A Regrettable GM [very long post]

Today I had an unfortunate experience, my own fault mostly. Thought I'd share it, partly in case it will prove helpful to others but mostly just to air it for my own benefit in coming to terms with it.

I was at a public venue, performing solo instrumental music as an unpaid volunteer, and I had been almost late arriving due to a storm. So I was tense. It is a setting where there is no seated audience, just people of all walks of life walking around and occasionally coming close enough to hear.

Two girls, from their height and clothing appearing to be about 16 or so, walked past at one point and started singing off key at the tops of their lungs, louder than I was playing, using melodies, if they could be called that, having nothing to do with what I was playing.

I ignored them, and they turned around, walked past again, and did the same thing again. This time I lost my temper, stopped playing, and yelled at them, "Thanks so very much," in a very sarcastic voice that carried to more distant onlookers who hadn't seen what had happened, thus earning some stares and scowls for myself.

The girls immediately stopped in their tracks, looked stunned, and started to apologize. I turned away from them, ignored their attempts at being sorry, and started playing again, from where I had left off.

They eventually gave up trying to apologize and walked off, much subdued.

I stayed angry for several minutes, but as I kept playing I began to realize that the severity of my reaction was uncalled for and inappropriate. Of course, what they had done was certainly inappropriate too, but that was really no excuse for my behavior.

About twenty minutes later, they came close and stood waiting politely till I was done with the current piece. Then they approached and asked if they could talk to me. I was over the heat of my anger by then, but in no mood to be chatty and nice yet, so I replied in a very reasonable and businesslike way that yes they could talk to me, that the reason I had yelled was that I felt they had been making fun of my music, especially by reversing course and doing it twice, and that I was an unpaid volunteer who was under stress at that particular time. Then I listened attentively as they tried to explain their point of view of what had happened.

First, they said that they actually enjoyed my music and were sorry to have 'interfered' with it. They explained that the reason they had walked past twice was not to repeat their 'performance' as I had inferred, but because they had realized at that instant that they were going the wrong direction, and that their 'singing' had in some sense been an attempt to 'sing along' with what I was playing, not make fun of it.

While they explained, I realized that they were rather younger than I had first surmised. In fact, they appeared to be in the extreme top end of my AOA at about 14, and seemed like kids I might have found attractive in other circumstances.

Reassured that I was no longer angry with them (though I wasn't being very friendly yet either), they left. In the distance, I saw them hook up with a man they called to as 'Grandpa.' I figured that was the end of the episode.

Nope! About an hour later I went into a nearby cafeteria-style restaurant, and guess who gets in line right behind me?!? That's right, the two girls. As we slowly went through line, I struck up a conversation with them. First, I apologized for yelling at them. Then I told them that when I was their age, I had had 'run-ins' with adults who reacted much as I had reacted to them earlier, and that I had not appreciated being treated that way. That I had never intended to tick these adults off, much as the girls had said they hadn't intended to tick me off. And that I had not appreciated as a teenager being treated like a little tiny kid by these adults. Then I asked their ages.

Imagine my shock when they turned out to be eleven and twelve! My mouth must have dropped open a mile. Especially because the eleven year old was nearly as tall as I was and looked at least fourteen. The other one, once she had told me, I could see actually did look some sort of twelve.

Then something happened that is very rare in my experience. The twelve year old said, "I know we were acting silly, and part of what happened before was just us being silly. We're really sorry we made you feel upset." Then she reached out and patted my shoulder, as though comforting a lost dog!

By this time we had reached the end of the line. I told them goodbye in friendly fashion, found a table, and they took their to-go order and left. I figured this time for SURE I would never see them again.

Incredibly, about an hour later, I was walking back through the venue where I had played the music, and here they were again, coming toward me at a diagonal. Our paths were not going to cross, but as they started to leave the area, they both waved in very friendly fashion. I waved back.

In a sense, I had 'made friends' with them in spite of my initial reaction. So in that sense, the whole episode was positive.

But I have dwelt on my internal and external reactions a great deal since leaving the area: If two five-year-olds had done what they did, I would not have reacted in anger at all. I would have chalked it up to immaturity and even smiled at them. My initial reaction was based in part on my misinterpretation of their ages. I had first mistaken them for sixteen year olds, and had interpreted their actions as though they had been committed by sixteen year olds. What would my initial reaction have been had I known their actual ages? What they did was still rude, even for girls eleven and twelve, but that's also young enough to suggest some level of excuse based on immaturity.

And yet, their action in coming back to make a further attempt at apology, after I had brushed off their initial one, suggested a great deal of maturity of a sort. They didn't have to do this. I know their Grandpa had not witnessed the initial confrontation, so he was no factor in their decision to apologize. Even if they told him what happened, and he suggested an attempted apology, their first attempt would have satisfied that. The fact that they tried a second time, unprompted, on their own, as though it really mattered to them to make peace with me, was impressive. And then in spite of my earlier anger, and then unfriendliness, to be able to hold a civilized and fairly sophisticated conversation with me, as intelligence talking to intelligence, not traditional 'kid to adult,' capped it all off. I am in some sense amazed at this whole sequence of events.

I want to emphasize that there were no sexual overtones at any time, in any of the interchange. Even when we got friendly at last, in the restaurant, there was no flirting, no coyness, nothing other than trying to deal with a situation that had started out badly, trying to make it all right after all.

How many adults would take the trouble to do that!?!?!

--Jensman