Of friends, fools, and forgiveness...

While I am not one to actively sabotage myself in terms of social interactions, I have an infallible ability to not restrain myself when it counts the most. While I have been able to fake it at my workplaces, becoming a true sycophant with my less-than-savory types of customers, there are still some people that I do not understand. Several examples exist during my over ten years of working at the same place, and here are the ones that occurred just a while ago.

My first customer of which I had a problem with that day (not that I had a problem with him before, but chances are he will earn a mark if I have to deal with him again) came up to me and announced that he had not received his receipt after getting his purchase. As per any customer, I apologized, made up some witty, well-worded excuse I use with all my customers, and then proceeded to get him his receipt. What normally would have taken me about ten seconds to complete took over three minutes as the customer kept repeating that he had not received his receipt. As I was torn between what was more the atypical "Get off my lawn!" rant, I started to wonder if the customer has some type of echolalia (the need to repeat words or phrases heard), the bizarre interaction even started to bring the attention of the surrounding people going about their business. After he received the slip of paper, he continued to repeat the phrase until he actually got into his car and drove away.

Another customer had the problem was that, due to a rounding error in our machines, our gas weights round down when the dollar amount reaches a hundredth-cent on the external display, and the register, which is independent of the pumps, rounds up, thereby causing the order to be one cent more at an estimated one in over ten thousand transactions. As the customer was a cent off, I asked her if she had the spare penny.

Whether she had it or not, she argued with me over a glitch in our computer system for over thirty seconds before I had a chance to explain the rare occurrence with the customer. I did not have the ability to put in a word edge-wise. Regardless, I would have been more than willing at that point to give her the penny whether she had one or not just to get her away from me.

Then there is the normal stuff that I have to deal with:

• "Does your gas have ethanol in it?"
• "Your squeegees are out of water."
• "Do you sell (insert random cigarette brand X here)?"
• "What's the quickest way to the interstate?"
• "The machine didn't print a reciept."
• "Where's the closest (insert national bank name that doesn't exist in Wyoming)?"

And my all time favorite:

• "What's the quickest way out of here?"

And so on and so forth... I always get a chuckle out of the business types that always try to make it sound that their time is always more important than the person's time that is helping them accomplish the most mundane activities. It is almost as if I asked them to define irony and they responded "Isn't that one of the clubs you use in golf?"

Still, in the grand scheme of things, customers offer amusement once you cast them in the right light. Now dealing with people that hold that superiority complex over you and has the capability to screw you over is a whole other ball of wax.

For the record, this is not me.

For those of you whom are not familiar with what I am referring to, I once had a teacher who taught a few required classes that I needed to graduate from my degree. She was, as crude a description as this is, a Feminazi bitch that hated graphic design students. That being said, what has two thumbs, is male, is a graphic designer, and trying to pass her classes?

The last semester I took her class, towards midterms I was studying close to eight hours a day solely for her class. This would have been fine, had this not been a 2000-level class and I had not been working a part-time job and had two other 4000+ classes that semester.

This same 2000-level course had the most reading assignments (which involved almost $200 worth of books, excluding the main textbook) and the most extracurricular requirements, involving us to go to visiting artists that were fairly, what is the word I am looking for? Oh yeah, insignificant to the art world. Additionally, we did not even cover the entire textbook. Anything that was not European-based history, effectively cutting out the half of the book I was actually interested in reading.

Unfortunately, every time I typed Feminazi Zombie, I got my teacher's photo...

Ironically enough, I got B's on the midterms in the 4000+ classes that I probably spent about a grand total of ten hours studying for the couple weeks prior (combined), and an F for the midterm I had invested over (a rough calculation) 300 hours of actual invested study time.

And that was just during the semester. Once you include the time spent prior to the semester starting up, and the time prior that I got *shock and horrors* another F in the prior class (same class, different semester), I think it would be safe for me to assume that I had easily logged over a thousand hours of study time just for that one class (I actually think it was closer to 2,000) before I said "**** it! I'm taking this class online through a different teacher!"

Which I did, and which I received a 3.986 out of a 4.0 for the class grade, and that includes having to read the whole text book. I missed one question in the entire class that caused my grade to not be a perfect 4.0, and that was for a portion of the book that I was not as well-versed in since I had not covered it at least twice.

As such, finally passing that class was such a head-trip that I felt a sense of euphoria and nausea after checking my first trimester grade. Euphoria for the the perfect 4.0 I had received, and nausea for the thought that the grade was calculated in error. As such, I called the teacher in regards to this, and she had confirmed that was the grade she had assigned me. After mid-terms, my grade had less of an impact on my personal well-being, but I thought that shouldn't be any less reason to not let my grade slip.

Bitch, put some clothes on lest you incur my wrath!

This problem teacher was one of many that I had to deal with whilst pursuing my degree, but she was the only one that took it to such an extremity. That being said, I still am throwing away index cards of important figures and dates, and still have a deep-rooted hatred for anything Princess Diana, Guerrilla Girls, and reclining nudes in the context of it "demeans women."

Don't get me wrong, I fully support feminists. It's when they start discriminating against people because they have a Y chromosome and start to punish them for it, while giving the "better half" an advantage. Last time I checked, the whole feminist movement was about gender equality... but what do I know? I'm just some dumb, testosterone-driven guy. As such, I feel anyone who labels themselves as a self-professed feminist is deluded. There is the rare exception to this, but there are women people out there that feel as though women should earn as much as their counterpart, yet they stay at home, don't contribute to any of the household upkeep, and buy things that they want and overruling their significant other when they have the rare need for an impulse purchase.

