Category: It just got personal

All that randomness in such a small package!?

airplane etiquette…or lack of and a time to speak up

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At what point did it start being okay for people to just lay diagonally in their seat on a fully packed airplane (AKA diagonally all over the people sitting on either side of them)?  I’m sorry did I miss the memo or did their mothers completely FAIL in her duty to teach them how not to be a horrible, inconsiderate person.  Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but seriously a five hour flight with a teenage boy draped over you isn’t that much fun…unless I guess you’re a cougar…

But in my five hours of “I’m going to drop kick you in the face if you put your elbow in my stomach one more time” running through my head I realized that part of my nun chuck to your head feelings may be of my own doing.  Looking back over the last week I may or may not have been a little on edge. I might have road raged on the car that interpreted merge to oncoming traffic as drive faster to try to cut into the tiny spot that person has between themselves and the car ahead.  I may or may not have visualized running over the teenage boys in neon vests trying to tell me where I can and cannot park at the grocery store.  But really just because you’re wearing a bright yellow vest, it doesn’t mean you get to put even further delay in my path to get dinner and get home after working all day.  And who decided that Safeway checkout boys have the authority to direct traffic in the parking lot anyway!?  But the point being I may have had a little stress and frustration building up.

And as I sat quietly contemplating the ways in which I could dislocate said airplane neighbor’s arms and tie them together in a manner that would ensure they stay within the barriers of his own seat, I realized that this wasn’t the first time in life I hold myself back.  And no, I don’t mean hold myself from committing aggravated assault on an airplane, I mean holding myself back from just telling him, “Listen, I know that you’re in full on teenage mode where you think you just have to lay out over all three seats to obtain the perfect “cool lounge” position, but do you think you could keep yourself from manhandling me for the next 4 hours.”  Or something a little more polite, but the point being I didn’t SAY anything.  I nudged.  I “ahem’d”.  I coughed.  I gave the evil, Asian death stare.  But I did not just SAY to move the %$#& off.

Which I now realize happens a lot in life.  I’m so afraid of coming off as a bitch or being judged that I often just keep things inside and LET things happen, rather than MAKE things happen.  Promotion?  What?  No, please just keep having me do 3 different roles without a promotion, raise or even acknowledgement that I’m saving you from having to hire more people.  And in relationships?  I’m a total case of dodge the confrontation.  But where has that gotten me?  Happy and fulfilled?  Or wishing death by nun chuck on teenage boys?

So the goal is to start talking the talk.  And maybe, just maybe, I can stop hating the existence of all teenage boys.  But seriously STOP telling me I can’t drive out that way!!!  THERE IS AN ARROW THAT SAYS OTHERWISE!!!

“Well this has really been a waste of my time” and other genius of a 5 year old…

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On the last day of Kindergarten I turned from my Crayola masterpiece to my parents and told them, “Well this has really been a waste of my time.”

In all fairness my parents had indulged me the year before and let me drop out of preschool, but then for some reason had determined that Kindergarten made it legit.  That I had to completely finish Kindergarten before moving on to 1st grade, then 2nd and some day (far, far away in a far, far off land, or so it seemed to me at that time) college.  And while I love and respect my parents, 21 years later I have to say, “Says who!?”

Who made it mandatory that we lay our lives out in a line, starting with grade school, moving through high school, college and up the ladder right to the glass ceiling (if you’re still employing that line of thought)?  In real life people don’t live in lines.  I mean sure some of us planned on being cops and robbers as 5 yr. olds then ran the lines to become exactly those things (see parents of the latter, linear living ain’t so great now huh?).  But in most cases I would say a good percentage of us aren’t even using our undergrad degrees and have ran the professional gamut leaving us in a completely different career than we started with our first job.  It’s not because we’re all having identity crises (well…) or because we think it’s fun to spend thousands of dollars to become more well-rounded.  It’s because you can’t predict life.  You have to live it.

As a 5 yr. old I knew that secret which I then spent the next 21 years being brainwashed into forgetting.  I knew that sometimes I might have to leap, skip or dance in circles to get to where I’m going else spend a ridiculous amount of time walking the line.  I had sass and spunk and I spoke up.  I had opinions.  I made decisions.  I was a flipping little 5 yr. old version of the self I keep trying to become (well with hopefully a little better fashion sense…and boobs – albeit small, Asian cursed ones).  So here’s to a little circular living and getting back some of that 5 yr. old swagger.  And this time I’m not wasting my time.

[Photo Credit: luigi diamanti]