a thought

it was rainy today.  

first, before i start my anecdote, i really need to say that i severely despise it when people speak english just because they think it makes them cool.  i mean, it's fine if you're fluent, because...that's the language you speak.  but it really bothers me when these people think they can speak perfectly, but they can't, but they still insist on using only semi-perfect english.  they can express themselves perfectly well in japanese, so USE IT.  yeah.  so i was sitting near a bunch of girls who, according to my friend, have been overseas for maybe...i don't know, an average of six or seven years.  that's long enough to allow them to be able to speak english, but not long enough for them to be perfect in it, you know?  but they just kept talking in this weird accented english (which wasn't really the problem, cause that's mean, but it bothered me anyway) and they were being so ridiculously dumb that i wanted to hit them.  blahhh.  i probably sound really conceited and terrible and mean, but i like.  cannot explain the madness.  anyway.

so today.

my friends and i missed the 3:40 school bus (by the by, "school buses" are basically city buses painted bright blue with "ICU High School" written in yellow lettering on the side....yeah, they stand out).  so we were standing in the rain under our umbrellas, just talking.  my friend maya had this huge-ass umbrella that was literally about three feet in diameter, and so, even though i had my own teensy umbrella, i was standing under it.  of course, this led to me breaking out into a chorus of "you can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella".  however, a bunch of the annoying girls mentioned above were standing right behind us.  when they heard me sing (in my standard enthusiastic, half-shouting, head-bobbing way, of course), i saw them snicker and visibly roll their eyes at each other.  

woah, judgment from you?  no thanks.

having grown up in new york, at ICU, i pride myself on being good at english.  better than most kids, anyway.  but the thing is, i guess the girls behind us didn't really hear me that well, and they'd probably assumed i was a wannabe-american who just knew the song "umbrella" and was trying to be cool - and they were laughing at my supposed lameness and the "bad accent" that wannabes often have.  so even though at first i was like "woah.  excuse me?  you don't even know me", i kind of understand now.  and it made me think about how many people i'm judging every day, based on my own silly assumptions that are probably not even based on anything substantial.