What a week...

 (I know, I know: "Erica, it's only Monday")

Saturday was the second memorial service in two weeks. It was sad but somehow less sad to me than the first; I think the widow here is taking it a bit more in stride (this is her second marriage; her first husband died some 25 years ago). 

We served lunch to the family. We didn't have to cook much (other than desserts); the place where the deceased had worked for many years said they wanted to do the catering - they ordered barbecue from a local barbecue chain (brisket and chicken, and green beans, cole slaw, and potato salad). 

They said they ordered for 40 people - I guess the restaurant heard "40 teen boys" because MAN there was a lot of food. We fed the family, the five of six of us women working in the kitchen ate, we packed up a LOT and sent it home with the family.....and there was still more than half of the food left over. There was a potluck planned for the following day, so we all kind of looked at each other and went, "Well, let's just wrap this up and reheat it tomorrow, nothing will go to waste and then we won't need to do much cooking (one person did elect to bring mashed potatoes and a couple others brought a couple other additional side dishes, because more of the cole slaw and potato salad went than the meat). And there were desserts left over.

So we did that. And THEN sent leftovers home with a few people, and took leftovers to someone who hadn't been feeling well and stayed home. So I guess it was kind of a Loaves and Fishes moment, and it was really kind of funny about how much food there was. 

***

I filled the pulpit, too. The minister and his wife had a family thing, I guess, and I had agreed to this a long time ago. The lectionary scripture was The Prodigal Son and frankly that's easy to come up with a sermon over, there are a lot of different ways you can approach it from (I used the concept of forgiveness, which is really pretty central to the parable anyway). People said it was good so I guess I did an okay job, and anyway, I'm the only one willing to do this kind of thing, so....

***

Today was not so great. I learned in quick succession that (a) we have had what is called "a failed search" so I may be stuck teaching a high-level botany class next spring - one that's kind of at the edges of my expertise. and (b) we have something like 400 scholarship applications to go through through the clunky online interface (when I e-mailed my chair with a question, and noted "they're including a lot of people whose GPAs don't satisfy the requirements, so I'm not sure how good their sorting function is" she replied "I *hate* this system" which is rather direct for her, so I think she's annoyed by it too. Anyway, it will take me a couple hours to process all the information and rank people)

And also, well....Events of last evening brought up some unhappy childhood memories. I'm sure you saw it or heard it. I wasn't watching the Academy Awards (why would I? I haven't seen a single of the movies up for contention. I would like to see Encanto and The French Dispatch and maybe one or two more, but I don't have a lot of time, there are not really any nearby theaters, and I don't have a streaming service). But I saw on Twitter about The Big Event of the evening. At first I thought "oh this is a publicity stunt, Will Smith fake-slapped Chris Rock as a gag or a publicity stunt" and then I heard more of the story - apparently Rock made a joke at the expense of Jada Pinkett-Smith, and she was hurt by it, and that angered Will Smith, and.....well, he did what men often used to do.

No, what Will Smith did wasn't right. Everyone's a little wrong in this but I have to say my feelings are Chris Rock is *more* wrong because of what and how he did it. He made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith's hairstyle (or lack thereof; she has shaved her head). It's pretty well-known she is dealing with alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes you to lose your hair. I'm sure this is traumatic. I know I've fretted over normal age-and-stress related hair loss I've seen myself in the past couple years, and my hair is still pretty much "average thickness for a woman" (my hair used to be REALLY thick though, so much that I had to wash it before 5 pm if I was going to wash it in the evening, or it wouldn't dry before bed). So the "gag" was punching down, it was at the expense of someone's medical condition (and I suspect Rock knew that, it's not exactly a secret). 

And here's where the childhood memories came up for me: I dealt with a sort of this thing as a kid. I was funny-looking, I had a bad haircut for much of my tween years, I had braces, I cried easily, I "developed" fast, my parents had less money than the median for where we lived so I wore "cheap" clothes, I was a little egghead.....lots of things. And I got teased and bullied and had jokes made to my face or in my presence regularly. 

And it hurts. And when I was a kid, no one really came to my defense. No, I wouldn't want someone to slap one of the bullies....though I don't know what I would have wanted. For them not to do it, I guess. Or for me to have had more friends, or have someone publicly stand up and tell the other kids not to do it. But I don't remember anyone doing that. 

I also found myself wondering: how would I have turned out differently if I hadn't dealt with that? Would I have been more confident, less fearful of rejection, less of a people pleaser willing to tie herself into knots over the hope of being "liked"? Would I have been more outgoing, and thus, more successful? (in love, in work, in other things) - more willing to take risks and less involved with self-protection from the "hurt" of failing or being rejected? 

I still find when people are laughing with each other and I'm around - like in lab, like today - I wonder to myself, "oh no, did I just say something wrong or that's now got an Urban Dictionary meaning? Are they laughing at me?"

And yes, I know: when someone laughs at you and you're not being a butt deserving of the mockery, it tells you more about them than it does about you. But it still hurts. 

And I have had a couple instances of a (thankfully, now-former) admin saying some belittling things to me or in front of me - basically making me the butt of a joke in front of other people. It hurt a lot because I didn't understand why - this guy had all the power, I had none, I wasn't doing anything wrong. Did he do it to score "points" with the other people by making me look small? It's hard to let go even though, as I said, it seemed like a stupid point-scoring bit, several other people I know, when I told them, rolled their eyes and said "Oh *THAT GUY,* he always does that to people, he's just a jerk" and apparently at some point he did it to someone who actually didn't have to just laugh weakly and suck it up because he wound up retiring rather precipitously and *for reasons* as someone else told me. 

But I don't get it. I just want people to like me. And when someone makes me a butt of a joke, I assume they don't like me - or at least don't know me very well because people who know me and actually like me know that's a very painful thing for me and they don't want to cause me pain. 

But anyway: both of them are wrong, but I feel like the guy mouthing off was maybe a little...more....wrong. 

***

So anyway: gonna be a long week this week and I'm already a little low on cope. I do have to remember to write an exam for one of my classes this week, and also on Friday haul the brush I've managed to cut to the curb - got my name on the free pickup list for this month. And I can't really think of anything fun to look forward to in the near future. (The next big thing I think will be visiting my mom in May, but that's still a long way off)