it's not easy being green

I remember when I first heard Kermit sing the song ‘It’s not easy being green’. It was a Sunday night, and we always watched The Muppet Show on Sunday nights. One Sunday night, a lonely Kermit sat and sang. I remember thinking how sad that song was, and I wanted to turn the channel, but of course that would have meant getting off the couch walking to the tv, and switching between 2 other channels with nothing on, so I sat through the discomfort of Kermit, my childhood friend, being sad.

Today, this song is what came to mind after an uncomfortable lunch. I stopped going for lunch in the lunch room over a year ago. I only go occasionally now, and I try to go late enough so that nobody else is there. Today I was unlucky. It started okay, with two guys I don’t mind hanging out with(one went to my old high school). Than a couple of other men from another lab showed up( I have never spoken with them before, but I have seen them around). Finally, in the last 10 minutes another women showed up. She is a Ph.D.

When I first met phd, I thought she was nice enough. She was Mennonite just like me so we had some stuff in common. But she started to crack more and more jokes at my expense and I started avoiding her. Her jokes were not just jokes, they were mocking. She would talk about how much power I have, or how everyone knows that I’m the real boss, but she would say it to get everyone to laugh at the idea of me having power or a contribution to make.

Today was no exception. Once again she started in on how lucky everyone was to have me sitting at the table with them, and how they should just follow me because I was such a powerful being. I started to laugh it off and said silly things like ‘yes, follow me into the light’. But it turned ugly. One of the men that I don’t know started. He started making comments about my size, saying how the big boss always has a big body etc. Everyone turned silent. No one laughed, and phd tried to explain how what she was joking about was about the fact that I didn’t actually have any power and that there was irony in what she was saying. It just got worse and worse and I could feel myself turn more and more red and the more I thought about how red I was turning, the more red I turned.

No-one including me can deny that my body is large, but sometimes, it’s just not easy being green.