Having a Bad Day?: Get 'yer Hugs here!!

[Elenion he/him]

@Steeldancer @Shqueeves So it looks like the signs I took to mean one thing actually meant another, so while the situation is still awkward for me it isn't that bad anymore. She's not trying to put a romantic move on me but she wants a close friendship that I really don't. I can deal with that much better than the alternative.

[SilverTiger she/her]

I have just been through the single most terrifying experience of my entire life.

I sing in the young adult choir at my local church, and today we were singing at the 3:00-4:30 Good Friday Mass. During the homily, just after the stations of the cross had finished, the altar servers go up to Father, and then they all start quietly conferring. Then Father says, "There's been an incident. Because of the nature of the incident, let's say the Our Father." We said the Our Father. Then the Hail Mary. All the while, the altar servers are over at one of the entrances/exits of the church, clustered by the doors. Then they come back and talk to Father some more.

That's when Father tells everyone to please go quietly to their vehicles, out of the left entrance. Not the other two, just the left one. And the choir director asks us (the choir) to all go too. I kept asking what was going on, no one knew, the choir director told me to stay with him because I didn't have a car, and no, I couldn't walk home (I live close to the church), he'd drop me off instead.

After going outside, I asked him (again) what was going on, and could I just walk home. He'd talked to the priest just before leaving. That's when he told me, "There's been a threat."

I ended up getting to walk home, and while doing so I saw no less than two cop cars and a sheriff's department car. One of the cop cars was parked on the sidewalk, empty, but still running.

I have never been scared for my life before. I was singing church hymns while walking. I called my mom to let her know what was happening, and told her I loved her. I was terrified. For my life. I am in high school. And I was at CHURCH.

As I said, the most terrifying experience of my life: that moment you hear there's been a threat. And you realize you could die today.

[Delightful]

On 3/26/2018 at 3:58 PM, AngelEy3 said:

Over an arm smack? So glad I'm not in school these days. In my day (not that long ago) the teacher would have smacked someone before you felt you had to, and thus stopped this nonsense from going further than it has. We'd even get just detention over bloody noses, and everyone is fine now. 

........capital punishment is illegal in most civilised places.

On 3/28/2018 at 5:34 AM, Tesh said:

Someone out there needs this. Someone always does.

Dear Evan Hansen!

On 3/31/2018 at 0:30 AM, SilverTiger said:

I have just been through the single most terrifying experience of my entire life.

I sing in the young adult choir at my local church, and today we were singing at the 3:00-4:30 Good Friday Mass. During the homily, just after the stations of the cross had finished, the altar servers go up to Father, and then they all start quietly conferring. Then Father says, "There's been an incident. Because of the nature of the incident, let's say the Our Father." We said the Our Father. Then the Hail Mary. All the while, the altar servers are over at one of the entrances/exits of the church, clustered by the doors. Then they come back and talk to Father some more.

That's when Father tells everyone to please go quietly to their vehicles, out of the left entrance. Not the other two, just the left one. And the choir director asks us (the choir) to all go too. I kept asking what was going on, no one knew, the choir director told me to stay with him because I didn't have a car, and no, I couldn't walk home (I live close to the church), he'd drop me off instead.

After going outside, I asked him (again) what was going on, and could I just walk home. He'd talked to the priest just before leaving. That's when he told me, "There's been a threat."

I ended up getting to walk home, and while doing so I saw no less than two cop cars and a sheriff's department car. One of the cop cars was parked on the sidewalk, empty, but still running.

I have never been scared for my life before. I was singing church hymns while walking. I called my mom to let her know what was happening, and told her I loved her. I was terrified. For my life. I am in high school. And I was at CHURCH.

As I said, the most terrifying experience of my life: that moment you hear there's been a threat. And you realize you could die today.

Ive experienced similar as a Jew; anti-Semitism is millenia old. It sucks. Hate crimes and violence suck. Be vigilant. Dont walk around with headphones in. Look out for people acting suspiciously. Be careful.

[A Budgie she/her]

25 minutes ago, Del-light-full said:

........capital punishment is illegal in most civilised places.

