Not Big With the Sympathy

"Where's your sympathy?"
-Mom

On occasion, my mother has called me, usually jokingly, heartless. I’m not big on “ooh, that’s too bad” stuff when people complain. Why? Because of things like Saturday.

Katherine stopped by the bar for a while, along with a smattering of SCWP folk. One of whom is in the masters program and I’ve known her for a while. To be honest, I’m not a big fan. Let me explain: drama. On Saturday, Katherine and another gal were feeling badly for her, they even got her a shot out of sympathy. When this gal went out for a cigarette, I went out to pick up glasses from the patio and asked her about why she was so stressed.

I got a laundry list of every little problem she had, like the pump on her swamp cooler went out, her car’s having problems, her mom’s coming to visit and her house is messy, she’s so busy with SCWP, and she’s got a lot of school deadlines due at the end of the month. By the way, these school deadlines are her finishing up coursework for classes she took a semester or two ago and currently has an incomplete in. I was in one of those classes, I don’t think it was that overwhelming. Yeah, she works full time. Great. Um, so do I, and during the semester we had a class together, I think that was her only class (I took two). She doesn’t even have time-absorbing kids as an excuse. The best part was how she whined about not being able to even have the summer off because of SCWP (which is one month of the three of break). As I write this, I’m trying to remember the last time I had three months in a row where I didn’t have to go to work. I think it was middle school. Anyhow, during her litany, I nodded and said “yeah” and then tried to walk back inside. She kept right on talking. Yeesh. I wanted to tell her “Get the hell over it already, most of these problems are of your own making anyway.”

Then, on the other hand, we have Julia. She works three-four nights a week at the bar, including the occasional killer 2:30 p.m. – 2:00 a.m. (if she’s lucky) shift. She also works around thirty + hours as a caretaker, and she’s been taking classes. She finally got her bachelor’s on May 5th and had the whole week off of work for it. The week before she was looking forward to getting some housework done. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the chance. Her brother’s new baby died, SIDS strikes again, and she spent the week in Kansas for the funeral. Instead of getting a chance to have some time to herself and celebrate her degree, she got to spend some time with family, grieving over her nephew’s death. While she told me what happened, and I could tell how sad she was, she did not go on and on about how her life sucks.

Isn’t it funny how the people who complain the most are often those that have the least to complain about?