Annoying Friends Die Hard--And are Remembered Easily

Turns out, I am a natural volleyball player (if I do say so myself, which I just did! J).  This is something I discovered at a volleyball camp I am attending this week.  At the beginning of the summer, my mom asked me what it is I wanted to do this summer, what camps I wanted to enjoy.  Volleyball was something I wanted to try ever since my P.E. teacher chose that as one of the lessons we would learn (I also wanted to try hula dancing, but that was a no-go L).  I liked volleyball in P.E., the bumping circle my peers and I started.  I have, “a natural instinct,” my sister told me from watching me.  That’s so sweet, puts tears into my eyes.  And when I told my sister that, she said I should not get used to it.  That I’ll never hear those words again.  Well, it was worth a try…

I entered the gymnasium at the local high school, the high school I will be attending in a year.  That’s so crazy to think about, that I am almost going to be granted the brilliant, the wondrous, the honorable title, “fresh meat”.  Okay, not that honorable.  I cringe in delight and fear of that thought…the fear now overtaking the delight. 

Anyway, when I first got there, I saw a bunch of kids and parents standing around the courts.  People were talking, some kids were playing, and I searched every one of those faces for a familiar one.  Results: nada.  That’s okay¸ I told myself.  I will deal.  A couple more minutes of standing drift by, when all of a sudden the stars align, the sun lights up the room.  Someone I knew walked into the door.  Thank you, I praised the world.  Thank you so much.  But all that delight ran out, like the battery juice running out of your favorite robot toy, bpuuuuuuttttt.  I realized just who the person was.  She’s a girl my age who I know has good intentions at heart, but comes across very mean, annoying, rude.  I understand she doesn’t try to make me angry, embarrassed, but it seems like every little flaw I have, every little mistake I make, every little humiliating thing about me, she points out.  It makes me crazy, just plain crazy.

As the helpful blogger I am J, I will give you examples of why she makes me just so darn annoyed.  To begin, every day in the fifth grade, after I tested my blood sugar, she asked me what my number was.  The first day it seemed caring.  The second day it seemed nice.  The third day it seemed a little repetitive.  The fourth day completely staged.  The fifth day…I was done.  And as the little bit of Italian I am, I had a hard time not showing it.  She could tell it bugged me, but she didn’t even think about stopping.  My problem wasn’t that it embarrassed me, it didn’t at all.  My problem was that it was every day of plain insincerity.  I would rather you not ask anything at all than to ask a bunch of phony questions your mom told you to ask.  Deep breath in, Erin.  Hold it, hold it.  Let it out, nice and steady.  Much better.

As the day went by today, I remembered very quickly why I stopped hanging out with her.  Today, as my next example, I was testing my blood sugar for snack (we ate snack earlier than the other 12, 13, and 14 year olds because we thought it was time.  It didn’t matter though).  There were four of us sitting in the same spot.  One was the girl, another her sister, a friend of the girl, and me.  The friend didn’t know me at all before this camp, therefore she would not know of my type 1.  I was pricking my finger, squeezing my blood, contemplating whether I should let her ask me about it, or if I should come right out and say it.  It was loud where we were, right next to the big fan, so I didn’t hear the friend ask the girl what snack she was eating.  Since I am so used to the questions of, “What are you doing?”, I just assumed that was what she was saying.  “I have Type 1 Diabetes,” I said to the girl.  I saw the confusion displayed on her face, so I added, “Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you were talking to her.”  Most people, the nicer ones, would just blow over the topic, talk about something new.  But not this person.  No, she goes ahead and talks on about my mess-up, moving me from mildly embarrassed to full-on red-face embarrassed.

“That’s so funny,” she remarked.  “’Cause she wasn’t talking to you, but you were, like, explaining everything.”

Yeah, I thought it was hilarious.  And by the way, how is saying I have Type 1 Diabetes explaining everything.  If I was explaining everything in my life, the testing, the site changes, the bolusing (the insulin intake using a pump), it would take quite a long time to explain everything.  I don’t care.  I can’t change some people.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better and she won’t make me annoyed.  Good luck to moi and adios for now!