of attending.  A and I have been friends for more than ten years- ever since I pretended to shoot up with my mechanical pencil during choir.  (this lady ALSO got to be in their wedding party!!)

Down to business, now!  I need to clear the air after my last post.  It was brought to my attention (by one of the ladies I referred to, hereafter known as the assigned name, Veronica) that some of my language was a bit unclear.  This lack of clarity was easily misconstrued, and was thus rather hurtful.  This was not at all my intention.

I sometimes forget that by posting things on this blog I display them to the possibility of the entire world indiscriminately.  This is not to say that I post things I don't want people to read, but rather that I often assume much about my audience.  I assume, for example, that the only people reading my blog are people who already know me quite well.  This has proven itself to be absolutely untrue.  As I found out this week, I cannot assume that my blog audience knows me at all, or that they understand what I mean between the lines.  

So, to clarify, when I said:

These are the popular, chic, pretty students. . . At least that's how they carry themselves.  I'm not in awe of them or disgusted by them- mostly I'm intrigued by them.  They must spend so much time in the morning putting all that makeup on.  And by *all that* I simply mean that they always look very coiffed, with makeup and outfits and shoes and hair. . . and they invited me to sit with them?

I did not mean this description in a derogatory way at all.  I was trying to establish the fact that I felt out of my element.  I did not mean "pretty" and therefore "stupid" or "pretty" and therefore "snobby".  I meant that I have spent a lot of time with quasi-hippies over much of my adult life, and the situation I found myself in was different from the very start.

I had the excellent fortune of being able to talk about "Cattiness" with Veronica.  She had seen a link to my blog on my facebook page and followed it out of curiosity.  Imagine her surprise (and hurt) when she found that there was a post about her at the top of the page.  To Veronica's immense credit, she responded by contacting me to talk about the entry and her feelings about it.  

I am so grateful that she did so.  It would have been so easy to absorb such hurt and let it play out passively over time.  And I might always have carried a little reservation about her, too.

Instead, we talked.

Thankfully, due to the communication age, we processed all of this over chat.  Though that might sound like a passive way to resolve conflict, I rather think it allowed both of us to be more direct and honest than a face to face conversation would have.  

I will admit that it was a difficult conversation for me to have, even so.  My first inclination was to make everything ok- do whatever I had to to make Veronica happy with me.  Instead, sweaty palms and all, I stuck my ground.  I listened to what she had to say with my listening ears.  I re-read the entry, and I saw how I had been hurtful.

This was such a growing experience for me.  I was able to take ownership for my words and feelings.  I explained the context of my words, and apologized for hurting her feelings, all while maintaining my original point: the conversation I had been drawn into had been uncomfortable and inappropriate.  

A magical thing happened: just as I had listened to Veronica, she listened to me!  She explained that her comments had come out of continued frustration with a fellow student's work ethic.  It hadn't occurred to Veronica that a table in the cafeteria filled with future colleagues (at least one of whom only just arrived from San Francisco) might not be the best place to vent such frustrations.  Veronica apologized.  I apologized.  I felt such relief.  In a funny way, my faith in humanity rose quite a bit. 

People like to rant about how inhuman the internet makes interactions, and often enough they have a valid point.  But after exchanges like this, I feel the need to extoll the possible virtues of the interweb.  Sure, it allows dis-empowering porn to multiply faster than bacteria on stinky tofu, AND it allows trolls to air the most disgusting fruit of their overactive ids to the entire internet-world, but it's not ALL bad- 

sometimes it can be downright revolutionary.