Self-Image…how authentic is it?

There is a widely-held belief… okay, I believe that I can handle anything, coolly, with no drama.

I am the one who gets it done, (albeit that’s when I want to get it done) when others have shrunk from the task and I am left alone to face it…I will get it done! Easily, correctly, with poise and sophistication, the task is completed…by me. That’s the myth.

Reality reared its ugly head last evening when I was tabling for my anti-drug and alcohol group at a local back to school night. The group’s fearless leader and I had set up the pamphlets and books, flyers and sign-up sheet…always looking for new members. We had distributed lanyards and run out of flashlights on strings that converted to pens. We had recommended particular flyers to parents based on the ages of their children. We had each greeted people that we knew from around town and chatted pleasantly. Oh, and did I mention that we were set up dead center in the main hallway. In other words, we were impossible to miss. At that point, Val, our “fearless leader”, walked nonchalantly away from the table, about 15 to 20 feet, turned around and gestured toward the floor near my feet. She said something to the guidance counselor, who was set up across the hall from us that sounded like: there it is. I had been in conversation with a parent at that point. My eyes moved in the direction she had indicated and I very calmly and collectedly shrieked at such a high pitch that I hurt my own ears. Yeah, there was no calm and certainly no poise. What was the cause of such an outburst? A tiny, furry creature about the size of one joint of my finger, an extremely tiny mouse. The mouse turned and scurried in the opposite direction, someone called the custodian. By then I had pulled myself together and was beyond embarrassed at my antics. Val was laughing and claiming that my scream had saved her from doing the same thing.

Now the custodian emerges with a broom and a dustpan on a long handle. Another woman and I both say to him: Don’t kill it. He makes a U-turn and announces that if we want it alive then we can catch it. That would not be me…another woman produces a plastic cup from the refreshment table and a piece of cardboard and begins attempting to corral the mouse. The mouse scurries under the crack in the door of the broom closet, where he remained for quite some time, only to emerge and squeeze his tiny body under the door of the cafeteria entrance, which was probably where he had been in the first place.

I am sure that I will never know what became of him/her and if the cafeteria workers had the pleasure of his company the following morning. All that I know is, I can no longer believe that I show “Grace under pressure.” How very disappointing.

Wordsmith647