Welcome to my Friday’s Rants from the Soap Box in my Living Room. A small space in the week where I can have a chunter about things that have made me twitch with annoyance or made me question if the world has gone mad or not….
I also linked up with MummyBarrow for her Ranty Friday. You can find her blog and link up if you’d like to join in. A good rant can be therapeutic. Click on the link at the end to join in!
So, there is a Mum, of a child, in the class above Big Girl’s at school, who I have “known” since Big Girl was at nursery, her son is slightly older. She knows who I am, and we see each other almost every day at school, at least twice a day. She has NEVER said so much as a hello, or even acknowledged my presence, despite my being polite, saying hello, if I see her, or pass her when we are out and about. She got on our bus, today, on the way home. Big Girl pointed her and the children out, “look Mum, there’s x and y from school” and said hello. I politley said “Hi, how’s the school holiday going?” to her, and she literally looked me up and down, like I had a contagious disease, and totally blanked me. We had to then get off at the same bus stop, and walk part of the way to our house, along the same road, with our children, with her totally ignoring me, and me feeling like some sort of nasty insect, that had offended her in some way. She speaks English, she is from the UK, so it is not a language barrier, making her feel unable to communicate and making things awkward, and she always acknowledges and speaks to others. In fact, if there are a group of us, outside the gate, she will make a point of speaking to everyone, but me. I have NO idea what i have done or said, to offend her, we never really chatted properly, when our children were in the same nursery, but for the past 3 years, she has made me feel I have done something, that makes the concept of speaking to me, even just to say hello for her, so painful and unpleasant. I had to give myself a good shake, when I got home, and deal with a mild anxiety attack, at being snubbed, for no reason that I can work out. I assume something about me makes her feel very uncomfortable, but I am not sure what. I am 37 years old, I need to get over this, and let it go. I doubt that I will ever figure out what the problem is. I do feel she is a bit rude, though, to be honest. I will stop trying to be polite and say hello. Life is too short. I hate that someone feels this way about me, but, what can I do?
Thats my somewhat pity party like rant, for this week. Normal service will resume next week!
Click on the Linky below to join in with your own rants or read what others have to say!
Oh my word, what a horrible woman. I want to give you a big hug (and her a smack in the face tbh). I would find this situation really, really hard to deal with and I don’t blame you at all for having an anxiety attack, it would really mess with head. What you say is right though, forget her and don’t acknowledge her again – she is obviously a plonker xxxx
Just forget her. She is not worth the time of day or the air she breathes.
It’s not you with an issue, and it’s not just you that it happens to. A very small number of the general population (including the Mums at school) are badly mannered, OR socially ignorant… I cant work out from your description which case this is (and the two are not mutually exclusive). But either way, the problem is theirs & should be pitied somewhat, because it happened in front of the children. Which parent looked like the one with a problem on the bus/on the walk home? Which one was giving her children a terrible example of how to conduct themselves? Not you…. If somebody cant manage a small-talk conversation (under ANY circumstance) in front of their own kids, then that’s just very sad. I believe you should continue to say hello, to smile and to join her group conversations. If you don’t, you’re lowering yourself to the child-like level she’s inexplicably set. Raise the social-training bar for her kids, as she seemingly cant manage it.
What a shame.
I would ask her, politely “do we have a problem here?” and see what she says.
It sounds like she’s the one with the problem – if it was the children we’d say rise above it and go with someone who can be civil but still always be polite. However, we all have to function alongside people who aren’t as socially capable as us and showing your children that you can still be polite, honest and sociable is a really important skill for them to witness and learn from…even if she can’t do the same