things that make me tired

[mamajoan]

One of the things I noticed about the reunion this weekend was how many people seem to still be dwelling on the petty melodramas that happened in college. To be fair, much of this is probably related to the setting -- being back on campus, back among the people who were around back then, many of whom you haven't seen since. So it's probably not like most of these people are sitting around at home all the time thinking, "I still hate Person A for what s/he did/said to me five years ago! That Bitch! I hope I see him/her at the reunion so I can deliberately snub him/her!"

But still. It kind of irked me, and/or made me sad, to see the way so many people seemed incapable of talking about anything *new*. Maybe I'm mostly thinking of one person in particular, who not only had to make sure that I remembered her big blow-up with Person A (musical-theater stuff), but also made a point of telling me this whole story about how a freshman asked her one time why the musical-theater scene at Oberlin was the way it was, and she said, "just wait until Person A and I have graduated and then you guys can get things in order again." I just thought that was unbelievably arrogant. Not so much that she said this to the freshman -- hell, we all said stupid arrogant shit like that in college -- but that, six years later, she felt the need to tell me about it. You know?

Another friend spent a fair amount of time obsessing about his crush on Person B and the fact that seeing her again made all these feelings come back to him. I can sympathize, to an extent, because he had a thing for her and she never reciprocated and it was all sad and shit. Who hasn't been there? But I guess my point is that it made me realize how far I've come personally. I still harbor a lot of resentment about a lot of things that happened, but mostly I don't dwell on them and I just let them go. I mean, when I saw Person C, who *severely* screwed me over in regard to housing arrangements my first year (and there was some reverse-racism going on, long story), I didn't get all upset. It didn't bring back all those horrible feelings. I just thought, "oh look, there's Person C" and then dismissed it from my mind. Even with more recent things, like when Person D screwed me over even MORE severely over housing arrangements back in '99... I still get mad and sad about that, because we were such good friends (I thought) and her actions killed our friendship and that's sad. But the feelings are all muted, and overlaying it all is a sense of, "well, that happened, but it's in the past now."

And it sort of relates, in my mind, to jennyo's recent posts about what she calls "bitter old fic queens," which as I read it means people in the fanfic world who are always bitching about how much better the fandom world used to be and how the newbies don't understand/respect the old traditions and the older people in the fandom. I've been through that kind of thing far too many times, and it's a big part of why I'm not more heavily involved in fandom than I am. I mean, I write the occasional fic, I read a fair amount of fic, I chat with people here and in email and on IRC about the shows and the fic, but I'm not really deeply into it. It's just the constant rehashes of the same old arguments and the same old grievances, over and over. A lot of people say it pisses them off; jennyo seems to be fairly up-in-arms about it herself, although in a very entertaining and completely justified way. Me, I just find it makes me tired. Makes me want to shrug and say "dude, whatEVER" and go read some profic.

I guess I am a bitter old fic queen, but not exactly in the sense that jennyo means it. I'm bitter, I'm old, and I write fic. That's about it. *g*

Comments

Human nature

[jrosehale.livejournal.com]

The reunion setting really is ripe for the sorts of "digging up old shit" scenarios you're talking about. As I said in a comment to your other post, I went to my high school reunion (10 years), and there were a few people who still were pissed off about some school parking-lot fender bender or wanted to fight with the guy who stole their girlfriend, etc. Grosse Pointe Blank, the movie, captured this perfectly--especially the idea of people who fall into the old patterns without knowing or remembering why.

It'll get better with time. Older colleagues have explained to me that people are still hung up on shit at the 10-year (I would assume your college reunion was five-year?), but by the 20-year, they're just happy to still be alive and reasonably okay, so people are much cooler. I look forward to that one.

Re: Human nature

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure the reunion setting was much of it. I guess it was really just a vehicle for realizing some stuff about myself, more than anything else. (I LOVE Grosse Pointe Blank!!!)

And yeah, it was the five-year (actually six because Oberlin does this weird cluster thing, but...), and I did get a chance to talk to some folks who were there for their 20th, 25th, and 50th reunions too. It was pretty cool. They're all such interesting people.

Re: Human nature

[jrosehale.livejournal.com]

GPB is indeed one of the best movies ever. It came out the year before my reunion, and it totally prepped me for attending! It was indeed "like everyone swelled." Heh.

Glad you had such an interesting time. Not attending a reunion is almost always a mistake. Even if you have a crappy time, it's still a great chance to learn something about yourself (and how you've changed).

