Big Boost To the Ol' Self-Esteem, Thanks...

As if my social anxiety and fear of dealing with other people wasn't bad enough, last night...

I got dumped by a girl I wasn't even dating.

I met "Judy" online in a Y! chat room about 6 weeks or so ago. We had been chatting pretty regularly at night before bed. Nothing super special, general "getting to know you" kind of things that normal people do. Was I considering asking her out? Yeah, possibly... but it's hard for me to work up the nerve for something like that quickly.

Then last night, out of the blue, there was an IM waiting for me when I got home from work. It was pretty short and I don't recall the message verbatim, but she apologized for misleading me because she had an existing boyfriend and was living with him in fact and good-bye.

I was a bit stunned, but I think I was probably just too tired to think on it too hard. It's really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. But the more I pondered it this morning, I got to wondering if it really is me. Am I doing something wrong by simply talking to another human being? Or am I being punished by assumptions made because of my gender?

I think there are certain things in this country that have created problems for guys. I have another anecdote to illustrate this...

A couple of years ago, I was working as an assistant director for a choir group here in town. I knew the director well, most of the people in the organization knew who I was because I was one of its founding performers when the group started in the early 1990s. I really enjoy music and being able to teach others to perform it well also. So I got involved with the younger kids -- this group was 8- & 9-year-olds, mostly -- one night a week for an hour or so of rehearsal time. A few months, I found out that the organization was having to pay a huge chunk extra in liability insurance... solely because I am a man. Everyone else in that kind of position was a woman. They also had to be insured of course, but it was more of the traditional "if you lose a limb, you can't sue" kind of thing. Mine was the extra "Triple P" insurance -- "Possible Pedophile Protection". That alone was enough for me to stop teaching. What's the point of my trying to bring fun & music into the life of kids, especially in an safe and constructive environment, if some people are going to automatically assume that I'm going to grope their kids?

Quite honestly, with all the paranoia out there in America these days, I can't imagine why anyone of the male persuasion would bother becoming a teacher. Because apparently, we're automatically horny goats who want to touch other people's children in bad places! If we really wanted to do that, we'd at least become college professors, where the selection would at least be of (mostly) legal age.

Not that I'm condoning anything of the sort... you horny goats.