Irate Parents

I hate conflict. When it happens - when someone exerts themselves on me, with arms swinging (metaphorically or not) - I'm very bad at keeping my cool and dealing with it in a rational and tactful way. From early adolescence I - strongly - haven't liked being backed into a corner, likely, at that age, when I was bullied. Luckily that doesn't happen so often as an adult, but it still happens - conflict. And I'm poor at dealing with it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to be a teacher, and as I already work in education, I have to deal with parents - some of which will inevitably come at me - verbally - with great hostility. And precisely that happened today.

Long story short, when someone is acting irately towards me, I just sort of freeze up, and all those witty comebacks that I can think of 15 minutes later don't come out, and that smarmy presence of self-justification I should have just evaporates. Today, all I could do was come back at this irate mother with ill-thought-out words, and a strange smirk, both of which didn't over over well when she was talking to my boss later on the phone.


I'm going to have to work on this.


Maybe I should start a few fights (-;