It's broken, and I can't fix it.

This is an essay I wrote about why I am leaving teaching.

So how'd it go?

I had a job interview yesterday with a company in the private sector, for what seems to be a fairly decent job. It was my first interview in the private sector - I have a ton of interview experience, but it has all been with principals and restaurant managers. I was a little nervous. Six years of teaching + no new clothes = I had better go shopping. I bought a beautiful tan jacket to go with a pair of chocolate brown pants, matching pumps and shell that I already had. I was going to be looking and feeling great!
I went to get ready for the interview, pulled on the beautiful chocolate-brown pants, and the zipper was ripped from top to bottom. My undies were peeking out from either side. Oh boy. I have another pair of brown pants, with ugly copper threads running through them. They are old and worn and 2 sizes too small, but I didn't know what else to do. I squeezed into them and prayed they would stretch out at least enough so that I could breathe.
I finished getting ready right on time. My hair was perfectly coifed, nails trimmed and neat, mascara expertly applied, and with the exception of the pants, I was feeling pretty good. I left the house with my purse, portfolio, keys, and diet coke. I got to the building 5 minutes early for my interview. Perfect. I grabbed my purse and portfolio and reached for my jacket. No jacket.

NO. JACKET.

I can't go in there wearing my spaghetti strap shell, especially since it is holding in a sizable bulge from my pants being too tight.
I panicked for a minute but got it under control. There was a Wal-Mart 3 minutes away. On the drive, I left a message for the interviewer telling him what happened, that I hoped to be back in ten minutes or so, and that I hoped he would still see me. I called my sister and sobbed for a minute and got some reassurance that the world wasn't going to end. I ran into the store, saw a dark brown button-down shirt, yanked it off the hanger and put it on, ripped off the price tag, and RAN to the cashier. She looked at me a little funny, but she rang me up quickly. I RAN back to the car (let's not forget it is 108 degrees outside) and drove back to the building. I was 15 minutes late, but then I couldn't find the suite. A kind gentleman gave me directions, and so all together I was 20 minutes late.
I burst in the door and announced myself. The receptionist gave me a tight, curly smile and said the interviewer had been out a few times to ask for me. Then, the interviewer came around the corner. I can't imagine what I looked like. I had cried off my make-up, and I had been running around in the heat for 20 minutes. I was wearing old, worn-out, too-tight pants and a Wal-mart shirt. Wow. Just.... wow.
The receptionist gave me some paperwork to fill out and offered to get me some cold water. I thanked her, took a fist-full of kleenex off the counter, and sat down to fill out the forms. Sweat was quite literally dripping onto my shirt, my glasses, and the application. I did the best I could to mop it up with the kleenex and tried to slow my breathing. I think the interviewer gave me a couple of extra minutes to compose myself before he called me into his office. I calmed down and finally cooled off, and he started the interview.
He had my resume in front of him and had clearly studied it. His questions were well-thought out and specific to my situation. I've never been good at putting on a show, and when someone asks me a question, I tend to just answer it. This aspect of my personality plus my ability to make sentences out of fancy words makes me a decent interviewee, I think. The guy asked me questions for a good 45 minutes. Some of them were hard questions that really made me think. I had answers for all of them, and he seemed satisfied, so that part was ok.
The next part of the interview was with a panel of 5 people. Two of them were in the position for which I am applying. Then there were some regional managers and I don't know who else. Two people were there in the room with me, and three people were on conference call. Thankfully, the conference room was cool enough to be somewhat chilly after sitting in there for a while. All five people had my resume and the list of questions they wanted to ask. All five had clearly studied the resume. It was shocking. That part of the interview took a full hour. It was absolutely grueling. By the end of the hour, the two people in the room with me had filled up their papers with little scribbles, which is always a good sign. When we were finished, one of them walked me to the lobby and said the main guy wanted to speak with me again.
I waited for a few minutes and the main guy came out to get me. We went back to his office and he asked a couple more questions about restrictions on the hours I work, how I felt about coming in early, etc. He said that he thought I did well and that the team liked me. He had some more candidates to "get through" (his words) and then all the candidates would be ranked, and based on the scores, some would be invited back for a second interview.
I think the interview went well enough to make up for the lateness, and one of my sisters said it was good that I showed up sweaty and panicked because it meant I really did have an emergency. I guess we'll see. Hopefully I will get a call next week and go in for a second interview, because I have a dynamite jacket to wear.

Can't you take a joke?

I grew up hearing those words often. I was a buck-toothed, pudgy, redheaded, overly-sensitive child in a large family. I felt then, as I feel now, that words can be very effectively used as weapons, and when that happens, they hurt. Freckle face, Bugs Bunny, fatso, shorty, carrot-top, etc. were some of the words flung at me on a regular basis at home and at school. I'm sure I did my fair share of the flinging, too, picking out things I thought were funny about people and using them as insults. As with most insults, it's not the words themselves, but the way in which they are used. I remember the words with such clarity because they hurt. Sometimes, they hurt enough to make me cry, and that's when I would hear, "Can't you take a joke?" or, "Geez! Stop being so sensitive!" Those words filled me with anger and shame that I could not articulate then, and I find difficult to articulate now. 

