I sometimes wonder where I was the day that attitude was handed out – if I know me (and I will admit that I feel like somewhat of an expert on that particular subject!), I was probably asleep. Other folks I encounter have it in spades while I tend to be an end of the line kind of person.
I went to a local high school to register my daughter for 9th grade. Somehow I have time warped to a universe where my first baby is entering high school. I sat through a nice set of presentations from various administration people, a skit in which dress code violations were the theme and the ‘get involved’ talk. Unfortunately, my baby is out-of-town and I attended in her stead. After the presentations were finished, they started releasing groups of freshman to go to the cafeteria to turn in the ever-present paperwork.
I waited until my letter was called and got up following a couple hundred other people. Actually, I was about 3 quarter of the way back, patiently standing in line waiting on my turn. Well, almost patiently – I did note how horribly the crowd was backed up for this process and proceeded to come up with a better plan (at least in theory!!). As I stood there, a large number of people slowly but surely pushed through the crowd moving their way to the front. I wasn’t alone in this observation – people around me were asking where those people were going. And it wasn’t our imagination – it wasn’t long until I was almost at the end of the line.
So I ended up asking myself – why are there certain people who have such confidence and attitude that they don’t feel that they belong at the end of a line waiting on their turn? Did they know something the rest of us didn’t know? Should the rest of us been pushing our way through as well? No matter – I did push forward to check things out and saw that all of us were funneling to one location – the cafeteria. Then I pushed my way back to my spot to finish waiting. The wait seemed much shorter once I knew what the end looked like. And once I got to the administrative people waiting to take my checks, I found that they were helpful and pretty doggone nice. I think I’m ready to start high school……..
I Was Just Saying 