Story time with Aunt Hippie!

Been thinking about how being neurospicy informs my outsized sense of justice for No Reason Whatsoever (cough, what wrong with goddamn it people, cough) lately, partly prompted by a meme to that effect when out of the blue my brain was like “hey, remember that birthday party in first grade? wanna be mad about it still?”

So. By first grade I was already well on my way to pariah status, but I did have one friend, Bethany. (To this day she is just a Nice Person, and I am sure that her parents told her it was the Nice Thing to play with the Weird Kid. But whatever.) She invited me to her birthday party — but of course the entire class was invited, because that was just how things rolled back then. I knew she coveted a particular Barbie, don’t ask me what one but whatever the new hotness in Barbies was in 1982ish, and I was extremely insistent that she get this Barbie as her gift. So we got one and I wrapped it in the Sunday funnies and we get to the party and along comes little miss Hot Shit Popular Girl, Stephanie — yes, her status as HSPG was apparent even then, she had *pierced ears* for crying out loud — bearing a suspiciously Barbie-shaped gift with pink wrapping and a giant bow.

Bethany’s parents decided that we would play pin the tail on the donkey and whoever won would get the honor of having their gift opened first, which basically turned it into Life Or Death for me. Fortunately I do actually have a pretty good sense of spatial orientation and when I tell you I *nailed* it… that tail was right exactly where it was meant to be. Everyone agreed that I had won, but then Miss HSPG threw an entire fit that her gift HAD TO be opened first, presumably because she also had figured out that we bought the same thing. The adults caved to her tantrum, her gift was opened first, Bethany was overjoyed, and by the time they got to my gift it was like “oh you got two, well we’ll return this one” and I am still, to this day, angry whenever I think about it.

Not because I didn’t get the brownie points — I’m sure the doll was decapitated by her brother within 6 months, and it would have bought me maybe like 48h reprieve from being That Weird Kid at most, and I am probably the only person on this earth that still remembers it even happened, but because I won and had my glory taken away because all the adults caved as soon as some pretty girl threw a fit. Also because HSPG could afford at least 2 of the Barbies for every girl in class, whereas one was pretty much my limit, so it extra mattered to me that it was now being wasted.

When I say I am lawful good, most people assume that I will follow bullshit rules the same as valid ones. And sometimes I do because it’s not worth it, but I am mad inside my heart about it the entire time and the only rules that I actually care about are the ones that are Fair. Not “oh if I do this for you I have to do it for everyone” fair — PS screw you, Principal Decker — everyone knows you can use the letter of the law to be a giant asshole if you feel like it, and I occasionally support this tactic when it’s being deployed against someone who is already being a giant asshole and hoisting them with their own petard even. I mean the rules that *prevent* you from being able to be a giant asshole to other people. You know, the ones that are an endangered species, because there is an entire class of people who specialize in taking laws with the purest of intents and turning them into weapons that allow you to be a giant asshole instead, and did I mention that this makes me so angry I can’t see straight, when they deliberately pervert the spirit of the law and then smugly quote the letter of it to you? If I ever get an instayeet button there will be a lot of people in orbit that first week specifically for this offense.

I know now that what HSPG pulled is pretty much the essence of White Woman Tears — and if I, a fellow saltine-American, am still angry a full 40+ years later over the first time it was used on me, I cannot even express how shameful it would be to ever pull that bullshit on someone else. But this is the point where I feel like I don’t know how to talk to other WW about it because they’re all the ones that think I have three heads to begin with. It’s entirely too easy to say “well, this person isn’t on board, they must not actually be part of the in group.” Not that that’s the story of my life or anything.

IDK where this was going other than “huh, I’m still mad, yep” and “The things that make me angry about injustice are considered pathologies, and boy is that a weird sentence to think about.”