Doesn't capital punishment refer only to the death penalty, or am I missremembering?

@SilverTiger I am so sorry you had to go through that, it sounds awful. Are you alright now?

[Sunbird she/her]

37 minutes ago, A Budgie said:

Doesn't capital punishment refer only to the death penalty, or am I missremembering?

You're correct. Capital punishment is the death penalty; corporal punishment is physical punishment like spanking.

[Delightful]

1 hour ago, Sunbird said:

You're correct. Capital punishment is the death penalty; corporal punishment is physical punishment like spanking.

I stand corrected.

 

Also im so grossed out because my in-laws have no problem with chicken necks and I was eating soup and there were VERTEBRAE in my BOWL. And they think *im* the crazy one.

[SilverTiger she/her]

@A Budgie, I'm alright. It turned out to be a false alarm.

@Del-light-full, I'm sorry you've experienced hate crime and discrimination. That must hurt.

But basically, someone had a rifle in their car, another person saw it called the cops, big scare ensued. Said parishioner with a rifle had a concealed carry permit. Everyone is fine.

Thanks for your support and sympathy!

[Tesh Any pronouns]

6 hours ago, Del-light-full said:

Dear Evan Hansen!

I'll admit it, it's one of my obsessions.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

My jokes are ironic

My depression is chronic

I got a whole pint of gin

But not a drop of tonic

[Silverblade5 he/him]

"We shouldn't have to say exactly how to do something. A general instruction should be sufficient. Everyone else was capable of doing it correctly with what was given. "

Storm off, rotting chasmfiend carcass

[Steeldancer he/him]

My mom brought back my time limits, and the girl I asked to prom is being uncooperative with scheduling going to see infinity war. I mean seriously, I told her way in advance, and she sounded like she wanted to go. WHY IS SHE BEING SO STUBBORN GAH

[Elenion he/him]

18 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

My mom brought back my time limits, and the girl I asked to prom is being uncooperative with scheduling going to see infinity war. I mean seriously, I told her way in advance, and she sounded like she wanted to go. WHY IS SHE BEING SO STUBBORN GAH

MAC address change time?

In general I like prom but I hate scheduling stuff for just this reason. I'm sorry man, it's the pits.

[Tesh Any pronouns]

I got a C on my math test yesterday, and I've gotten As on all the other ones I've taken this year. I can retake it on Tuesday, though, so I hope that goes well. 

And my best friend since second grade is slowly drifting away towards a not nice group of people. I'm really concerned. She's just trying to fit in, and be popular. One of the kids will even go onto my friend's mom's Instagram account, screenshot pictures of my friend, then edit them to make her look like an idiot! She's even just ignoring me completely when that friend of hers is around. She's a completely different person at school and with those friends. The type of person I usually try to avoid. 

Middle school is the worst thing ever. 

[ShardBreaker he/him]

@Tesh , have you tried personally talking to her personally yet and explaining the negative effect that her friendships are having on her life? 

[Tesh Any pronouns]

2 hours ago, ShardBreaker said:

@Tesh , have you tried personally talking to her personally yet and explaining the negative effect that her friendships are having on her life? 

That would be a terrible conversation.

"Hey, most of your friends, including some of your best friends, are bad people. They are turning you into a terrible person. Leave them and come hang out with me, instead!" 

---

Yeah, I've had a bad day. Sorry for the sarcasm. I asked the same friend if she was going to ride the bus home today, she said yes, then five minutes later, she went home with her friend who had taken the pictures from her mom's Instagram. 

I do need to talk to her, though. 

[ShardBreaker he/him]

Yeah, probably not a good idea to word it like that. Word it in a way where your friend would understand. For most of my friends, I'd probably just say it to there face. Don't do that. Just a word of advice, don't try to do it over text or email or anything like that, as emotions aren't as understood over text.  

[Tesh Any pronouns]

In English, we're reading Tangerine by Edward Bloor. While reading part two, we had to fill out a reaction log. I was fine with that. But right before we started part two, my teacher said, "So, a lot of new characters and places are introduced in this part, and a lot oif important things happen. Instead of a reaction log, you are going to fill out a study guide to help you keep everything straight."

