Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Apparently I Got Assertive

As I was cleaning out my dresser drawer the other day I found another letter. This time, from me to Bill via email. From the date on it I know it was in January of the toughest year I ever had in the classroom. I had the most unruly, rude and dysfunctional class of my career. Even today as I think about this group, I shudder. Bill, who was used to a wife who came home with a big smile on her face, was shocked to see the change in my behavior. What used to be a rhetorical question, "How was your day?" became something he hesitated to ask. He was used to hearing, "Great!" That year the answer was usually, "Awful!" or 'Horrible!" or something more detailed but always unpleasant. He would visibly flinch when I answered. It continued to surprise him no matter how many days we were into the school year. It was a year to be forgotten. After the group left me, I watched them torment teachers for the next five years. And that was after my two worst students moved away! From the letter I can tell that there was a day in January when Bill had a hissy fit about something, or committed some financial treachery of which I disapproved, and ran off to passive-aggressively punish me by gambling. I wrote, printed out and saved the following email. What surprises me about it is the date. It wasn't until June of that year I discovered that he had been gambling so much that he had taken $80,000 from a joint account we had set up for remodeling the house, and he had only put $59,000 in it. But here is the message from January 28: Dear Bill, You seriously blew it this afternoon. How quickly you have forgotten that this year is NOT about you; it is about me. I am doing all I can to unload my horrible class and until I have some satisfaction in that area, you are to support me. There is no negotiating here. I will not be speaking to you until I have a note from you, in writing, saying that you will put your ego behind you and help me out. There will be no more temper tantrums, no more running off to gamble because you are pissed, no more ignoring your phone. You need to be supportive of me in ways you have not done before. I will not be backing down on this. You are losing the best friend you have ever had and if I were you, I would seriously consider what you just did. I will not deal with this babyish bullshit. I have now contacted lawyers. Cindy> I don't remember contacting lawyers at that time in our marriage. But I wouldn't have lied about having done it. Did I get an apology in writing? I must have because he didn't like the silent treatment. Not one bit. I can't remember what he did but it must have been horrible for me to have written a message THIS assertive.

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