My Bad

Last week, during a meeting at a women’s club I belong to, I got my fingers slapped by the club president. Another member, who lives in Hamburg (over an hour away) sent out a general invitation saying, if anyone felt like it or had the time, she was giving a brunch the next weekend and she’d love to see us. I didn’t respond to the invitation because we get general invitations from various people or other clubs all the time; other than going to our monthly meetings, I am not interested in attending other activities.

It turned out that not directly responding to the invitation was a nono. During last week’s meeting, the president spoke sharply to us all (looking the whole time directly at me), basically saying the invitation warranted a response and “even a child would know better”. I reacted as I always try to when I make a mistake; I apologised and said I hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Then I dismissed the matter. The fact that the president was quite bitchy about the situation didn’t concern me; it was her problem after all.

Last night, a good friend of mine (who was not at the meeting) said another friend of ours (who was at the meeting) called her up and ranted on to her for two hours about a situation. It seems that this ranting friend assumed I hadn’t registered the insult and she was really upset at the president for using such bitchy tactics. This resulted in our ranting friend carrying around her upset for the last week and having to talk herself blue before letting it go. I am not sure what is more of a insult, the bitchy critique on the part of the president or my friend’s underestimation of my language competence.

P.S. I've just reread this story and it does seem wandering and convoluted.
P.P.S. After living and working in Germany for nearly 25 years, my German is fluent, though grammatically inaccurate. Unfortunately, my command of the English language has diminished abysmally over the years. Oh, how I wish it were not so!