Just when I’m thinking, yeah, here I am, 27 years old and competant, straight forward and confident. Nobody can step on me, YEAH…I get burned. I suppose it was inevitable.
Let’s step back into time, a bit. For starters, the reason why I’m crowing over my self-confidence is that I came from a place of the worst self-esteem as a kid. Ok, ok, so we all had it rough growing up, we all had pieces of duct tape thrown into our hair. And yeah, it was the 80s, the Cold War was on, Reagan was yoinking funds for education and sucking up our budget. We all suffered…
But, I was a painfully sensitive kid, you looked at me wrong and I took it personally. I did not do well at slumber parties, day camp, or Bluebirds. I tried, but I was much happier sleeping in my own bed, reading a book, and making tongue depresser forts in my own home away from the Popular Kids. Now I had a fiery temper, sure, but nobody saw it. I didn’t have the skills to hone a true passive agressive nature.
It took years to stand up for myself. I actually contribute my two years at Starbucks for giving me an iron backbone. Man, if you want to get walked all over by a corporation and its customers, work at a Starbucks in the middle of nowhere in a remote tourist town.
Even at my current job I find myself talking on the phone using my Firm Voice, demanding an estimated arrival time for a box of pointe shoes. Majority of my vendors are located on the east coast…anyone who’s spent substantial time in NY knows that folks there can be abrasive, abrupt, and offensive. You have to speak the East Coast Language right back at them or else you’ll never get what you want. You have to use firm, short, sentences and punctuated diction. (“I don’t care if there’s a long shoreman’s strike, I need my tap shoes now!”) As a manager I am constantly using my Firm Voice (“Sorry, our policy states that tights are like underwear: NO RETURNS). It’s all in a day’s work, I suppose.
Anyway, three mornings ago, the doorbell rings and there are four construction workers flanked by heavy machinery at my front door. A sewage pipe burst and they’re going to be DESTROYING the alleyway to fix it. I had no idea they were going to tear the street limb from limb with jackhammers and bulldozers. The alleyway is the only entrance to our garage and our front door. Their fair warning wasn’t enough to prepare me for the cement carnage outside my window. When I returned from work it was even worse: Huge gaping holes, orange cones everywhere, the horrified face of my cat peering out from the second story window. I ran up to a guy with a jackhammer (ouch, my ears were killing me) and I started right in: “What IS all this? How am I going to get into my garage? You mean I’m going to have to park on the STREET…When are you guys leaving tonight? I have four jobs, I’m always coming and going, and my car can’t be locked in by your machines…When are returning tommorrow morning? How long is all this going to take? That’s my husband’s truck parked over there, is he stuck?” (what is didn’t say was: I was going to try and take a nap, jackass, you’ve ruined my plans). Anyway, I suppose I was yelling, (it was a construction site after all), but it was really more like my Super Duper Firm Voice in tip-top action. I wanted control, dammit, they might have the machinery but I wanted them to know that this was my driveway they were chewing up and they were making my life hell. (Did I mention I’ve always been somewhat dramatic, too?)
I must say that a lot of my stress is in direct relation to The ‘L’ Project opening up on Friday…and my family flying in on that day, and all the other stress of Opening Night. There’s no room for construction work in my busy life. So after I chewed out the foreman and several lackeys, I found my way into my front door and cried. Boo hoo. Of course Josh came home and talked some sense into me. (“They’re just doing their job, they have a right to be here, this isn’t our property, you need to be a Big Girl, it could be worse, it could be YOU working out there in the rain, etc. etc…”) Later, when Josh went to move his truck, one of them said: “Hey man, your wife came out and yelled at us.”
Oh Lord, YELLED at them? They said that? It reminds me of when my Dad used to use his You’re-in-Big-Trouble Voice and I’d whine: “Dad, stop yelling at me.” And he would roar: “I’m not yelling, you want to hear YELLING? I’LL SHOW YOU YELLING!” That’s kind of how I felt when Josh told me the construction guys thought I yelled at them, only I was more embarressed than anything else. OK, so I’m an adult right now, and I don’t want to turn into one of those crazy, yelling, old ladies who’s agitated by everything. I probably should do something nice for those poor guys out there who are literally pounding the pavement…probably.