Being Rude

I cannot believe what he said to me. It was incredibly rude. I can’t understand how people can be that rude to others so I just couldn’t let it go.

After staring at the back of my eyelids for what felt like hours, I finally get out of bed. It was just a small comment that Gary had made, but it wouldn’t get out of my head. 

I paced around my bedroom for a while before finding myself at the mirror. As I contemplated what had happened, I stood in the corner, gazing at myself in the full length mirror. 

Overall, it had been a wonderful day. I had gone out with my girlfriends, we grabbed a bite to eat and then we relaxed and chatted at the winery. It was so nice to meet up with everyone again. We don’t get together enough, even though we say we will every time we do this.

Next time Gary had better not be there though. He hadn’t been invited either. We were having a good time catching up on each others lives when he came over and acted like we were old friends. We barely talked with him even when we were all in school. But of course Olivia asked him if he wanted to sit with us, which is exactly what she always does. 

So him and his friend came over which was fine but then we naturally changed to talking about the old days when we were all in school together. Which, again, was totally fine even though I had not gotten the opportunity to finish bringing all of my friends up to speed on what had been happening in my life.

Like, I look really good. I turned left and then right, and then in a full circle. I didn’t even get a chance to nudge a conversation in that direction. 

However, once we got into chatting about the old days, I enjoyed it. We had a lot to reminisce on. So many good times, most of them centered on me. I have always been the leader, nobody else would ever step up to lead. Or if they did, they just couldn’t do it as well. So I just had no choice but to be the one to fill the leadership role. 

I told some of the best stories from our crazy times in school, mostly because Gary and his friend wouldn’t know them. 

But then Gary wanted to feel included, so he started telling stories too. They were okay. The other girls seemed to like them anyways. 

For some reason, after that the stories began to really come in droves. Many of them I had never heard before. Which was unusual because I seemed to be there for all of the best and craziest stories. 

Evidently some of the girls had spent more time with Gary than I remembered. Olivia and Gary were telling a pretty lengthy story of some misadventure they went through that involved some of the other girls too. Even Gary’s friend, who we evidently went to school with too, was there for it. I’m sure I was up to more exciting things, which was why I must have missed it. 

I tried a few times to interject and subtly change directions with the conversation. But each time I tried, someone would either use it against me and redirect it back to them or just ignore it and continue on with their story. It seemed like nobody else noticed or even cared that this was not what I wanted to talk about.

The story just kept going and going. I laughed along with everyone else but by this point I was starting to get annoyed. What had Gary started? This was not where these conversations usually went when I chatted with the girls lately. I zoned out for part of the story, because it just couldn’t keep my interest. 

I was brought back to the story when everyone started laughing by Charlotte’s loud cackle. Nobody else ever seems to notice it, but it drives me crazy. I couldn’t help but look at her and sigh. I must have rolled my eyes because out of the corner of my eye, I see Gary looking at me. I look at him and he sighs and shakes his head. What in the world was that for. Again nobody else was paying attention to me so they didn’t see what happened, but. Like that was rude of him.

Af first I thought maybe I misunderstood what happened or maybe it wasn’t directed at me. But he looked right at me, I’m sure of it. Judging. Thats what it looked like he was doing. Like he was judging me, and the worst thing was that it seemed he was disappointed. But that just didn’t make sense.

For the rest of the time, I just avoided looking at Gary and tried to ignore him as much as I could. They were still talking about events that I had not been there for but I just let them keep going. I was so over trying to get them to change so I just sat there and did the bare minimum. Laugh when they laughed. Look around at everyone except Gary, and his friend by association, and smile at the right times.

Finally, the conversation started to move away from what they had been talking about for what seemed like hours. I immediately perked up and got excited to get involved. It was going well until Olivia started to tell a story that I really liked to tell. 

As usual she didn’t know how to tell the story, if I let her tell it it just wouldn’t have the right effect, especially on Gary and his friend who had never heard it before. So I cut her off before she could embarrass herself any more and told her, “You are really bad at telling this story, let me do it.”

Before I could even get started, Gary blurts out “Wow, that was really rude.”

I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say. Nobody else spoke up for me and I couldn’t stand the silence so I just got up and left without another word.

My full length mirror was tall enough that I could see my whole body. I looked myself over from bottom to top. I was looking deeply into my hazel green eyes but it still didn’t make sense. “Wow, some people are just so rude."