Most teen and preteen girls probably know exactly what I
mean. If you even dare to do something
different, like, oh, I dunno, carrying a plastic food-storage bag full of neon
pink wool around in your bag, some popular girl will laugh at you.
I am
very sorry to say that I am guilty of carrying that aforementioned plastic
food-storage bag of wool in my book bag.
There is
nothing better than being able to say that the sweater I crocheted is made out
of one hundred percent personally hand-spun wool. And I love nothing better than to be able to
do something that few others can do. This
should be a common occurrence in the knit/crochet community. Spinning rocks!
Perhaps
my situation is more peculiar to the outsider when right next to that bag o'
wool I have a homemade spindle. I have
to admit that the spindle is lopsided and doesn't spin right, and the wool
catches on the unsanded edges of the wood.
But my father made that spindle for me, and I love it.
I don't
spin because I'm some strange and mysterious person. I don't spin because I have to. I spin because I'm bored. When someone's talking to me at the library I
could be seen spinning. When I'm waiting
for something to be done, I'm spinning.
When
I'm at the library, about to go to a library movie night, just waiting for it
to finish being set up, I will be spinning.
And there you go. I've come to my
complaint.
When
two seemingly popular girls are waiting too, and you pull out your lopsided
spindle and plastic bag of wool, they have to laugh at you. It's in their social contract. What else would they do to pass the time
other than laugh at someone who's doing something productive? If they haven't noticed, when I'm done I'll
have a nice pink ball of wool. When
they're done texting their friends about the weird girl with a sheep in her bag,
they will have absolutely nothing but bad karma.
I was
starting to get a little uncomfortable with the whole situation. They were texting someone on their
phones-probably all of their equally-popular-non-spinning friends telling them
what a weirdo they had to wait with-and I was spinning away. So then I decided to break the ice by saying
something funny. My list of wool-related
jokes is not very long, so I said the first slightly funny thing that popped
into my head. "I'm the only person
I know who carries a sheep around in her bag." I thought it was great. The best wool-themed joke I have ever come up
with.
But did
they feel the same? Heck no! They looked at me like I had an extremely
catchy case of consumption-clearly the malady of choice for people whose hobbies are still stuck in the 18th century. They might have even taken a couple of steps
back. I honestly wouldn't have been
surprised to hear them say something like, "That short girl with a bag of
pink lint is trying to communicate with us."
I
wouldn't have cared so much when they didn't laugh at my sheep joke if they
didn't have to whisper and giggle behind their hands, all while obviously
looking at me out of the corner of their eyes.
So,
from now on, I won't waste my wool-related humor on people whose interests are
dictated by the most popular person in the group and limited to OMG and LOL. I'll just share my jokes with people who
actually think that wool-humor is the best thing ever.
At
least I can feel sort of happy that, even though I was laughed at, I will still
have a nice fuzzy pink ball of yarn and all they'll have is a couple of
texts.
