I have been meeting a lot of new people lately. We are more than halfway through the semester and it feels like I have had a tidal wave of new students looking for a reliable multi-divisional tutor so I have had my free time eaten up by working with students (or working through the newer textbooks myself just to make sure that I am up-to-date on my information). At the main job, the fall temps are leaving come November and the new temps are coming in for the winter, which is still essentially a skeleton staff since our events are highly concentrated around the holidays and then nothing for months. They've also been sending me to dance classes to refresh and learn new things. It sounds silly, but it's been very helpful, and I've been pushing for it for a long time since I am their only full-time performer and that kind of makes me the star of the show (which is the lie I tell myself to make me feel better about my job, which is actually not a bad job, but I am so deeply ashamed of it). And then I've been trying to get familiar with my future students at the new dance studio, sitting in on classes or guest teaching when I am able.
There are many new people in my life.
And new people mean a bunch of different things: more anxiety, more bullshit, more explanations I need to make, more nasty comments. I've been bracing myself and my family's been scolding me for being so tense lately. But surprisingly, most people have been pretty good, pretty accepting. By general rule too, the younger the person, the better they are about it. My future students have all been good, a couple asked if my scars hurt or how I got them. New temps have been annoying, but they always are, mostly because I'm in makeup a lot so they don't see them right away and then they act all shocked and horrified because they didn't know. But one new guy is being exceptionally obnoxious and trying to spread the rumor that they're self-inflicted for sympathy (and I say "trying" because fortunately everyone knows me well enough to know better). My students usually find me through Dad so they already know what they're getting into with me. But it's the 40+ yr olds that can't behave themselves or keep their mouths shut.
I can't even keep track about how many say really nasty things about me while I am STANDING RIGHT THERE. How I shouldn't be allowed out in public. How they won't take a class if I'm teaching it because they can't take me seriously. How I should have the decency to get "some kind of surgery.' How no one could be expected to look at me for a whole class period. Really nasty things. It's like high school all over again.
People have no boundaries either. One guy grabbed my face a few nights ago when I was teaching foxtrot (adult group) as a guest teacher (regular had an emergency) to see if they were real and what they felt like. First of all, I have to know you and like you to let you touch me and secondly, you don't touch my face unless I consider you family, and that's a grand total of five people. Needless to say, this guy is not one of them. I almost decked him. He got pissed off at me though when I pulled away and told him that wasn't acceptable, not to do it again. He made a complaint. Fortunately, the studio sided with me but I'm already getting complaints before I even start working there as a regular and I'm already rather stressed thinking that the studio will reconsider my job (and of course they will if I make enough people complain about me, if only because they're uncomfortable looking at me or can't keep their hands to themselves, ugh for customer-is-always-right mentality). And if these people sign up for my classes, I can't say no. And if these people go to the management and say that they won't sign up for my classes because of me, then I really may lose my job, even if it's not my fault.
Like I said, new people = stress. And I should be really happy. I have a plan for the next year to keep a relatively steady income and yet.... The bullshit. I'm so tired of it.
