Urban Thought Collective

The two things in life I fear most are unexpected cold sores and rejection.

I’ll cover the cold sores on another occasion. