Please Communicate

On Wednesday everyone was happily piling into the big classroom we hold our sketch writing meetings at school. There's a bunch of us, and we get together joyfully--laughing, making cracks, bubbling. And suddenly a stern woman--probably my mother's age--stomped into the doorway and asked Sid--sitting at the front of the room--pointedly, "Are you even a real class? Do you even have this room reserved?" Yes, he answered. We have this room reserved. "Because I don't think you do. I don't think you do. People are trying to work here, and you're all very loud, and there is a lot of profanity." She was steaming at us, but to us, hyped up on creative promise, she appeared as a deflated balloon.

Sid tried to pull up the room reservation, but the system was down. The woman stood, actually rudely since...we did have a right to be in that room. Even if we hadn't reserved the room, which we had, people are allowed to be in a space, and if they are converging, it's pretty unloving to insert oneself abrasively. She hissed, "There have been lots of complaints!" I smoothed my shirt and said calmly, "Who has complained? You are the first person who has ever talked to us."

"People have complained. Lots of people have complained to me!" We couldn't show her the reservation, but, again, even if we hadn't had one, what could she say, "You're not allowed to be in this classroom that no one else is using right now"? She started stumbling in her anger, murmured to keep the noise and profanity down, and exited disdainfully.

She knew her actions were not appropriate, you could tell the way she backed down but didn't back down. She very clearly had simply been annoyed with us before and bottled it up until she couldn't take it anymore and exploded on a group unknowing young people.

Takeaways:
1. Going in angry usually makes you look like a fruit basket.
2. COMMUNICATE AT THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY. PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW!

I considered finding her office and apologizing--but I didn't because I suspected she would be understanding, but if she wasn't...I would have been extremely rude, which is a rarity for me, but definitely possible, and to be avoided. Here's why I would have been rude: our classroom is in the women and gender studies wing. The woman was most definitely a women/gender studies professor. Hence, she was probably so annoyed by some of the things she heard spilling out of our student sketch team pitch meetings, but she honestly has NO IDEA what really happens in those meetings. Because for every time someone screams an offensive slur in a script, we have a ten minute conversation about how the desperate single character at the Valentine's party should be a male so the sketch can be more progressive and less stereotypical. Lady, I would have yelled, I care so much about the stuff you care about it makes me sick!

So, I just left. But, Chelle did apologize. And, the woman was very understanding and apologetic herself. Also, we're moving rooms.


Baby chicks. State Fair 2011.

I did scream on campus this week. I yelled at a pro-life protester who stopped me on my way to work to tell me about how all fetus must live. I asked her if she was a vegetarian. Nope. I walked away. She stopped me. Bad move, girl. Bad move. Insert: 20 minute debate about the ethics of killing animals versus embryos. I believe everything I said was Right, but it definitely wasn't Good. She's not going to stop eating meat. She's still going to support over-population and starving children via her beliefs. Plus, I believe what I believe to encourage a sense of Love in this earth, and probs me literally pointing at her. yelling "HYPOCRITE!" with raised voice and hellfire eyes was not in accord with the whole promotion of Love thing. I'm working on it, you guys. I'm working on it.

In an interstellar burst
I am back to save the universe.