Blearg.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

I missed my reunion way back when I was in CA. Not entirely sure why; something to do with not wanting to fly unless absolutely necessary. Also wasn't much of a fan of going back there and running into all sorts of people again. Most people, yay, but a few, hell no. Not because I didn't like them (which I didn't, back in college, but later on didn't consider them one way or the other) but because I just didn't want to end up stuck in my old ruts again.

Same thing with high school reunions. I imagine myself reverting to the complete dork I was back then, degenerating from the half-dork I have become. And that would be unpleasant.

And now that I'm remembering you were not in my year, the musical chairs thing has a logical flaw in it which I cannot resolve, and hope you can fix for me. How exactly is it that you ended up in a double with tiggrrl? Earlier jll33 was punching holes in my story left and right and it's been bugging me all night. It all boils down to what the hell a freshman was doing rooming with a junior.

So now I have officially missed 3 reunions (2 high school, 1 college), and I don't regret any of those absences. :D Although it would have been nice to see old friends again...

Re: Blearg.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I missed my reunion way back when I was in CA.

I went to it for ya. :) I actually went to the five-year reunion for your cluster ('93-4-5) back in '99, as well as the five-year for my cluster ('96-7-8) this year. Both were fun although I actually think I enjoyed the previous one more, because there were more people there that I really liked and really wanted to see.

I imagine myself reverting to the complete dork I was back then

I think we all imagine that, but as for the stuff I was talking about in the original post, really the majority of people aren't like that. I think the vast majority of us are past all the petty crap; we've matured and realized that there's no point dwelling on it. There's just always that one person who can't let it go -- or, that one person who you REALLY can't stand and seeing them brings it all back.

Re: musical chairs, it went like this. Officially, it was me and tiggrrl in one double, you and Joe in another, and Jodi in a single. In reality it was you and tiggrrl in one double, Joe and Jodi in the other, and me in the single. As for how a junior and a freshman ended up roomies, that was by request; tiggrrl and I requested each other as roommates for the express purpose of setting up the whole scenario. We weren't placed together, if that's where you're confused....

Re: Blearg.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

What I guess I meant by reverting was that I'd probably end up sitting in the corner somewhere, talking to myself, trying very hard not to interact with people. Because that still happens. :)

As for the scenario, yeah, I got all that. But because you were a first year, you must have been assigned first semester to a first year roommate. Yes? So then how/why did you change that? And if you were in a different situation first semester, where the heck was tiggrrl supposedly living that semester? (Supposedly.)

The reason I ask is because this story gets almost as much mileage as the story about how my junior year my room flooded with bathroom sewage.

Re: Blearg.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Oh, that. Now that's one of the things from college that I *am* still bitter about. See, my class was apparently over-enrolled so they assigned some of us to program houses. I was assigned to Third World House, where it was more about cliqueyness than about actually being interested in discussing and working with third-world issues. They resented the hell out of me, some privileged (they thought) white chick intruding on their safe space, or whatever shit like that. (I even tried going through the formal application process to be in the house officially, figuring I could treat the whole thing as a learning experience, but they rejected me.)

So I had to run around trying to find another room, which struck me as ridiculous because HELLO, if there were another room available anywhere on campus, wouldn't they have placed me there? And the Residential Services office does *shit* to help you with this kind of thing; it's basically "you need to move out of the room we assigned you to within a month, sorry there aren't any other rooms available, now go find yourself a new room!" I mean, WTF?

Eventually I did find another room but it turned out that the girl living there was a smoker and it only took one night with her to realize that I wasn't going to be able to do that. I like being able to, you know, breathe. And stuff. So when the opportunity to do the whole switcheroo thing with you and tiggrrl and the others came along, I jumped on it like a starving woman on a crumb.

Re: Blearg.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

Wow! That makes the story 100x better! Thanks.

"with you and tiggrrl and the others" makes it sound like the first season of Gilligan's Island... except that we all got off.

THE ISLAND! Get your mind out of the gutter.

Wow. This might now be jumping the charts to compete with the sewage flood...

Nah. You can never beat floating shit and piss for funny stories, or Res Life's claim that this was an "act of God" because it involved water. I threw a stink (hee hee) and then they paid me $400 or something to replace all the stuff that had been beshitted. Of course, they couldn't replace all the Student Senate records that got water-, piss- and crap-logged.