Look at this!

Spoiler

November 4:

1. Paul wants to go back to the nursery. In your opinion, why would he want to go back?
2. What does Paul help Tino and Luis do for three hours?
3. Why does Paul like the citrus groves?
4. Tino reaches out to Paul to ask for help. What does he ask him to do? What does this say about their friendship?
5. How did Luis' knee get messed up? 
6. What is the confession that Paul makes to Tino? How does Tino respond? Are you surprised? Why or why not?

In the first part of the study guide, we had to answer 20 questions for a five page chapter. I just... Urgh!

I need to rant. This is a good place to rant about being sick of not being in an advanced English class. I won't get the chance to be in one until next year. I should have seen if it would have been possible to skip my grade English, and just go up the the advanced English class. I should've. But that thought didn't even cross my mind.

Also, same English class, we got this huge packet, and one of the questions was this:

Read the poem.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. 

[A nice poem. But this question ruined it.]

This poem could have been written as a persuasive essay. Why was it not?

I was very tempted to write, "Because that would be stupid."

Thanks for bearing my ranting. I am so excited to go to collage. (Please don't tell me to enjoy this stuff while I can. I want to look forward to it instead of dreading it).

[The Thinking Herald he/him]

I really don't want to push this on here, pretending that any of my issues can compare to anyone else's. They probably can't. But, this seems like a good place to ask for advice and rant in general, so here I am.

First. A little context. In school, I'm part of the Prefect team (Please don't hate me for this, we're normal people too), and as such, part of my duties entail patrolling along the corridors and keeping the peace, enforcing the rules with drinks and computers etc. No rule states anything about ruckus (noise in general) since it's obviously very hard to keep down, with all the students in the corridors. Normally, there's a group of other students my year on a sofa next to a classroom, and they do make quite a bit of noise. Of course, as implied, I don't have the responsibility to shut them up - such action is up to the discretion of the teachers and my superiors. In addition, one of them is currently talking with me over reforming a club from last year.

Today, in specifics, I'd during my duties come across several members of this club from last year, and I had asked them whether or not they would re-join the upcoming year. So, of course, when I had seen that friend of mine today, I had to tell him about the results (one doesn't want back in and the other does). Of course, since his friends are quite the bunch, I was also there to sort some of them out. So, I was talking to him, and he threw me a ridiculous idea, and I, incredulously, and shocked, pretty much repeated his words verbatim back to him in that obviously higher-pitched and louder way. (It wasn't that loud, just... you get the idea)

Nothing bad yet, right?

Well, as soon as I did take in his idea in that shocked way that I did (which was to limit membership of the club to our year group), a furious teacher (known for being full of chull) stormed out of his classroom and dragged us all in, for being "too noisy" and "constantly disturbing him" (which there are, again, no rules about. As far as I was concerned, they were abiding by the school rules). He nearly attempted to rip my prefect badge, until he backed down and basically gave the power of "playing God" to me. Basically, I had to sell out the "ringleaders" of the group (of which there were none, all were equally guilty of speaking or just weren't speaking at all), and choose people to "save". (Well, of course, he didn't tell me that I had to save my friends, but you know how it is.) I did not enjoy the experience, not one bit. Shortly after I had "identified" the ringleaders and the innocent (purely by calculating which ones I'd thought were guilty and not (and I'd like to say that one of the "innocent" probably manipulated my calculations here, in hindsight)), I told the teacher that I may have had been a contributing factor to the incident, and I explained my involvement, toning down just a little how loud my reaction had been. He chose to let me go.

I feel bad now. I think I should have done my best to save even more people from the punishment (detention every day of the next week). I know that I did the best I could have under the circumstances, considering that this was at the very end of lunctime and my mind was rushing to get to the next lesson. 

