Hear Me Roar!

Tonight we are celebrating the 7th anniversary of Stories on the Square Gwinnett which Mike and I co-founded and emcee. To add to the festivities this evening, we have ordered a full sheet of Biba's tiramisu! Every month we have a suggested theme for the stories, just a suggestion, any story is okay to tell. And I guess we should have picked for this month's theme - copper or wool which are the traditional gifts for 7th anniversaries according to Google, or maybe 7 year itch or just anniversary, but instead, we got to thinking about the month of March and the expression March comes in like a lion, and came up with our suggested theme for March 2020 - hear me roar!

       Well, I don't usually know what story I'm going to tell at the time we announce the theme - sometimes I can't even think of one until the weekend before the event. And I've been pondering and scratching my head over what to tell for hear me roar! So far, four thoughts have come to mind - there's my post from January 2nd called Red All Over where my Mom roared with a Letter to the Editor - it was not published but she was assured it had brought about a change. What an example of  the pen is mightier than the sword. And it follows that stories are equally powerful!
       The second thought is to give a recap of our seven years of storytelling in Gwinnett - our venues, themes, sense of community - hear us roar into our next year!     
        The third story that came to mind is the one I will probably tell tonight, and upon checking the Sharp Stick in the Eye blog, I see it has already been written up in Pay Day - it involves the agar factory and the noise I made after the manager was being a bigger jerk than usual one pay day afternoon.
        And the fourth anecdote I may slip in between other people's stories tonight while sharing the emcee duties with my dear Hubby. Thinking about it today has inspired me to write it down here and get back to posting on this blog!
       A co-worker of mine at one of the Buffalo labs I worked at back in the seventies was very bright and articulate. After just a few months at the lab she was able to write up the work she was doing and got college credit for it as an independent study class! On top of everything else going on in her life, my co-worker was planning an elaborate wedding and applying to several grad schools. She totally had her act together.
      Well, one Monday morning, I asked her how her weekend had been, and she said she had spent part of Saturday at an assertiveness training class!  Now, I did not think she needed any help being assertive, but a self-improvement class would be just the kind of thing she would sign up for in the little bit of spare time she had during the week. But before I could get that thought formulated in my brain, my co-worker bitterly complained that the class was a waste of her time - she did not see how anything that was being said or done in that class would improve her assertiveness - and so at some point during the training, she announced that she wanted her money back, she would be leaving, and clearly there was nothing more this class was going to be able to teach her about being assertive! She got her money back.

      And since then, I've gotten a chuckle every time I remember my co-worker who was assertive enough to demand her money back from an assertiveness training class!

20200303 28 hear me roar