Miss Reid, It Wasn't Enough

When I was tenish I was playing in my Grandma's backyard with my cousins.  I have quite a few cousins who are right around my age so we made quite a gang.  A gang like that needs organizing, so, as I often did, I organized everyone.  Unfortunately, I organized whatever it was we were playing to my benefit.  It seems like we were doing wagon rides or something and I was getting more rides than the other kids. We were taking turns pushing each other I guess.

I can't recall now who was pushing the wagon, but as it careened across the patio and past the sliding glass door, my Uncle Hack stuck his head out and hollered, "Hey, how come it seems like Tonia is always the one riding in the wagon?  That doesn't seem fair!"

Immediately I hopped out of the wagon and reorganized the game so that I had fewer rides than the other kids.  I was mortified that someone would think that I was mean or took advantage of other people.  It changed my whole life in fact.  A few years later when I was organizing my neighborhood friends to do a backyard play, I took great care to give the starring role to another girl.  I retained the part of director, but I figured that giving up the glam job of  leading lady was keeping things fair. 

It seems reasonable that his was not the only comment ever made to me about my leadership style.  I must have been called bossy by a lot of people.  I guess you could say that Uncle Hack wasn't even saying I was bossy, just unfair, but I lumped it in with all the other, "Tonia, you're too bossy," comments.  In fact his comment cut right through to my heart and have stayed with me for about 30 years becoming the representative memory of all the times I was told that I was too bossy.

I kept right on taking charge of things though. I don't think I could stop myself.  It must have been pretty noticeable too because when I was in the ninth grade, my history teacher, the adored Miss Reid, told me I should run for student council because I was a "good leader."  

I told her that it would never happen because, "Student council is about being popular, not about being a good leader."

I didn't even try student leadership for another five years when I went off to CMU.  Then I was elected to be the floor rep for my hall council when I was a freshman. Later I took on many other leadership roles including being not only a resident advisor, but one who trained other RAs. 

So it seems like I got over the comments about being too bossy and even took the good in the comment from my uncle and tried to be fair while I was being bossy.  I practiced what my mother called, "The art of letting other people have your own way." They were happy, I was happy, things were good.

And then some jerk, whose opinion means NOTHING to me, told me that in our group of friends everyone always did whatever I suggested and no one else was allowed to have ideas or steer the group in any direction that wasn't mine. This person is a whiney, immature, ego maniac, and somehow he was still able to instantly kick my butt back to being ten years old.  I wouldn't plan or organize anything straightforwardly again.  I ceased to be a real and decisive leader.  Immediately.

This time there was no Miss Reid to give me the power to lead and somehow I haven't become adult enough to take the power for myself. I never, or rarely, feel like it's my place to say something. I usually go find someone else, tell them my idea and then convince them to bring it to the group. I do it both with friends and coworkers.

I've been thrashing around for a conclusion to this post for about thirty minutes now. You might be able to tell by the length.  I don't know what the final observation should be.  I don't know if people without clearly defined authority given to them by a position or title should just take charge.  I don't know if adults even want to be organized by their peers in the same way that kids do.  

I don't know.  I don't know a lot.  I do like to think though that I'm not bossy because mean goes with bossy.  I just have a lot of ideas and I get excited about them and I want to try them out. What do I do with all of those ideas if I don't share them?