Volunteer Idiot

So, like a dummy I volunteered for a school fundraiser. Fortunately, I volunteered for some of the more solitary things like making copies and stuffing envelopes but now I'm going to get 8 frillion fucking emails a week  until the end of November. Oh and I'm sure I'll come across even more of the kind of people that make me want to impale myself—that being the people that reply-all for every damn thing, the people that want to take credit for everything, the clique bitches that won't give you the time of day, AND my personal fave...the bossy Queen Bee types that just steamroll right over everyone.

Someone, please...KILL ME NOW.

The bossy one

You know how there are some women that are just so abrasive they almost seem like men? They're not warm at all. They're just bossy and domineering and they never say anything in a cooperative or  friendly way. It's not that they can't be nice people—they can—but it doesn't seem to come naturally to them. They're just not concerned with the niceties of a civilized society—it's them and THEIR agenda. Period.

I met one of those women a few nights ago. I forget what she does but she sends out a lot of tersely worded emails to the squads that raise my hackles and as it happens, our daughters are in scouts together and they have a couple classes together at school in addition to cheering together. It's taking everything I have to not go head to head with this woman.

I never get along with her personality type. I must give off some subtle rebellious signal that those types pick up on that says FUCK YOU! YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! because they always zero in on me and try to break me. I'm not exaggerating. It happens everywhere and it's happened my whole life. I just don't get along with those bossy Queen Bee types at all unless I completely subordinate myself to them and I have a really hard time doing that.

I told you...same players, same game. SIGH.

Going along to get along SUCKS

When we arrive at cheer practice, all the girls warm up together so you have really little girls warming up with the biggest 13 year olds I've ever seen. I don't really dig it because the big girls are, well, big girls.

Tonight we got there and they had their radio on, right there with their moms, and they were playing the nastiest, dirtiest rap music and I'm like HELLO? Little kids are sitting right here listening to this shit. And their moms are totally oblivious. Or maybe they're not and they just don't want to be uncool and tell their daughters it's not appropriate for the little ones (OR the big girls).

Honestly, I can relate to that because I sure as hell didn't say anything. But my daughter was already away from the bleachers with her squad so I felt less inclined to take any action. But would I anyway? I don't want to embarrass my daughter by calling out a big girl or another mom but WTF? Who just lets their 13 year old listen to that garbage? You can bet your ass if MY daughter turned that shit on, I'd be like NUH UH.

It really is like junior high all over again—I don't know any of these women and I don't want to start off on a bad note so I just sat there and did/said nothing. Who didn't feel like that a hundred times a week when they were kids? I hate it. It's not who I am to just put up with things I think are wrong and yet I don't feel comfortable speaking up about it. It's the worst feeling.

And so it begins

So cheer practice has started. Woohoo. The four night a week practice schedule makes me crazy but every night we show up at 5:45. This is my daughter's first year cheering with this organization. She cheered last year for the Y and that was okay because they don't take it too seriously but these people? They act like it's the fucking NFL. Well, I've seen these kids play and it's more like watching The Bad News Bears of football but God forbid you say such a thing out loud because if you're sitting next to a football mom, you'll get some serious stinkeye. Well, I'm saying it here... YOUR BOYS SUCK AT FOOTBALL.

Where a Cheer Mom Comes to Bitch

I'm not just a cheer mom. I'm also a scout mom and a homeroom mom and PTA mom and honestly, I can't stand it most of the time. If you thought any of these venues were free of the same bullshit politics you had to deal with in junior high, you'd be wrong, It's the same games with the same players, just in a different venue. What makes it worse is that now your kids are involved so telling some of these people to go fuck themselves is not even an option, which, for me, is frustrating on every conceivable level.

So, you ask, why do I do these things? That's a good question. I guess because I wanted to be an involved mom who knows what's going on in their kids lives. My mom, bless her heart, was clueless. We always missed everything and I was always three steps behind everyone else. I don't want to be like that and I don't want my kids to have to deal with that.

(Some of the names and details of our lives and real situations have been changed to protect the innocent but everything I write here is based in truth.)