wrong_ass_word epitome of incomprehensibility In class, Jen asked me too many questions too brightly. "Did you do badly on the quiz? No? Did you look up the words on this sheet? No-o? Why not? What's wrong?" It was too much. I'd managed not to cry earlier this morning - or rather, to cry only a little bit, quietly, in the bathroom. Now I put the palms of my hands to my desk as if pushing it away. The tears I couldn't push away. What I said to Jen made no sense: "Stop bothering me. Please. I didn't do anything." I hurried outside the room. In the hall, a few sobs escaped me. I saw that the door of the upstairs bathroom, the one with a single stall, was shut. Annoyed with myself, I pounded my feet down the stairs to where the bathroom was a spacious suite, door-full - a hall with coat racks before the chamber with the sink and three toilet stalls. I pull out some toilet paper, dab my eyes and blow my nose. As I get to the sink, Lindsey - LN of Woyzeck_and_company - comes in. She looks much calmer than before. Self-possessed. My thought: here to help me. Well, I listened to her when she was under a lot of stress. Unterstützen = support. It makes sense. But I don't want to be wimpy weepy Kirsten all the time. She asks, "You all right?" I'm 99% sure "sorry" is the first thing out of my mouth. "I didn't mean to cry." "You don't need to apologize. What's wrong?" I explain: I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before, I didn't bring my dictionary, I couldn't look up the words, I don't have data on my phone here, I couldn't focus, and Jen was nice but "Too positive, too hyper-something...too, too hyper. I mean for me. Right now." "No, I get it, that makes sense." I go to the sink. I'm not crying anymore. I try to smile. "When she started talking to me, I was distracted, looking at my quiz, trying to figure out my mistakes. So she asked if I'd done badly. I said, 'No, no, I got 95%, I'm just perpetually confused.'" Lindsey grins. "I really said that. I wasn't trying to be funny..." I go to the stall to get more toilet paper. Liar. Hadn't I been attempting humour? To ward off tears? "I mean, I didn't mean to be sarcastic or to brag. It was just what came out of my mouth." I blow my nose again, sigh. LN is leaning against the wall across from me, other side of the sink. "She thinks I'm weird. Everyone thinks I'm weird." "No one thinks you're weird," she soothes. Unlikely that *no* one does; besides, "weird" shouldn't be the issue. Weird is okay. I try to be more precise without contradicting her. "Well, I don't mind if she thinks I'm weird, but I don't want her to think I'm an asshole." I run the water, wash my hands. "I don't think she thinks that," says LN, and she seems to mean it. Then she explains that she'd gone to the other bathroom to blow her nose too, because she was still sniffly from the cold we had too weeks ago, but she also wanted to avoid sitting next to the person that was giving her trouble in the beginning, which is partly why the prof asked us to switch seats. I ask an indirect question to try to find out who. Then I decide that's cowardly and unfair. If she doesn't want to say, I shouldn't ask. I tell her that, apologetic, drawing a line in the air as if to cut myself off from possible prying. But as she says it was hard at the beginning of the course, having to deal with someone who treated her badly, I'm fiddling with my fingers. Not Thea. Please tell me it's not Thea. Thea was one of the people the prof probably talked to, because when she got excited she'd talk over others, but I can't believe she'd be purposefully mean to Lindsey. Don't tell me my two favourite people in this class hate each other, my thoughts run. I feel like I've been in similar situations too many times, and it always stresses me out. (Actually, TK might be my favourite because I know her the best, but for some reason I wasn't counting classmates who were also roommates.) Lindsey asks me if I'm okay to go. "Yes...yes..." Looking at my fingers. "What time is it?" Almost 10:30. We figure we'll just stay there until breaktime, so she can avoid working with the person who upset her before and I can calm down. Oh, and I have an answer for her question about what "geil" means in German slang. She's wondering why someone would call clothes horny. "It only means horny if you say 'ich bin geil'. That would be awkward to say just randomly. But if things are geil, they're cool. I saw a movie once that translated it as 'kickass'. Kickass shirt, this guy would say." Etc. And we heard noises of other people coming out. Lindsey had said she didn't want to gossip, but the wheels in the gossipy part of my head were still turning. I wanted to know what was going on. I didn't want to be clueless. She said someone who was sitting next to her; I tried to picture the past seating arrangement. TK, me, Thea...Lindsey? Wasn't there someone in between? Thea, Grace, Lindsey? Could it be Grace? Grace was cool, if sometimes grouchy-seeming. Fair that people weren't always peppy all the time. Wasn't peppiness what annoyed me about Jen and Owen sometimes? But peppiness wasn't bad either. Petra. Petra was right after Lindsey, right? I could maaaybe picture her being mean, but maybe that was bias on my part: she didn't seem to put that much effort into the class and I thought she could as least try. But maybe she did and hid that with bravado, upset that her dyslexia gave her problems. Honestly, any conflict in the class would make me sad because I don't dislike anyone there. Okay, Siwon annoyed me a couple of times, when he seemed (to me) to confuse critical thinking with negativity. But I wouldn't call my feeling about that "dislike." Of course, they don't have to get along just because I want them to. The world doesn't work like that, and the sooner I accept that, the sooner I can realize that the ass-word I that best fits my worry was "smartass," not "asshole." They won't think I'm an asshole just because they think I'm a smartass. But I'm some kind of ass. Smartbutperpetuallyconfusedass, I guess. 230530 ... e_o_i Also, I confuse "to" and "too" and "two" and put "I" where it doesn't belong. Wrong ass syntax. Wrong ass life. 230530 ... e_o_i (...she says dramatically. No, my actual ass is quite happy with its life. It just has to sit there, mostly. It's fine.) 230530 ... e_o_i It took me another day to get perspective on this. It made me think: I have to stop taking this stuff personally. Do I have control over other people arguing? No. Plus, it makes sense that the by-the-book overachiever and the rebel overachiever are going to clash sometimes. And it turns out the older one is also still 20. Not 23, even though the way she talks and the places she's been make her seem older. Of course, just because they're young doesn't mean they're not complex beings with a range of motivations, desires, and interests, so my "X overachiever vs. Y overachiever" bit is a gross oversimplification. But it's maybe a little bit true. Some personality types just clash, given the right or wrong circumstances. 230604 what's it to you? who go blather from