After the incident, I had a chat with a "friend" (I say he's not a friend because I'm afraid he could leave me to rot at any moment, but I rely on him for advice), who told me that I may have to worry about certain involved people who I did not save retaliating, but probably wont have to. (This bit is not really relevant, but I'm including it for continuty's sake.)

What's worst, is that when I got home, my mother refused to engage in this conversation with me and basically is guilt shaming me now.

TL;DR: I had to play God after witnessing an incident. I may have contributed to this incident. I think I should have saved more people from the punishment, and not toned down on my own interpretation of events. And my family refuses to engage with me.

Please help.

[AngelEy3 he/him]

@The Thinking Herald Hm... If you want to think on how you could have handled it differently, I'd suggest that your main error was in allowing that faculty member to put you in the position they did. 

It was petty and a tyrant-like move on the teacher to give a student the choice of who to punish. 

My personal opinion, and what I would have done in the circumstance would be to refuse the option to "play God." If you are worried at all about what those other students think of you, then you should have died on the hill with them. You sold them out, and now you feel guilty. Been there. Decided to never go there again. 

 

 

[The Thinking Herald he/him]

@AngelEy3 I wouldn't say that I sold anyone out, perse. It was more along the lines that I didn't have enough evidence or memory to prove their innocence, and this faculty member basically, instead of taking the innocent-until-proven-guilty course of action, took the guilty-until-proven-innocent course of action. If given the choice, I would have saved all of them as well as me, but the thing is that there's only so much of "This one's innocent" that an angry, furious little man-child of a teacher can take, until he thinks that I was actually in on the act, which I was not. (I was not participating whatever most of them were gossiping about, merely there to inform one of them about recent developments with something important we both have a stake in, and my "role" in the incident was my, IMO, reasonably shocked reaction to his comments)

I still recognize that, morally, the thing to do would be to admit to having an overly shocked reaction to what my peer suggested. However, I'm not enough of a morally righteous person to sacrifice myself for a bunch of people who weren't completely innocent. (Rather, I'm not enough of a degraded person to sacrifice myself for people who wouldn't sacrifice themselves for me, or for people who never show any recognition of me, or for people who look down on me.) Basically, I'm no Jesus, and neither am I a Kaladin.

My point is that a ) Most of them weren't innocent, b ) I wasn't given the choice to take the role of Playing God and I would have saved them all if I could have, but the teacher would have turned his wrath to me, which I was, still in my opinion, not deserving of, c ) My role in the incident was limited insofar as responding naturally to incredulous and shocking comments, and d ) I recognize that I should have owned up more than I did (I don't really have an excuse for this, other than surviving to fight another day and potentially saving other people from such fates in another capacity, which, depending on your point of view, isn't valid here)

Edited April 11, 2018 by The Thinking Herald

[AngelEy3 he/him]

@The Thinking Herald I think our worldview at this time is too differing for me to give any additional comment other than to say that I would have been less concerned about who was guilty or not, and more concerned with the outrageous response of the teacher. Any actions I would have taken at that point would have been to spite the abusive authority. 

 

Edited April 11, 2018 by AngelEy3

[The Thinking Herald he/him]

Yes. I know that I'm in the wrong. I ought to have owned up and said, "I was the one that acted out of line, and it was at a shocking comment." I can't say that I think that "surviving" is a good enough excuse. I don't.

Luckily, I've been given a chance to own up again tomorrow, in front of a different teacher. Though others involved claim that they already have valid points in their defence, if anything goes wrong at the slightest with their plan, I'm planning on owning up for my mistake fully and hoping that not many consequences come of it. While they likely will, I must still say that this is why these two quotes have stuck with me since I've seen them uttered or in a book. "All err. An error, however, only becomes a mistake when we refuse to correct it." (Grand Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars), and, though I'm not currently living by this Ideal, "I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man." (Evidently, Dalinar Kholin from Oathbringer).

[Guest]

I'm not currently having a bad day, but with my anxiety issues, among other things, I could always use the support! 

[Yvainnie she/her]

@Ilythyrra Be blessed

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Yvainnie said:

@Ilythyrra Be blessed

 

 

Thanks much!  Same for  you as well!