i arrived at work the other day to find a bag of candy had been placed on my chair. underneath the bag of candy was a note telling me i had been "ghosted." the note also instructed me to copy it three times, make up three more bags of treats and distribute them to others who had not previously been ghosted. i would know who had and had not been given treats by the display of a xerox-ed picture of a ghost tacked to their cube wall.
"great," i thought to myself. a chain letter with candy.
my mom sent me something similar about a month ago that instructed me to send dish towels to people on the list. i called her and asked her to please stop the madness. perhaps before the advent of the automatic washer ladies might have welcomed receiving six new dishcloths in the mail. me? my kitchen linen drawer is brim full. and the weekly load of laundry keeps the drawer well stocked with clean towels.
the candy thing, well, i played along. i made up three bags of treats, copied the accompanying poem and doled out my goodies. it was difficult to find three folks that weren't already letting their ghost flag fly. and that's when it hit me.
i was at the bottom of the ghost candy chain. honestly, it hurt my feelings a bit. the poem says you're supposed to give the treats to someone you think is "neat" or "swell" or "the mostest." i don't know, it's very third grade, really.
it was reminiscent of a valentine's day party in grade school. counting the valentine's in your box you realize there are 23 kids in your class and, not counting the valentine you didn't give to yourself, you only have 21 cards. you rack your brain and try to figure out who in the class dislikes you so much to not give you a valentine. because in your 8-year old brain it couldn't possibly be that the offender miscounted or ran out because they had to share a box with their sister. all you can think is that someone's got to really hate you to not give you a 5 cent holly hobbie valentine.
yea...the ghost thing was kind of like that, but with bigger words.
1 comment:
i have often referred to this as 'rudolph syndrome' ( as in all the other reindeer would not let rudolph join in reindeer games). i suffered from this daily as a child. i think it cuts to the bone and hurts just as bad as an adult. in some ways it seems to hurt worse because we are more aware of what it truly means on so many different levels.
i had the same thing happen to me this year when an artist joined my yahoo group all excited about the charm bracelet rr only to scoop up the idea and take it to a different group with players with names that people know, she thought the idea was good enough, just not me and my group of unknown players. ouch. it still stings.
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