invisible man

people can be so rude here at times. this weekend was a bit of a culmination of that. friday night i was at gpscy (the grad school bar) and i was in a hallway where people hang coats. there were a couple of guys near me in the hallway, and one backed into me, spilled my drink all over me, then looked at me and said "it isnt that bad." i was appalled. i stood there staring at him for a second, waiting for an 'excuse me' or and 'im sorry' or a 'hey, let me get you another drink,' but instead, he said nothing aside from the fact that being doused with a cosmopolitan 'isnt that bad.' i wanted to throw the rest of my drink (well, the 1/3 of it that was left) in his face, but i couldnt bring myself to be that mean. then, the next day, on the way to the gym, i stopped at urban to return a couple things. the doors were locked. i thought maybe i was just being a klutz, so i tried to open them again. locked. i looked at the hours on the front door. i looked at my cell phone. nope… it was definitely 11 32am and the store shouldve opened at 11. there were workers chatting at the register who motioned to me that they'd be at the door in a second. a few minutes later, some bitch comes slowly sauntering up to the door, unlocks it, doesnt open it for me, and never says 'o, sorry for the delay' or 'we had to open late due to x.' when i get to the register, two workers stare blankly at me until i finally say 'i need to return some things.' they still say nothing. i put my things out on the counter. neither of them ever say 'sorry you had to wait' or 'how can i help you?' instead, we proceed through the transaction saying nothing. i want to tell them how terrible their customer service is, and that i couldve done their job better at age 13 (when i actually helped out at a children's clothing store) than they were doing at 23. but it just wasnt worth wasting my breath. i just wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible. and to top it off, when i got home from the gym, someone was coming out of the lobby door that leads from the lobby of my building to the elevator. the door is locked, and a guy looks me in the face and lets the door slam behind him in my face. when he hears it slam (as he's still in the lobby), he says nothing. no apology. no excuse me. just nothing.

i have to admit that one thing i like about the north is that i dont have to smile at everyone and i dont have to chat everyone up b/c no one does that for me. but i do still hold doors for people; i do still say 'excuse me' when i bump into someone even if it isnt my fault. in fact, i even blurted out 'excuse me' to the guy who spilled my drink all over me, until i realized what had happened and waited for him to reciprocate via his response. i can be impolite in many ways — rude, abrasive, outspoken. but most of the time, it isnt intentional. and most of the time it is with people who know me better than just as a rude or abrasive person. im not rude to strangers. i go out of my way. i just wish people could learn some basic manners here. it just makes you a better person.

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and in other news, im reading anna seghers' the seventh cross. it was written in the 1930s; it was begun before german crematoria had been constructed, but the narrative about an escapee from a labor camp implies the evil that the main character wouldve faced if he hadnt escaped. it was so gripping in the first thirty pages, i had to read the last few pages to know if he lived or not. my whole body would tense when reading sections about his escape route.

i have weird survivor's guilt when reading about the holocaust. i dont know why; it just makes me feel terrible that im not going more relief work in poor countries, or that i didnt really know what was happening in rwanda in '94 until years later. i had to pep-talk myself before sleeping that i was not in danger of the SS pounding on my door at 2am and that there are ways i can do something good for other people through design. regardless, i still had nightmares that i was in a country where the holocaust was impending and that i was persecuted: as funny as it might sound, i dreamt i was at william and mary, in the sunken gardens, borrowing a list of 'safe' professors from an SS guard, and copying the names down in the hope that they could offer me refuge. admittedly, i go a little crazy when i read about the holocaust and WWII. while reading this novel, i imagined how we could hide people in our house in richmond if something like this were to ever happen; i wondered if we would take people in. the worst part about my craziness is that i only read 100 pages last night; i still have 300 to go, and i dont really want nightmares for the next three nights. i didnt think it would affect me this badly…it certainly got to me pretty badly in late high school and undergrad when i was reading about the holocaust obsessively and taking a class on its representation, but i thought that was water under the bridge. does anyone else deal with this? am i the only wasp-y-perfectly-safe-well-educated-american-girl who has this strange and terrifying guilt?