Float Fun for No One!

I am back in sixth grade. I am at the skating ring and the super popular girls ask me to skate with them. I agree,...and they proceed to give me a wedgie and skate off. This memory came to mind as I sat in a meeting room at my current place of business (I am not allowed to discuss where I work. lame) with a handful of grown woman arguing over float ideas. None of these woman with their place-of-business-badges glistening under the lamp lights ever paid me any mind. Every idea I gave went unnoticed. You could almost hear their ridiculous silent judging ("she wants to what with what??"). I had to keep reminding myself that this float committee--which I was nominated to be on while I was out sick from work one day--was not a sixth grade party at a skating rink. And these woman, who took this float committee thing way too seriously, were not the tween bullies from my past.

The theme of this year's contest is 'Small town, big heart'. My group decided on using Parkersburg as the prime example of this. I was gone during this discussion, so when I came back and was told that we'd be recreating the tornado ravaged town, I was...ambivalent, but I had a lot of ideas.

All of my ideas during these meetings (I've had three of them so far) have been ignored and frowned upon. Seriously,...it's a freakin' chair float contest and the winning department gets a pizza party. You'd think this contest was for a shot at eternal life or a large cash prize. Nope. Casey's pizza.

The thing that gets me the most is that some of my ideas that have been shot down out of thin air during the meetings have been created. And someone else has taken the credit! I used to read stories about office behavior like that in my Cosmo magazines, but thought I'd never experience that...at least while being a part of a committee that cuts out construction paper people and pop bottle tornadoes.

Float judging is this Friday. Just to be a good sport, I've still volunteered my time to make our team's float something worth looking at (the rubber band roads actually look cute. Too bad the cardboard people are all white teenagers. Not much diversity--a crucial rule of float building)

As long as no one gets wedgies by the end of this committee experience, it won't be too bad. Right?