Making fun

One part of TALES OF HOFFMANN that I didn't like doing was the moment after Olympia gets busted when we had to all make fun of Hoffmann. (I felt the same way when we put on THE ELIXIR OF LOVE and we made fun of lovestruck Nemorino.) It reminded me of the times people have made fun of me, like the incident I mentioned a few days ago when I got scared at the miner's museum.

Some people dislike others talking about you behind your back.  I don't mind so much, because it means they respect me enough to avoid talking about me in my presence.  When I was in school, there were kids who'd talk about me in the third person right in front of me, as a show of power.  When they saw me coming that would remind them to talk about me!  When they quoted something embarrassing that I'd said, of course, they'd start not with "He said..." but "He goes..."

I remember how these people would be walking along in a group, I'd bicycle past them, and they'd jeer at me every single time.  It was their automatic reaction, really.  It's easier for a grownup to say "Don't let it bother you," but it's really the elephant in the living room.  If it doesn't bother you, he doesn't need to say it.  But if it does, he's just making things worse.

Fellow schoolchildren deliberately being nasty toward me was something I could never deal with.  I'll admit that when I was a kid, ignoring people just never made sense to me.  Does a grownup decide to do nothing about his biggest problem and call that a solution?

All these years later, it still bothers me.  I don't get nostalgic about childhood.  What particularly bothers me is the sense that my feelings were "the weak link":  if only I hadn't been sensitive!  But I WAS sensitive and that's the central fact.