I belong to a women’s hiking group and we like to travel to fun destinations to hike. There are about 12-15 of us who go on these trips. Everyone gets along very well and we’ve never had any drama or issues. Until this year. We had two ladies drop for different reasons and had 2 spaces open. One of the ladies was offering her spot at half price. The group organizer, we’ll call her Ann, invited an acquaintance of ours we’ll call Betty. I know Betty from other women’s groups and see her about 3 times a week. Betty is ‘different’ and can be brash at times. Ann knows her through me and we all hike together in town with a different group.
For this trip another friend, Cathy, and I had our own room to share in the house at the destination with our own beds. Since Betty only knew Ann and me she asked me if I would switch rooms so she didn’t have to room with someone she didn’t know. I spoke with Cathy and she OKd switching rooms. The 3 of us ended up in the master with a king bed and a double futon. Cathy and I ended up sharing the king instead of having our own beds, which wasn’t a big deal.
The first morning Betty is up very early blow drying her hair with the bathroom door wide open waking Cathy & me up. We were going hiking all day that day so there really was no reason for hair and make up.
That night when we were trying to sleep Betty is talking loudly in our room on her phone. She also would answer her phone at the dinner table and proceed to carry on a loud conversation as we’re all trying to enjoy the meal and table conversation. She never excused herself, just sat there loudly yakking away. She really had no etiquette in that regard.
Betty brought up politics and religion out of the blue with one of the gals, Susie, who is a legal immigrant from another country. Susie told her several times she didn’t want to discuss it. Betty was telling Susie that Susie’s religion doesn’t believe in the true God and they don’t know the truth. That Susie’s religion breeds terrorism and there is only one true God. Betty was also touting the merits of the current US president and her own political party. They were in the back seat of a mini van with 5 other people in the van listening to this. Susie was very upset as Betty would not stop after being asked to do so several times. You could have heard a pin drop in the van. It was very awkward.
Betty also got very angry when we were rafting as she kept hitting one of the girls in the head as she wasn’t using her oar properly. She was very nicely asked to please watch her oar. Betty snapped she was doing it just fine and the other girl (who had rafted many times before and Betty never had) needed to watch her own oar.
At night she always went to bed way before us. One of the nights, when we got to the room to go to bed, we could hear her snoring through the closed door. It was that loud and she could be heard in the next room and down the hall as well. We tried to nudge her. We tried to shake her. We tried calling her name. We tried blasting loud music close to her head. She was on the futon so we picked up one side and dropped it. She didn’t budge. Cathy & I finally had to go to the living room and sleep on the couches. The girls in the other room didn’t get any sleep either due to her extremely loud snoring. We asked her about it in the morning and asked her to please switch rooms as one other gal offered. Betty again got very angry at us, said she doesn’t snore and was snapping at everyone all morning. These are people she just met.
She always made us wait for her to go on our hikes and excursions. One excursion we almost left her as we were all in the vans and she was told a few times we had to go as the tour left at a certain time. We ended up waiting 10 min for her as some of the ladies are too nice and wouldn’t leave her.
She didn’t want to play games with us. She didn’t want to hang out with us. I’m really not even sure why she came with us. She wasn’t super friendly to anyone.
Fast forward 3 weeks and I was driving a group of 5 ladies, including Betty, to a women’s event. Someone asked her how the trip was and she tells them first thing, she didn’t get any sleep and the beds were awful and the night she did get sleep she was forced to move! Wow! You get to go on a trip for half the cost of what the rest of us did. You make it miserable for most of us and now you’re complaining?! I couldn’t believe the nerve. 0918-17
Category: Sports
Sportsmanship When Having Lost
My children have been participating in chess tournaments for a while now. When they enter one, we plan to stay for the entire event; we don’t bail 20 minutes early (before the awards) if they didn’t win one that day. MANY MANY parents do this! (“Oh, you didn’t win – let’s go.”) I’d put the parents who leave early if their kids didn’t win something into eHell, since it’s not sending the kids a good message. I’d consider it bad sportsmanship. Whether my kids win or lose, we stay until the end and applaud the winners. It’s not as fun for the winners if the crowd of 300 dwindles to 40 just before the awards. I understand that people are busy, but it’s only 20 more minutes, and these are 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. events — 20 minutes isn’t _that_ much longer. It certainly doesn’t make my children feel badly to stay for the awards if they didn’t win; if anything, it encourages and excites them — “Someday that will be me!” They have come home after not winning and started working hard so they could win next time — and then they actually did win the next time, so it was a good life lesson all around.
The tournaments I am talking about are in our town, where everyone lives less then 30 minutes away from the site. But last year, our family went to a tournament in a city 90 minutes away, and yes, we still stayed to the end, even though my children didn’t win anything. I wouldn’t have felt like they had fully participated unless they had attended through to the end. Same goes for music competitions — we stay for the awards no matter who won (or didn’t). I just think it’s good form. And they DO get joy from applauding their friends. Many other parents seem to agree — we have a crowd of “regulars” who always stay to the end and cheer for each other’s kids — they all have their winning days and not-winning days, and they take it all in stride.
What do you all think?
(And these awards go 1st to 5th place, per grade level K-12, so about 60 awards are given out to 300 kids. It’s not like it’s just 1 award for 300 kids!) 1111-13