Scenario B

While I do realize that there are a vast majority of discrepancies of gender inequality, not all are unjustified. Some aspects of construction, military, civil services and menial labor do require a level of physique that is uncommon in women. I have an issue when this circumstance is brought up within the ranks. If your job requires you to bench-press 300+ lbs for a firefighting position, don't bitch us males out when you can't pass the physical. Conversely, if we (the male half) happened to complain at how much more the female CEO or accountant made in relation to us (if anything, my sister with the MBA with two Minors in accounting and economics and my other sister with a Masters in Biology and Minors in microbiology and zoology to my Bachelors in Art should prove this point), we'd be brought up for sexual discrimination and fired, which is why we don't talk about it (at least with our female coworkers or the office stoolie).

Even then, this situation with my teacher is like the subject I was studying: ancient history.

Then there was the issue I had with a fellow classmate who had a little bit of a god complex, both in his reservations of me being a Gentile and his expressions of superiority towards me. While I cannot tell if the two situations ran hand-in-hand, I feel that it is easiest to explain what happened if that were the case.

Nope. More retarded than this.

I was working on an extracurricular activity with him and a TA (Teacher's Assistant). Long story short, I fought him every step of the way, correcting him on my assignments the TA told me to do, helping the TA figure out an algorithm that helped in the project development, coming up with the project type, and being uncredited for most of it, and at the very end being being related to a redneck hick that had the capacity to talk to animals.

To be equated to such could be offensive to people, and I should have acted on this sooner by contacting his acting parishioner, I felt that it was a moot point as I honestly didn't care about his opinion.

Again, this is just a brief summary of the events that transpired, and most of the minor details have been forgotten. The main points that transpired  of his condescension and his ability to twist details in his favor, thereby turning the TA (as far as I can realize) against me by giving me less than 24 hours notice of being flown out to receive and award for our project being one of the top three winners when it was announced to my TA over a week ago, for a project that was my original idea, my algorithm implementation, and my creative possesses as I was the graphic designer for the images at the time, I can safely say that I felt to a certain extent, both gypped and betrayed by my peers. As I was not at the exhibition, I cannot say for certain what my fellow classmate said about me, but I can assume that it was not in a positive light.

And then there is a level of betrayal that is done by a friend.

I cannot say the exact details as to why my friend pretty much cut me out of her life. Perhaps it was the fact that I called her on her inaccurate views on politics and religion, perhaps it was the fact that I creeped her out (though I cannot say why or how I creeped her out, and how she suddenly wouldn't have anything to do with me). Perhaps I didn't contribute to her anti-bestiality rants (don't get me wrong, I oppose bestiality, I just feel it isn't appropriate dinner conversation in a family-friendly public diner). Perhaps it was the fact that she was a furry and I really don't understand them, much in the same light I don't understand anime cosplayers on the level of ego and pathos, but I still tolerate them (though I am still scratching my head at the anti-bestiality furry combo). Perhaps it is the fact that many of my female friends elaborate on and confirm  the following: girls are crazy.

Whatever the reason, we went from rather close friends to complete and total strangers in a period (at least as far as I could consider) of a week. I, being naive, just thought it was her time of the month and needed some space. Then two weeks passed, then a month. At this point I was really trying to pressure her to come clean about what happened. My ex-friend being herself, said that she simply did not want to talk about about it. The next time I "saw" her, after she had left the premises that I was residing in for a social get-together with my other friends, I finally got an explanation from her boyfriend (who is now an ex-friend due to his nutsack being kept in a vice in her purse). He did not elaborate in which way I creeped her out, otherwise I would have already elaborated, but the fact remained that I did.

Now, this would have had less of an effect on me had I not known her for over five years and done many activities and events together. Do not receive the impression that we were boyfriend/girlfriend or bed-buddies, but rather good friends on the platonic level. There was no sexual attraction toward either end, as we had discussed this on occasion in regards to relationships. If anything, towards the end, I did kind of consider her the little sister I never had (and I do realize that by mentioning this the creep-factor has escalated by saying this, but that is sort of the relationship we had... innocent teasing of each other, shooting the breeze, hanging out in general).

Then it stopped. No tell-tale signs (unless I was completely oblivious to the fact... I admit that I am kind of thick when it comes to such situations), no warnings, no "I don't want to associate with you anymore" talks. I thought she would turn around after a few months. After about seven months, I had given up and pretty much assessed that if she didn't want to be friends any more, then she didn't want to be friends.

Then she turned ugly by starting to bad-mouth me behind my back with my current friends. As she has done this to other people, it was not unexpected. However, what specifically she has said has not been confirmed from my current friends that still hang out with her.

A little pretext in regards to whom I consider friends: In the most literal sense, I would probably take a bullet for a complete stranger that I met on the street in order to save their life.

My friends, I would take a full clip.

With that elaboration taken into account, when asked whom I consider best friends, I do weigh such a description highly. As such, I believe there are only two who reside within that category: One of which is a friend that I have known for almost half my life, and the other, almost a quarter of my life, but have never met face-to-face. Both had a monumental impact in my life and both of which helped me through my college years. As such, there is no conceivable description on what level I would try to help them out.

That being said, if I consider you a friend but are saddened at the thought of me not considering you a best friend, take heart as I choose the people I coin my friends very selectively.

Which brings me at last to the summary of this post. The reason why I have gone into such detail of the scenarios listed, is that I should not hold this as a weight towards me new life in Seattle. While I am able to forgive and forget (to some extent) the trespasses of the customers, the feminazi teacher, and the classmate that betrayed or crossed me in some form or another, I cannot say that I feel the same for my female friend.

Maybe in time I will be able to forgive, but not anytime soon. And definitely not forget.