I Am Rude

It is raining!! Great joy in the kampground. The flowers in my garden have their faces lifted to the heavens, so happy for the nice cool drink.

Me, I am ecstatic! No swimmers, a day off. I can clean my house and lounge in front of the TV with a dog or two nestled close. I can read blogs uninterrupted, I can cook a decent meal. Lest I get carried away with all the possibilities, I must remind myself that I am still open for business and will still need to answer the phone. Can't have everything, you know.

Yesterday was grueling. The heat was stifling and I could not seem to catch a minute for myself. As the day was coming to an end, I had an RV come in and as I was checking them in, a group of swimmers arrived. I asked if I could help them (just like I always do) and they expressed a desire to swim. I reminded them that the pool would be closing in just an hour, in case they wanted to wait for another day, but they were intent on paying to swim.

I left my overnight guests filling out the registration and turned my full attention to the swimmers. The first girl reached out with a handful of change. I counted it and found $2.50 in dimes and 2 quarters. I told her it added up to $3. She insisted it was $3.50. I showed her that it was only $3, but she would not look at the handful of change, just maintained eye contact with me.

I wanted to finish this transaction and be on to my campers, so I told her that $3 would be fine, since they had such a short time to swim. I extended the discount to the entire group, they all paid and I assigned a site to my campers. Did not give it another thought. One of the group came in and got snocones and I divided myself between the office and my kitchen in order to put together a meal.

I called HeWho in to eat and we were able to finish a meal almost uninterrupted. Phone rang while we were clearing the table and HeWho hates to answer the phone took it ....... I was cleaning up the kitchen.

It was the mother of the group of young people who had come out to swim. She wanted to complain about my rudeness. She said I was very rude to her children and indicated to HeWho that we were rude to these young people because they are racially mixed. When he asked for details about my rudeness, none were forthcoming. He then asked her why she had blocked her phone number ( like the rest of the world, we have caller ID) and she insisted that she NEVER blocked her number and would give him her name and number.

I gave the incident some thought and could not think of any rudeness on my part. Don't get me wrong, I can be the master of rudeness when the situation calls for it. I was busy, handling two transactions at once, but I do that all the time. I admit that I did think the change givers were hoping I would not actually count it. Maybe the first one really did think that her change added up to $3.50. I have found the young people here lacking in basic math skills. I tried to recall any slight on my part and honestly cannot think of a thing.

So, I called the mother back. I started out by apologizing that they felt I had been rude. I asked what exactly I had done to give the impression of rudeness. She said that I was mad because they used change and that I did not want to count it. This made no sense at all, since I did count it. Why would I not count it? Counting change does not bother me. If I had not wanted to count the change, I would have blindly accepted what was handed to me. She did not bring up her racial issue, since HeWho handled that. She asked him if he had a problem with "mixed" children, so he asked her if she had a problem with our 3 black granddaughters.

Beyond saying I did not want to count change, she had nothing. She told me that her family would never be here to swim again and that she had heard things about me being rude to others. I told her that I was sorry she felt that way and that, once again, I apologized for anything that her children may have construed as rude behavior on my part. I was hoping to end with that, but she was vicious, kept saying what a bad person I was, that she had heard about me. I hung up.

I hate phone calls like that. I am not at all worried about her family boycotting my pool. I am pleased that she will be staying away. But, I wondered what she had heard about me and my rude ways. The only thing I can come up with is the incident with the not paying tenant. You will recall that I pulled the plug and evicted the woman who was not a registered guest. She had expressed that she could not believe what I was doing and I encouraged her to believe and spread the word.

If this woman and her offspring are friends with the squatter, well, let me just say this is an element of local society that I really do not want in my park anyway.