You'll need background for this next little life-victory of mine so here it is: In the spring of 2000 I opened my big mouth at a PTA meeting and complained about the lame art curriculum at the elementary school. To make a long story short, 2 weeks later three other mouth openers and I completed a grant application for a $1,000 grant for a parent volunteer run art appreciation curriculum. We got the grant and the next school year we introduced a program that we designed based on suggestions from the principal and one of the other mouth openers karate teacher's kid's school. We worked our butts off, but we researched artists, put together binders of information, trained parent volunteers to teach the kids and coordinated it all with the new art teacher. It was a huge success. I would spend the next 5 years expanding and refining this program.
During the third year of this program, I was training a group of parent volunteers when Josh, then a year and a half old, needed to nurse. I picked up, discreetly nursed him to sleep, while I continued and completed the parent orientation with out skipping a beat. I felt especially good when one of the mothers came to me after the orientation and gave me a pat on the back saying she knew I was "one of those Moms" and she meant it as a compliment.
A full year later, I get a call from one of my friends, she didn't know how to tell me this, but one of the other parent volunteers present that day had issues with me nursing Josh at that meeting and because of her, people had been talking about me for a full year! This OTHER woman was going around telling the women of our town that I was unprofessional (hello? PTA is an unpaid volunteer no glory kind of job) and inappropriate. She told the rest of the rest of the neighborhood that I was nursing my 3 year old (get your facts straight lady!) in public and that she thought it was just appalling. Me nursing my kid had apparently been a hot topic of discussion at neighborhood block parties, tennis parties, cocktail hours, book groups, etc... all winter long. I was just scandalous. Give me a mother fucking break!
I was just devastated when I heard this news. I couldn't believe that after all I had done for the community (I was also in charge of the school's publicity that year, and had gotten them into the two local papers almost every week) that what people were talking about was me nursing my kid. I had to go pick up Evan at school then, and when I walked out the door, I shared this story with the first two neighbors I bumped into going to pick up their kids at school. One of them said that they too had heard the story about me, but she added, she knew Josh's age and had defended me. I went around telling people what I had heard and about half of them had been approached by somebody over the past year who had related the story to them. Now this was getting even worse- because not one person had had the guts to tell me for an entire year. I would look around at pick-up and wonder how many other people were smiling at me and chatting with me, but had been gossiping about me too. It is a bad feeling, trust me. And nursing gossip? Is this town so lame that they couldn't find an affair or a plastic surgery to gossip about?
Time after time people told me that this OTHER woman is just a mean gossip, and that no one takes her seriously. This didn't make me feel better. The thought that this OTHER woman went around saying mean things about lots of people all the time just made me even sadder, I mean, look at all the people who were actually listening to her.
I see the OTHER woman all the time, she is active in the PTA, I am active too, and she always smiles at me and says "Hi! How are you?" and I always want to freeze time around me so I can kick her in the gut and get away with it. But of course, I can't, so I don't, I just mumble and turn away. Until this morning. This morning I went into the laundromat to drop off some sheets and she was there. She said her thing, I mumbled "Fine." and slunk out of the laundromat. Once on the sidewalk I stopped myself. I took Josh's hand and told him Mommy was about to be mean to the lady coming out so he had to just stand there and listen and not interrupt. When she came out I told her that I wasn't talking to her and that she had to know why. I told her that I knew she had been talking about me and that I was shocked that she chose to discuss my private business after all the good things I had done for the benefit of all of our children. I told her that what I did with my kids was my business, and that even though Josh was only a year and a half when she started this false rumor, I would have nursed him when he was three if that is what he needed, but that wasn't the point. I reminded her that I had created that program and worked that art committee for 5 years. I repeated that of all the things a person could say about me, it was just shocking that this is what she chose to discuss. And she said "I didn't tell that many people." I told her she told enough people that it was still being discussed a year later, and that telling anyone was telling too many. She apologized and I waved her off and said "That's not good enough, you need to think about this before you open your mouth next time." She stood there, shell shocked. I turned and walked away. It may have taken me 3 years to stand up for myself, but I did, and it felt great. And best of all, now when I see her I can glare at her from across the room and she'll know why.
FANTASTIC! That's something I think and hope I would have done as well. Just think what they'll be saying now! She'll twist it all up and by the time it gets back to you you'll hear that you punched her in the stomach and spit on her face.
Posted by: danelle | May 31, 2006 at 11:45 AM