no fairytales

It's official. I was voted PTA president tonight. (please hold your applause)

I went in feeling strong, in control, and able. I came out feeling insecure, unsure, and fragile.
I'm not sure why. There were some things I wanted to talk about and asked to have put on the agenda (about 4 times) that were inadvertently left off so I felt off-balance with that, and then ending up feeling overbearing and pushy when I pushed to fit my stuff back in.

I felt alone. I felt Intimidated. (We actually had 20 people show up - a quorum!) In front of all those people I suddenly felt totally insufficient to do this. Which is dumb, I know. It's only a PTA. And I know I'm not an idiot. I have a PhD in a physical science and hold a fairly high level job at a government agency. I've made presentations to international scientists, I've had many papers published, I'm successful on paper.

But ultimately, it doesn't really matter. We're all the same, and we all are so hard on ourselves.

It's just me, again, wanting to be Dan Akroyd to someone else's John Belushi. I'm a great second-guy. I'm not very comfortable being in the front. I know that ultimately it'll all be fine. I just need people to keep telling me that.

So.

Being from Virginia, today's news has left me pretty numb. One of my neighbors has a daughter at Virginia Tech (not to mention MANY teachers at my kids' school and MANY of my co-workers). This daughter was about E's age or younger when we first met them. We (Friend K and I) called our neighbor (the mom) and found out that while daughter is fine, her dormroom was about 20 feet away from the site of the first shooting and she was there at the time. Mom was shaken up and scared but is keeping a good attitude. Daughter is coming home tomorrow after spending the night at someone's apartment out in Blacksburg (NOT in the dorm).

What is there to say? Random senseless horror. Yet it doesn't define today's world. As tempting as it is to fall into the oh so common trap of decrying how horrible we've let thing become in this day and age, I stubbornly believe that we've got it good, relatively speaking. That doesn't mean that horrendous, unspeakable things don't still happen. They do and they always will. It's just startling when they happen so close to home. My kids could end up going there. There are no guarantees in this world. We are not guaranteed a fairytale life, even when we're sure we deserve one.