Angry young man. Cliché.
I am in a foul mood.
This annoys me: it is not the fault of any particular person, and being pissed off is not good. It is not helped by the fact that about five seconds after I turned on some music, my mother decided to turn on the radio and listen to something that she doesn't particularly like, and therefore require me to turn it off; nor the fact that my headphones have, in the long tradition of my headphones, died, so I now have to listen to things through my left ear only.
It is mostly because the stupid, farcical little squab of pomp and ceremony with which to end a waste of my time that I will be attending later this evening.
Some background: despite my personal theology (or more pointedly, my lack of thereof) I am involved in youth leadership in my synagogue. The reasons behind it are quite complex, as are the politics, but I have been, for the past two years, enroled in a youth-leadership training course, which has been run by Noam, an organisation with which the synagogue is affiliated. Noam does a large variety of things, including running summer camps and Israel Tour trips like the ones I have been on in various summer holidays. (The organisation that I went with, however, was RSY - which adds another layer to the politics. But I won't go there right now.) It also runs various youth clubs for kids, which I am involved with running, and attempts to indoctrinate people, which I am rather less involved with. It also screws us around.
Over the last two years, I have been messed around, let down and crapped on from a very great height indeed. At one point I was organising where and when our meetings were each week - which would have been fine, except the reason I was doing this was because the woman who was being paid to do so was incompetent and we were the ones who were losing out; and, unfortunately, I'm the type of person who will step in and do the things that need doing because I know that no one else is going to. Being very, very unofficially in charge in a de facto way makes things very, very dificult - because I ended up doing the legwork without the time or the resources to do so. The fact that our supposed teacher was routinely late and routinely didn't turn up anyway was irritating enough - but the fact that I'm still beeing messed around by parents who don't seem to be able to talk to me and must communicate via the third-party medium of my mother is still irritating. When I was fourteen? Sure. Closer to seventeen? Not so much.
(It's a similar thing with my babysitting; there is a family who I have had no end of trouble with, because they not only let me down an unacceptable amount but also will try to organise through my parents. If I'm responsible enough to look after their son by myself, surely it's reasonable to expect me to be responsible enough to organise my own life?)
There is more, but I really can't be bothered: explaining it would take too much time and effort, and it's really not worth it. Suffice to say our group has been let down and abused by the synagogue's upper echelons, and by Noam, and by various parents who have interfered and made things worse, and something that could have been wonderful has been ruined beyond repair. Which, to be quite honest, is a crying shame.
In half an hour I'll be expected to smile for the camera and say happy things about it, and I am coming to the conclusion that I may do neither. Leaving a sour taste in everyone else's mouths simply because I've got one in mine feels far too petty, though - but, on the other hand, there are some things that need to be said.
It will be an interesting evening.
This annoys me: it is not the fault of any particular person, and being pissed off is not good. It is not helped by the fact that about five seconds after I turned on some music, my mother decided to turn on the radio and listen to something that she doesn't particularly like, and therefore require me to turn it off; nor the fact that my headphones have, in the long tradition of my headphones, died, so I now have to listen to things through my left ear only.
It is mostly because the stupid, farcical little squab of pomp and ceremony with which to end a waste of my time that I will be attending later this evening.
Some background: despite my personal theology (or more pointedly, my lack of thereof) I am involved in youth leadership in my synagogue. The reasons behind it are quite complex, as are the politics, but I have been, for the past two years, enroled in a youth-leadership training course, which has been run by Noam, an organisation with which the synagogue is affiliated. Noam does a large variety of things, including running summer camps and Israel Tour trips like the ones I have been on in various summer holidays. (The organisation that I went with, however, was RSY - which adds another layer to the politics. But I won't go there right now.) It also runs various youth clubs for kids, which I am involved with running, and attempts to indoctrinate people, which I am rather less involved with. It also screws us around.
Over the last two years, I have been messed around, let down and crapped on from a very great height indeed. At one point I was organising where and when our meetings were each week - which would have been fine, except the reason I was doing this was because the woman who was being paid to do so was incompetent and we were the ones who were losing out; and, unfortunately, I'm the type of person who will step in and do the things that need doing because I know that no one else is going to. Being very, very unofficially in charge in a de facto way makes things very, very dificult - because I ended up doing the legwork without the time or the resources to do so. The fact that our supposed teacher was routinely late and routinely didn't turn up anyway was irritating enough - but the fact that I'm still beeing messed around by parents who don't seem to be able to talk to me and must communicate via the third-party medium of my mother is still irritating. When I was fourteen? Sure. Closer to seventeen? Not so much.
(It's a similar thing with my babysitting; there is a family who I have had no end of trouble with, because they not only let me down an unacceptable amount but also will try to organise through my parents. If I'm responsible enough to look after their son by myself, surely it's reasonable to expect me to be responsible enough to organise my own life?)
There is more, but I really can't be bothered: explaining it would take too much time and effort, and it's really not worth it. Suffice to say our group has been let down and abused by the synagogue's upper echelons, and by Noam, and by various parents who have interfered and made things worse, and something that could have been wonderful has been ruined beyond repair. Which, to be quite honest, is a crying shame.
In half an hour I'll be expected to smile for the camera and say happy things about it, and I am coming to the conclusion that I may do neither. Leaving a sour taste in everyone else's mouths simply because I've got one in mine feels far too petty, though - but, on the other hand, there are some things that need to be said.
It will be an interesting evening.