Shut-up!

I've given myself 30 minutes to write this posting in order to force myself to stay on track and tell the facts as I see them. I could spend hours telling the story as other see it!

First of all, as I looked up words describing how I feel, starting with 'mortified' and going forward to chagrined, remorseful, contrite, embarrassed, penitent, regretful, sorry, somewhat foolish, quite displeased with myself, flustered, ruffled, irritated and upset - they all fit me at the moment.

But I do not feel ashamed, humiliated, depressed or (too) worried. That may be how the other person (people) feels, though.

I had my first 'fight' at school. Yeah, "Grandma" Mama Linda got into it and may or may not be in for some explaining to the school officials, but I don't think so.

At the start of this new term on June 1, we had several new students whom I attempted to 'be nice to' as is my nature to make people feel comfortable. It worked with a couple of new students, but there was a (should I say the word?) a 'click' who seemed happy enough to sit together and not particularly mingle with the rest of the class.

But, this group of three or four students are often rather noisy during class. They usually sit in the back and most don't mind or care that much.

Today, this group seemed more animated than usual. Sitting across from then, I saw that one of the girls was texting from behind her purse and whatever was being said caused some extra chatter, giggles and whispering that was really annoying me.

I gave them a couple 'looks', but it seemed that they got even more noisy. The instructor usually has a zero tolerance for any disruption at all, but he was running a video on the Internet and a power point that kept him busy.

Out of the blue, I said in a tone meant for the students across the isle, "You guys need to shut up!"

At once, the instructor came to our part of the room and said, "What's going on?"

"I just told them to shut up," was my honest and instantaneous reply.

But, now the entire class heard me and knew what was going on.

Keeping on point...The instructor turned to the noisy parties and said, "If you have a question, you can ask me. Do you get my point?"

After class he told two of the group (I thought there was more being noisy), to stay behind and talk to him.

The bad problem is that our next class is with this same instructor in the micro lab, and the lab was locked so everyone had to stand in the hall knowing full well what was going on - and giving me some ribbing for my comments.

During micro lab, I asked the instructor for a moment and he took me in the 'closet' (ha ha) with the door slightly open to watch the class while we discussed what happened.

It seems the guy student of the noisy party is really upset. (I thought it was the girl who was texting.) Anyway, I'm sure I've humiliated that student horribly.

The instructor suggests that if I 'think I should' maybe an apology would be appropriate, although he said he might had used worse language if he wasn't the instructor.

Of course, the rest of the class is somewhat divided on their opinion on what happened. Some say the group needed it. I believe most feel that I was very rude. "Very rude". (How many times have I used those words to describe how others are acting?)

Okay. Telling anyone to "shut-up" is rude. What I said was, 'You guys need to shut-up." I believe that is slightly different, but at the moment, who is counting peas in a pod.

When I see this group again, I will, of course, apologize. Perhaps now, a few of my classmates think a little less of me. But, what if some of my classmates think better of me for having the guts to speak up at all? It really doesn't matter. I feel terrible and wish I knew who these students are so I could tell them I was rude, and I'm sorry for my behavior.

In the meantime, I'll try not to fret and worry myself sick over it - as I have a tendency to do.

It's done. I'll try to fix it and move on.
They were rude. I was rude. Isn't that even in the universe of things?
No. Someone always gets hurt.
And we shouldn't hurt people on our journey of life.

My half-hour is up.

Please Take Care on the Journey,
~Linda


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