I’ve decided that i’m spoilt by the people i spend time in social situations with. When HESFES’ing, asking someone to watch a kid for 5 minutes is almost never refused, if a child wanders into a tent and wants to do something the adult almost always agrees, if someone is stressed to the point of tears, people always rally round. i only survived my first HESFES because of Alison, Susannah and co and a lady opposite me. I make it through most camps, weeks away, home ed groups and so on because someone will give my children 5 minutes/ a biscuit/ tissue, as i give their child 5 minutes/ a biscuit/ tissue.
I’d started to think being nice, putting yourself out for a few minutes, doing something nice that makes peoples life more bearable or just being pleasant is normal human behaviour. Perhaps i was wrong.
It would appear the people i choose to spend time with are NOT normal. 🙂
So for the second time in a week, i’ve got on the wrong end of an old person, just by politely asking if they would be kind enough to help me out and make my life a tiny bit easier.
My crime. I arrived at the musical show to find the carpark full, 4 cars parked in a row on a space that normally holds 8 parked up one behind the other and an old man milling in the area. Everyone was parked all over the place and to get out i was gonig to have to leave my car in the middle of a road with the little two in the car.
I wound down my window and said (after saying “hello are you going to the show” etc and getting a polite if frosty reply) “Excuse me, would you possibly mind asking those people there (pointing to just inside the dancing school door a whole 10 metres away) if any of them own these cars and if they would pull forward a bit so i can go behind them.”
He gave me a freezing, furious star, shook his head and turned his back on me.
Obviously it would have just been TOO awful for him to be in any way helpful. Pray i never walk by you when you need me, Mister.
Now after being at school for ‘x’ years with Zig Zag & Smiler I am amazed at how understanding/nice h.e people are. I have never got to see a whole school show purely because I had younger children with me, I was always frowned upon & have been asked to leave! You are right H.E people are not normal 😉
/rolls eyes/
And you left “cleaning up other children’s vomit” off your list 😉 I still owe you for that, lol!
totally miserable. I hope you got to see the show though, and that it went well.
Nah we are not normal. It is always a shock when I realise how rude some people can be and how unhelpful.
Grin, Alison, i owed you for an awful lot of carting off children before i murdered them. I’m not sure even the vomit brought me even to that 🙂
Yeah – show was good 🙂
how rude!! hope the girls enjoyed their show. I bet they were fantastic.
See you know its been nearly a whole year since your last HESFES when you start reminising fondly about the camaradarie and helpfulness of everyone instead of moaning about the rain, the mud, the underage sex and drugs! 😉
Seriously though I think you are right, we do seem to be in a bit of a bubble and it is a shock to realise not everyone is in it with us.
Grin, oh no – i haven’t forgotten the mud. Though i seem to have blanked that particular HESFES out, as i was visualising the previous two when i typed that!
I dunno what it is with some old people…I reckon they just ‘lose it’ in the end..they have all these aches and pains and they are all dosed up on wierd cocktails of drugs that the doctor just chucks at them. Their kids have all left the country and won’t have much to do with em. They are scared of their imminent deaths and twisted about the unresolved issues in their lives. They’ve had hips replaced and pacemakers added. Their teeth have fallen out and they have no hair. They have all this and a crap pension and no sex life. They look in the mirror and see a monster glaring sadly back. They go out on the street and meet a lovely people like you and they are jealous and resentful and bitter and unhelpful. You’ve got more life in your little finger than they have in their whole sagging body and they don’t see why they should help. Not very nice phenonema..but there is a lot of it abart.
However. I knows a lot of lovely old peeps who would help, in some way, even if it is to mime: “I’m sorry, I cannot help…I’ve just had a tracheotomy and my big end has gone!”. xxx
Goodness, that’s a cheery prospect, no sex, no hips, no teeth and looking like a monster ;-
)
Grin, could be worse. Could have no hips and still be expected to have sex!