Strangely, I want to write about people I hate more than people I like. They are more fascinating, and aversion is intersting when you think about it.
There is this woman in one of my Saturday classes. Let's call her Goody-pointe-shoes.
I HATE HER.
It is an unreasonable, exaggerated hatred. She never hurt me or did anything to me. She just... kind of rubs me the wrong way. There are many little things, but mainly this: She thinks she is good. And she is not.
She doesn't say much, but when she does, it is something along the line of: I know this and that, I have done this and that. Her facial expression is always smug. When she doesn't get a combination, she blames the teacher, I see it in her face. She laughs disdainfully and doesn't try again. She is always wearing thick legwarmers on her calves, even on the hottest summer afternoon. She recently started showing up to class in pointe shoes. Gaynors.
It all doesn't sound so bad. I just seem to be allergic to her. So much that when I see her, I want to strike her. And no, I am not crazy.
When I first came to the class, I thought she was much more advanced just from her bearing and her expression. Until I watched her actually do ballet recently (because I noticed she annoyed me), and saw that she was... not. She's rather bad. Her movements are limp, she appears weak and soft. This actually made me really happy. If she WERE good, she'd be insufferable. As it is, I KNOW I am better than she, although she of course doesn't see it. Now, I have no problem with people who are better than me. Lots of people are, I am still more of a beginner after all. But naturally I want to have an advantage over people I hate.
What I tend to do, when I hate somebody, is the opposite of my instinct: I am nice to the person, chat with them, get to know them. In a way, that gives me power over them. They don't know I dislike them. But I know things about them. Who was it that said to keep your enemies closer than your friends? U-oh, this makes me sound like a creepy stalker!
The thing is, I detest confrontation. And often, the person in question never hurt me in any way. I just dislike the way they are. I have no excuse to be anything but nice. Getting to know them also satisfies some weird curiosity: I need to know what they are up to, to know where I stand with them, how much and why I can dislike them.
In this case, I wanted to know how long and how often she had been dancing, and where. So I asked her last week. She wasn't unfriendly, but smug. Well, just VERY confident and a little patronizing. She has only been dancing for a little more than one and a half years. (HA) Already en pointe. She goes to other teachers, somewhere at Deep Well. She asked me (meanly, I thought) whether Franca didn't teach anymore because I kept coming to this class. I said truthfully that I just liked Rosanna as a teacher. And that the (beginner) class now was actually more difficult than Franca's because Rosanna advances much faster. She then immediately added that this class was actually too easy for her, and she just came to do it en pointe. Gah!
The class was a whole other matter, but more on that later.
There is this woman in one of my Saturday classes. Let's call her Goody-pointe-shoes.
I HATE HER.
It is an unreasonable, exaggerated hatred. She never hurt me or did anything to me. She just... kind of rubs me the wrong way. There are many little things, but mainly this: She thinks she is good. And she is not.
She doesn't say much, but when she does, it is something along the line of: I know this and that, I have done this and that. Her facial expression is always smug. When she doesn't get a combination, she blames the teacher, I see it in her face. She laughs disdainfully and doesn't try again. She is always wearing thick legwarmers on her calves, even on the hottest summer afternoon. She recently started showing up to class in pointe shoes. Gaynors.
It all doesn't sound so bad. I just seem to be allergic to her. So much that when I see her, I want to strike her. And no, I am not crazy.
When I first came to the class, I thought she was much more advanced just from her bearing and her expression. Until I watched her actually do ballet recently (because I noticed she annoyed me), and saw that she was... not. She's rather bad. Her movements are limp, she appears weak and soft. This actually made me really happy. If she WERE good, she'd be insufferable. As it is, I KNOW I am better than she, although she of course doesn't see it. Now, I have no problem with people who are better than me. Lots of people are, I am still more of a beginner after all. But naturally I want to have an advantage over people I hate.
What I tend to do, when I hate somebody, is the opposite of my instinct: I am nice to the person, chat with them, get to know them. In a way, that gives me power over them. They don't know I dislike them. But I know things about them. Who was it that said to keep your enemies closer than your friends? U-oh, this makes me sound like a creepy stalker!
The thing is, I detest confrontation. And often, the person in question never hurt me in any way. I just dislike the way they are. I have no excuse to be anything but nice. Getting to know them also satisfies some weird curiosity: I need to know what they are up to, to know where I stand with them, how much and why I can dislike them.
In this case, I wanted to know how long and how often she had been dancing, and where. So I asked her last week. She wasn't unfriendly, but smug. Well, just VERY confident and a little patronizing. She has only been dancing for a little more than one and a half years. (HA) Already en pointe. She goes to other teachers, somewhere at Deep Well. She asked me (meanly, I thought) whether Franca didn't teach anymore because I kept coming to this class. I said truthfully that I just liked Rosanna as a teacher. And that the (beginner) class now was actually more difficult than Franca's because Rosanna advances much faster. She then immediately added that this class was actually too easy for her, and she just came to do it en pointe. Gah!
The class was a whole other matter, but more on that later.
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