jaeleslie

Here is the passive-aggressive voice building steam in my head. I am still a practicing passive-aggressive. Just practicing till I get it right. Or maybe hone it to a sharp point. But I've had lessons from the best.

Yes, she's coming to the convention of course, as long as it is so important to me. She's coming with both attendants but they'll be late. I shouldn't worry about when the plane comes in or how my brother will get here from the airport or where he is staying. And she is driving and they'll be here late Saturday even though the convention starts Friday. I'm sure she doesn't want to distract me from anything else I might be doing. Like setting up the art show or helping on program items or meeting and greeting my friends or hobnobbing with the luminaries of my world.

They'll just stop in the convention Sunday to see the art show. They'll probably miss all the panels I had been hoping they might have a professional interest in, but that's good because they'll miss mine too and I don't need anyone else to watch me make a fool of myself in front of a room full of people. And I didn't get them tickets to the dessert banquet because buying too many desserts for people who are perpetually on low-fat diets is far too advanced a passive-aggressive tactic even for me. But they will have to sit in the back while I am seated at the front table with the luminaries because by the time I figured out I would be sitting there it was too late to see if anyone else in her party wanted to sit with me to listen to the speeches. If they even show up for the award ceremony, where I will get to make a fool of myself again for a large audience of my best friends. It will be fun because I will be lost in a crowd of people making fools of themselves for the amusement of their friends.

But it's okay she's not coming because no one came to my graduation either and that was decades ago. And that was okay, because no one takes graduation ceremonies seriously, surely. It is a boring ceremony that no one enjoys between the moments of sheer embarrassment and then receiving cards and checks and parties which (fortunately perhaps) I missed out on entirely, and getting drunk to forget it all for a moment, and afterwards it is back to trying to arrange job interviews. It is all meaningless pomp and circumstance in medieval costume, the honor before a community for which one has somewhat strived... But I digress.