memory lane monday

Last night it was brought to my attention that there are a couple of people who think that I'm one the most annoying people in the WORLD. Apparently I'm too opinionated, I constantly have to be a part of whatever conversation is going on, and I laugh too much. I don't deny any of this. I do have opinions, but where I come from, girls are encouraged to have opinions. I love being an active participant in conversations (but, in my defense, for the last 3 years I have gone to school with 350 people who talk just as much, if not more, than I do). I do laugh a lot, but when did it become a crime to enjoy life?

I find it ironic that I happened to hear these news last night. Yesterday, the lesson I taught in primary was about how Joseph Smith was persecuted and yet he always forgave those who persecuted him. We had been having some problems with a couple of the girls in the class who apparently were not getting along very well. One was being mean to the other and neither one felt she was in the wrong. So I told them a story about me when I was in 6th grade.

At that time there was this girl that sat by me, and I absolutely could not stand her. She was soooo annoying. But our teacher would not move us apart from one another. The teacher insisted that we learn how to get along. One day, after a particularly difficult morning, our teacher made the two of us go out into the hall to talk until we could figure out our differences. So we went out and just stared at each other for a while. Eventually the girl opened up and said that she thought I was being mean to her, that my friends and I were always making fun of her, and that she was having a hard time because her mom didn't want to be a mother anymore so she was living with her grandmother. I was shocked. I had no idea what she was going through and that I had done anything to bother this girl, but I had. I realized that I was the one that needed to apologize to her. We never became super good friends, but from that day on whenever she started to annoy me, it was easier to deal with.

I then told the class that we shouldn't be mean to the people that are mean to us. Instead, we should try to be as kind as we can. We never know what that person is going through, or why they are behaving they way that they are. So when Luis told me what these guys had said about me, the first thing that came into my head was, "This is exactly what I had been talking to the kids about this morning." Although I really wasn't mad at these guys for thinking this way, it did make me stop to think about how many other people may be thinking this about me. I'm sure that there are probably a lot of people out there who don't like me, but this is who I am. I can't really change that. And fortunately, I think that most of the people that I come into contact with don't hate me (I do have 509 Facebook friends, after all).