What Now

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) After church yesterday, I was standing the in lobby talking to one of our deacons, when out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone looking at me.  I turned my head, but the man that I thought was looking my way wasn't looking at me after all.  I turned my head to talk to someone else and it happened again. I looked back and noticed that the same man was looking my way with an odd expression on his face, he seemed to be looking at me as if he...uh..."knew what I looked like without my shimmy," and when he saw me looking at him, he turned his head away.  I immediately got the wiggins.  I'm not so vain as to think he was checking me out, so my next idea was that something was wrong with my clothes, i.e. my fly was open or my shirt had fallen off, or I'd forgotten my shoes or something obvious to everyone but myself.  Seriously, folks, at this point, I'm lucky I haven't walked out of the house in nothing but a petticoat and a pair of wellington boots.  So I stood there, completely awkward but trying hard not to look awkward, which only amplified my awkwardness, and trying to figure out why this man was looking at me.  I mean, I don't know him very well, but I'm fairly certain he isn't a creeper or a perv and all I could do was wonder if there was something hanging out of my nose or was I wearing my underwear on the outside of my pants or something.

It only dawned on me after I got home that I was standing in front of the bulletin board.  My guess was that he was reading flyers posted behind or beside me from across the room.  Because of this, now I'm wondering if he thought I was surreptitiously staring at him across the room, because I kept looking at him while trying to figure out why he was looking at me. For all I know, he went home and told his family about how that one lady, you know...the one who sings sometimes and works in the kitchen, kept staring at him and how it was weirding him out.

I think from now on, every time I go somewhere public, I'm just going to wear a shirt saying "I have few social skills and am easily rendered self-conscious. Please don't look in my direction or I'll get awkward. Thank you for your compliance."

However, I will say this much:  If that was his "reading-a-flyer-from-across-the-room" expression, I wish it conveyed a little more "reading-a-flyer" and a little less "I-wonder-what-her-spleen-tastes-like."

2)  You know, I usually really appreciate the anonymity of the Internet.  It's nice to be able to interact with people from all over the world without your entire life being on display.  However, one thing I hate about it is that a great deal of people tend to think that because we don't know their names or faces, they can behave like complete jerks. 

I usually like to read the comment sections of web articles that I find interesting, but lately I've noticed that more and more often the comments can become downright nasty for seemingly no other reason than that the commenter wants to be hateful.  Are we as a society so repressed that it becomes necessary for us to viciously, verbally attack perfect strangers because they have different opinions or ideals than we do?  It isn't that I think people shouldn't be able to express their opinions, because...well, that wouldn't be fair either, but is it too much to ask that people show a little bit of respect for others, even when we really don't HAVE to? 

I know this sort of thing has gone on as long as the Internet has been around.  Honestly, I'm sure that I've probably typed a few things that came across as overly ugly if I wasn't thinking about how it sounded. But ever since I actually sat back and started really noticing the genuine contempt people show one another when they disagree on religion, grammar, sports, or...I dunno...anything really, I've begun to worry about how this affects our lives off of the internet.  Is that crazy?  I know that the forums online don't exactly represent the whole of society and that usually the squeakiest wheels are the loudest and most noticeable, but in an increasingly digital world, how long before the comfort some people feel about attacking perfect, faceless strangers spills over into their real lives?  I'm not talking about, you know, physically attacking someone necessarily, but it isn't a complete stretch of the imagination to think that someone who gets comfortable attacking another person's beliefs and ideals on such an impersonal level as the internet, could eventually let that happen in everyday life.

One of my high school teachers once gave us a quote by a man named Dwight Moody that says "Character is who we are in the dark" and that's what I think of when I read the kind of hateful things that people say online.  It doesn't get much darker than complete anonymity, does it?

Aaaaaaand if we all join hands and sang Kumbaya, the world would be a better place.  :)  Sorry, didn't mean to preach. 

Just...be nice. To everyone.  Even when you don't want to.

3) Speaking of high school...my 15 year reunion is coming up this Saturday!  I'm not sure how excited I am about it because there seems to be a great deal of disinterest by the majority of the members of our senior class.  It'll be great to see people again, to be sure, but I wonder how many people will actually be there? 

I was given the job of making a "memory table" for the reunion, which is going to consist of my yearbook, whatever mementos I can scrape together, and a big fold out foam board thing that I'll attach pictures to, but I know for a fact that I can't fill that thing.  I had to send a Facebook message out to beg other people to bring pictures to use because in the process of trying to think of what I could add, I realized that I had a less than typical experience.  I literally never knew I was missing anything until someone started one of those "You Know You Went To (Insert High School Name Here) If..." pages on Facebook.  I don't know what I was doing, but whatever it was, it wasn't what almost everyone else was doing!  I was never invited to any parties, I had no idea where the cool kids hung out, and I didn't date much, so I don't have many pictures that don't revolve around being in the band or FFA.   Don't worry, I'm not feeling sorry for myself about it, because I remember high school being just fine.  I wasn't popular, but I wasn't bullied.  Most people just thought I was weird, and I was OK with that, I guess!  I had friends, and I don't remember any real enemies.  I have always kind of been a flake about that sort of thing, though.  I wouldn't have realized someone didn't like me unless they told me to my face, which didn't happen, so there very well could have been a whole section of my class that wished I'd die in a wood chipper accident.  Who knows?  I'm not worried about it, though.  It was a long time ago.  Oh, well.  I just hope someone else brings pictures!

Oh, and as for that project board...   Oy, vey.  I went to Hobby Lobby to get some things to decorate it with, and I wandered into the scrap booking section to see if I could find some pre-made do-hickies that I could add to it.  I found music notes, sports stuff, and even a really cute cheerleader uniform thing in the correct colors.  Scrap book companies sell almost any kind of thing you could ever imagine, every theme, every sport, every hobby...whatever.  You can find something to fit your scrap booking needs.  I, of course, couldn't find the one thing I was looking for.  I needed something that would go along with our school mascot, but it is next to impossible to get my hands on anything appropriate because of my school's completely un-PC mascot, the Indian.  We weren't a specific tribe of Indian, or the Chiefs or the Braves...just The Indians.  I was boned.  Seriously, there were no feathers, no tee-pees, not even one Native American anything. In fact, the closest thing I could find was in the Thanksgiving section, and it was a package of those weird, foam, bug-eyed kid cut outs that  were not only ugly, but completely the wrong kind of thing.  I mean, I get that Indians aren't PC, but it isn't as if we were the "Fighting Gay-Jewish-Black-Crippled Guys" or something!  Of course, had we been that, it would have been easier to find themed stickers.  *shakes head*