Wheatzie

I have such a raging Type A personality now in my mid-forties that I get things done well before their deadlines.  It annoys most people because I brag about it all the time. Like, I’ll be in a teacher’s meeting and suggest that we move dates up: “Why wait until January 5 th to finalize grades for the quarter? Why doesn’t everyone just have them in before we leave for Christmas Break like I do to make it easier on the secretary since she’s the one who has to print the hard copies?”   I put that phrase “like I do” in italics because I hope it helps you to visualize how I drop my voice a hundred octaves and flare my nostrils self-importantly when I say something like that.   It sounds more like “LIKE IIIIIIIIIIIIIII DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” in the obnoxious tone of a braying beast. It reminds me of this annoying girl who lives a couple of neighborhoods over from me. I call her the town hag and I try to avoid her, but in a small-ish city like ours, you can’t help but r

I used to be one of those people that things just happened for. It was part of the innocent charm I was born with:  without even realizing I was doing it, I simply believed good things would happen for me, and they did.  I’ve mentioned before that I was a person who ambled through life wearing rose-colored glasses, stopping to smell every flower.  I didn’t think about failure.   I didn’t really think about anything. I walked blissfully through life, letting good things befall me because I didn’t question that they would.   And they always did. My friends both marveled at it and hated me for it. Senior year of high school, I had no doubt that I would be voted homecoming queen.   So when the assistant principal’s voice crackled through the intercom and she started announcing the ten girls who had been chosen by their peers to be on homecoming court, I sat back in my chair and waited patiently.   I knew I would hear my name.   I wasn’t even stressed when she got to the ninth name