I’m not a bad person. I do get pissed off. I don’t swear often. But sometimes I do. My closest friends laugh hysterically when I do because, as they say, it just doesn’t look like it should come out of my mouth. Gosh, thanks. I think. – Caution, there’s a little bit of swearing ahead. Just a bit.  ;0)  Honestly, I felt it was caused for.

This young guy, maybe 22 years old, was arguing me about something this week in one of my classes. Our job was to create a realistic pitch to present to the rest of the class. We were to try to convince them that had they been real potential backers, our imaginary presentation should be good enough to get them to want to be involved. and give us financial backing and so on. Easy. All we had to do at this point in our imaginary plan was (this was me) “to hand out our marketing postcards to students and that we hoped were experiencing stress.”

The boy informed me that I couldn’t say that. Can’t say what? Can’t say they have stress. I didn’t say I’d say they’d have stress. I said I was hoping to give it to someone who had stress. You can’t say that.

Around and around we went. The other members of our group moved away from us. We got louder and louder. The professor, bless her long-suffering heart, had to come and in 4 times and intervein just during that one class period.

I’d decided I wasn’t going to be run over like I had been in my group last quarter. I was going to take a stand. I was going to stand up for myself. The boy with lint in his brain was wrong. You know why? I have two basic reasons. Well, three. One. he’s a stupid, arrogant youth who takes charge because his ego as a male gives him the automatic right to lead every group he’s in. (I know other people who observed our “discussions” who agree with me.) Two, we were using marketing to get people to come to our event. Um, you have to get people who experience stress interested in reducing their STRESS to come to our damn event! But he didn’t want me to even say the word to just our business audience. He didn’t want me to tell them that we hoped these students were stressed. What? Is he a moron? Third, if I want you to back my event financially, I need to tell you what specific audience I’m aiming to draw to my event. What student am I aiming to expose my marketing products too so that they will come to our event and reduce their stress?

A fucking STRESSED OUT STUDENT, THAT’S WHO GOD DAMN IT! You can’t say that.

Michael, why not? Because you’re implying they have stress. OMG Of course I am. That’s who my target market is. That’s what businesses do. They have target audiences and they try like hell to reach them so they can sell their products (or whatever) to them. Target audience. Do you know about them?

As it turns out, after having a discussion regarding the whole sordid thing, some college students today believe that we have no right to assume anything about anything. At all.

OMG

I wanted to speak first. I’m VERY well versed in ANXIETY and STRESS. Nope, Michael spoke first/instantly. He missed school for three weeks because he was stressed out. That story really ought to start things out well.

Michael, are you going to try to hook the audience by sharing your experience with them? Well, yeah. And you’re going to express some emotion so that they empathize with you, right. Well no. (His face went pale.) I’m not going to share anything persona. But I do know a lot about stress. Yes, I see that you do.

In the few seconds, before I was overtaken by lint boy, I had visualized myself getting up there in front of the other students, and then dramatically breaking a few pencils in half and tossing them in the air. Then I would explain how many college students feel stress and what kinds of things they feel it makes them do – like commit suicide. I’ve been there. I know. I understand. Have you ever felt that way too?

The audience would now be listening to the group. We could continue our pitch. We would tell them about our research and the target audience we found through our research that we would like to come to our event. Marketing. Audience.

I could go on. Lint man still makes me mad. He persists in expressing his superiority by taking over every meeting and every discussion.

We had a meeting today. I had a plan. I’d been listening to a couple of TED Talks in my car during my break. They were under stress. They were informational, insightful and funny. One woman talked about the “F-word.” It turned out her F-word turned out to be “fine.” The next woman talked about the “F-word too.” This one actually did mean fuck. I related the stories to the team, Michael was present. I had long advocated we should have a speaker, but when Michael asked the school counselor if he would do it and was met with an emphatic “NO” he jumped to the conclusion that putting on ANY sort of talk was stupid because he’d talked to this one guy who “knows” and that was that. I disagreed. The girls agreed with him because that’s what they did.

Back to Fuck. The more I used the word, the more they laughed. Apparently, a 55-year-old woman wasn’t supposed to say, “Fuck.” Go figure. I took advantage of their being off kilter a little bit. I suggested why we needed to give our materials out to students who we KNEW probably had a huge chance that they were stressed out, to reach our target audience.

Oh, hey, I get it. That’s a good idea. But you can’t read your slide to them that has the marketing mock-up on it. Let them read it. Sooooo you want me to stand there while they read. Basically, yes. No. I’m going to point out the highlights of my very brief POSTCARD and if that means I’m reading the whole thing, then so be it.

The professor comes to us before class ended. She calmed us down again. Then she said that I could do my own thing and that would be that and the rest of the group could do their thing and all would be good. It defused the matter. For a little bit. Then I realized she was isolating me from the others so I would rock the boat. Who does that? Also, who lies to the professor what he JUST said, what he just said to me about what I couldn’t say, right to the professor’s face.

Little lint monkey brain. Shit…. again.

There has to be a better way to communicate with kids who are being told they can’t be labeled by anyone at anytime. it is their right to be different. They are allowed to say stupid ass things and claim you can’t correct them because you can’t put your beliefs on them. They are who they are, even if they don’t know who that is.

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll stand for anything.”

I stand for myself and all others who suffer from Bipolar Disorder and other mental illnesses. I stand for their family members and friends. I stand for myself. I stand.

Don’t you dare tell me that you know more about stress than I do. You don’t know me… little boy. Why don’t you ask what I know of stress? I promise you that you will be horrified. You will leave being unable to comprehend or willing to sit and listen to terror that he does not understand.

Whose been stressed? I have. I am. I really am. And, there’s a good chance you are too.

In this case, I found that raising my voice at the boy helped some. It also helped to teach them something purposefully using the word Fuck. Boy, that felt good. Fuck.

Find ways to stand up for yourself. I stood up for myself with a whole chill pill in my system. I wanted to beat him. After talking to them about how I felt the group was functioning and using the word FUCK they seemed to respect me more. That seems like a weird thing to do to defuse a stressful situation but hell, I’ll take anything that will lower my stress.

I still want to beat the little lint monster brain over the head with the postcards to our stress lowering event that I’m not supposed to explain we hope will be given to those who are stressed out. Remember, he’s an expert.

Who gets the right to decide? Whose the expert on stress?

Let me just toot my own horn and say loudly and for the last time (at least to lint brain boy) that I’m the expert on stress. Not you.

Wait till you have children.

Fuck you lint boy.