longest post ever

I yelled at complete strangers today.

Most people know me as the high-annoyance-tolerance girl I am. And, no mistake, it's true and all ... mostly ... that I'm quite good at not letting the small and most larger annoyances upset my life. Sometimes, though, I truly want to punch people with as much force as possible. Some weeks, though, I'm missing the sleep numbers to keep me at a tolerable level, keep the filter going. Some days, I reach the end point and normally have a delightful cry-fest, which cools things out.

Because I understand that, when you're so far stressed, it helps for other people to make some sacrifices with you, I woke up at seven a.m. Saturday morning to help finish setting-up Meredith's folklore festival. (Incidentally, this was after staying up until not-quite-two a.m. the night before, and I won't discuss bedtimes for earlier in the week.) Technically, I was only scheduled to work until 9:30, but I knew the person I would've left at the table wasn't terrible comfortable with the greeting thing and I'm overly-everything when I'm sleepy. Soon, a second shift turned into the third; the third, the fourth, and so on. We'd just ordered pizza around the time people were attempting to send me home, further justifying my existance.

One last backtrack. The festival was spread between two different spaces, each marked with balloons outside the front door. Decorating was one of those morning of details, so I did have some attachment to the balloons. Anyway, post-pizza and waiting for Aaron to return from a small props run he made for children's theatre, a small group (two girls, one really tall guy) walked past, casually popped two ballons, and continued strolling. Impolite, yes, *and* obnoxious, but it happened fast and no one could really do anything. We all continued with our lives, some people in groups and our large collection of "if I go home, I have to do work" people at the front table. Not ten minutes later, the same group of hoodlums casually popped three more balloons.

We all saw how blatant it was, and we all weren't happy with the actions. I stood up, moved brisker than I had all day, and--from later reports--slammed the front door open while yelling, "Excuse me!"

"Excuse me! Do you have a problem with our balloons?" They'd already crossed the alley seperating the Kirksville Arts Building from the City Hall next door, so we stood on either side as they turned and stared at the incredibly short girl yelping at them. "I said, do you have a problem with our balloons? Do they offend you morally? Do you feel they have no rights to exist on those poles?" The absurdity of the situation (trust me, I felt it, too, somewhere floating above everything) caught them off-guard since I didn't receive any snarkiness back. "Um...no? They're...okay," one stumbled out, a fellow short girl, glancing at the others.

"Because it's really annoying with people can't show the decency to respect other people's property." Silence. "Are you sorry?" A tentative "yes" came from the group mouthpiece. "Are you really?" I shot back with a slightly ghetto head toss, though her tone had been truly repentent. This one received the smallest "yes" yet, but was shared with nods from the two others (including the guy who'd actually killed the balloons). "Okay," pause, and then an acknowledgment of the truth, "You can go laugh about me now."

And I spun on my boots and kicked it back to the festival before the trio had even turned around ... right into the small crowd that'd moved outside once they'd seen me take off after the hooligans. I felt like I'd been part of a movie fight, one where all the other rounds of characters chase behind just close enough to see the action, yet not get dragged in themselves. Upon entering the building, I promptly noticed the supreme lack of conversation mixed with utter staring at me, later chalked up to a friend's explanation: "well, you were really loud."

I'm not normally that person. I sometimes get the revolution urge to telling someone exactly what I think, yet I rarely act upon the impulse (generally to positive effects). I'm not even certain who those kids were; I'd guess high school from the blatant wearing of letter jackets, yet they were the wrong colors for townies. Hopefully I didn't scare off prospective students (it was one of the random Saturday visit days), but I don't necessarily want people like that here. No matter what, it was simply a break down in my system. Too much stress and not enough sleep--I'll never be completely certain if it was the best of ideas to take on the lab show, not knowing who else might have stepped in--culminated in a rather poetic end to my week.

I know a few people who freely admit to being scared of what I could do to them, should circumstances fall together, which I've generally taken as a compliment. I mean, I'm a 5'1", 115 lb. chick with no fingernails. What's the worst I can do?

Apparently, yell at you in public in a highly embarrassing fashion. And that's good enough.