...Well, that might be news to half my readers. (mastina maaaaaaaay have picked up a bad habit or two in her time. But no, seriously, I don't curse. I don't think in curse words, it's unnatural for me to do so except when I'm not really...me. When something outside of me enters, sure, cursing, but me, it just doesn't happen.)
...But I'm telling you right here and now. I never curse.
I got very very close to it because of tonight.
I'm just...angry and upset in every way about square dancing right now. My club was supposed to caravan (that is, every member of the club) to the dance we went to tonight. Including myself and my sister (and we had to go OUT OF OUR WAY to arrange for transportation and food), we ended up with...
...Two! People, that is. Not couples. (And god no not squares, we don't even have that many people.) As in. Literally just us. Technically, there's another girl there who counts as a member of our club and her father was in attendance as well......but she's currently "on loan", so to speak, to that club. As in: she is competing with them. She practices with them. She signed her name under their members list rather than the guest list. She has their badge on. She doesn't often come to our club anymore. She's still involved in our club, of course, but the other club is definitely what would be considered her main club right now.
Now standing us up would itself be bad enough. But they did so with zero justification--no text sent out. Nothing. We were told it was a thing we were going to two days ago. Nothing came out in those two days to contradict this. And this was an event we had known about for MONTHS, and planned to attend for MONTHS. Which brings me to my next gripe!
One of the reasons we didn't hold our annual dance this year was...get this!...that there was another dance (THIS DANCE THAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO ATTEND!) in close proximity to it. They essentially decided, "Oh, because of (dance which was tonight), our dance would be redundant, so we'll just go to (dance which was tonight) instead of hosting our dance".
AND THEN THEY DIDN'T EVEN COME.
You have no clue how close I am to having f-bombs littered throughout my speech right now.
I almost dropped one verbally when talking to my sister. VERBALLY. When I have never once in my life uttered a curse word verbally. To this very day, that remains true. No, seriously. Not once. I've typed them out a plenty. I haven't actually spoken so much as a single one. I always dodge the issue, awkwardly trying to express profanity when it comes up without actually using it.
...But by GOD I am tempted to use it right now.
They cancelled our traditional dance. They cancelled our thing. Our thing, which must be twenty years of continuous annual traditions. In favor of a dance they didn't actually bother to go to.
I think I am WELL within my rights to be absolutely livid, here. And I'm not exactly pleased with the state of affairs at that club, either. (That club was my alternative club a couple years back--I competed with them and had a sort-of "dual citizenship" of the two clubs.) The dance which once filled two rooms to the brim...
...Had an average of four squares. Less than 25% of what they had no less than two years ago. (Their dance is a relatively new tradition; this is their third, and yet it already has become so...much weaker.) More than that, the quality of the dancers was atrocious.
We danced for two and a half hours--in that time, you might have one square every-other tip which wouldn't break down. ONE square. Out of FOUR. Which wouldn't break down. About EVERY OTHER tip. Meaning that 7/8 times, you were in a square which repeatedly broke down. And once broken, with the exception of one time, they never were able to try and recover. (By the way, said time? Was when the caller was screwing up the calls, and the dancers were doing them perfectly!)
It was a weak dance, poorly attended and in desperate need of extra dancers...dancers our club was supposed to bring. Would that have completely stopped the breakdowns, no. Would that have suddenly made something like seven squares, also no. But it wouldn't stopped it from being as sad of a dance as it was. (Admittedly half the host club was off competing in an event in another state, but that doesn't excuse the rest of things.)
I think I am well within my rights to be angry.