Recently, I have come into communication with a friend from my past. My WAY long ago past. As in, my ex-husband and I used to hang out with this person when we were married and my children were very young. He found me on Facebook (fucking facebook, I hate you but I love you) and sent me a friend request. He reminded me of how we knew each other, and we got caught up a little bit on where we are now. I guess I am quite a bit different now than I was then. Raising two kids, going through college, joining the professional workforce... those are all life-changing events that I have gone through in the past 15 years. He, however, has been through... none. 

We have been exchanging messages every few days, and little things he said at first were irritating to me. Things like, "Wow! I can't believe you got a degree!" Actually, I have two. "Wow! You got a Master's too? That is unbelievable! You should be very proud of yourself!" And on, and on.

Now, on the surface, these things seem benign. But they didn't FEEL benign. They felt condescending. I think if he had just said congratulations, or that's great, it would have been fine. The over-enthusiasm of his response bothered me. Had he held the opinion that I was too stupid to do anything besides give birth and change diapers? Why was he so shocked? Irritating. And the praise... like he was patting me on the head. Ew.

Then something a little bigger happened during a discussion we were having about basketball. He asked if I watched the WNBA as well as the NBA and I said yes, but of course not as often because they don't get much media coverage. Then I made a remark about how great it would be if there weren't men's teams and women's teams - just teams. Well, he just about wet his pants laughing at that. Then he realized I hadn't been joking. He proceeded to tell me that he could explain it to me but all I would do is get mad. I had only one question for him - "Does your reasoning have anything to do with the physical differences between the male and female bodies? Yes or no." He wouldn't answer. I ended that conversation and didn't answer the next few messages from him, hoping he would just go away. 

He didn't go away. The next time he messaged me, I was watching my new favorite show, Through the Wormhole and it was about the concept of time. I asked if he knew that the reason the prime meridian goes through Greenwich is because some dudes got together and decided that's where it should go. (Change of subject, right?) The next message he sent was a link to a website about Greenwich Mean Time. (He HAS to make sure he knows more about it than I do.) Then he says, and I quote: "BTW....check out the conference delegates. They were indeed a bunch of men. Thank goodness..........if the conference had been a bunch of women meetiing they would still be trying to make a decision on where to establich the prime meridian!" 

I eventually responded that he really is very sexist, and I didn't write again. I really hoped he would go away. 

He didn't. His next message talked about how fun it is to tease me, and I wasn't mad at him, was I? I thought about it for a while, and I should probably have just deleted him from my friends list and let that speak for itself, but instead I quoted his words back at him - the part about if the conference had been a bunch of women. I have to quote his reply directly, because really there is just no summarizing it: "You are mad about that? Seeiously? Come on now you know I said that jokingly to tease you. Hello.......yes lost and found? I'm looking for Melissa's sense of humor. It is a really great sense of humor, yes it is the A+ model, yes super deluxe that's right...... Oh you have it?! Super I'll be right over to pick it up for her. Thank you so much!" 

I replied one word: Wow. Then, a day or two later, when I still hadn't written:
"Come on didnt that make you smile even a little? Is it cold in here? Brrrrrrrrr  ? -:)"

I can practically hear his thoughts! "Oh, how cute, she is giving me the cold shoulder! Aww. Well, I'll just keep joking around until she gets the bug out of her ass."

So here is my attempt to articulate why the whole "can't you take a joke" thing makes me so angry. What someone is saying, when they come back at you with that phrase or something similar, is this:

"I should be able to point out something about you that is different from me, and I should be able to use that thing to insult you whenever I feel like it. I might be thinking I am funny, I might be angry at you, I might just be talking. The point is, it shouldn't matter what YOU think about it. I should be able to say those things about you, and you should be all right with it. If you aren't, then clearly the problem is yours. Now, not only are you different from me in the first way I pointed out, you are also not even courteous enough to think I am clever/right/superior!"

There is more, I just can't put it into words.

I know there's no sense in putting this all out there for HIM to read, because clearly I will just get more of the same. Actually, if I put that out there, the next thing he would do is probably start calling names like "feminazi" and "angry bitch," etc. "God, what is your PROBLEM?????" he would think. 

I think, it's just not worth the energy, and I'm going to delete him from my friends list. I just really don't like him anymore. I'm not sure I ever did.

"Uh, not so much"

Here's a direct quote from this fantastically misogynist article featuring pictures of celebrities (women) without make-up: "And some of them still look completely stunning without a stitch of makeup, and others ... uh, not so much ..."
How awesome is the self-named BeautyRiot Diva! How great that she wrote a blog entry showing famous women in their natural state, and proceeded to point out every line, pimple, spot, and other so-called imperfection on their faces. The secondary headline reads, "Madonna's greasy look." The photo shows Madonna wearing a baseball cap with hair that is clearly wet, not greasy, and the most logical assumption is that she just came from a workout at the gym, since THAT'S WHAT SHE DOES. In my world of middle-school teaching, this kind of thing is called bullying. Women have enough trouble in our patriarchal society without attacking each other in this manner. Most male celebrities wear make-up for their red carpet appearances and shows as well. They look just as different. Is there a male blogger somewhere posting pictures of men without their stage makeup and making snarky comments? Possibly. Is that type of thing featured on the Yahoo! home page? Certainly not. So, let's think of the general rule for deciding whether something is misogynist and/or sexist. Could you do the same thing with men without appearing ridiculous?
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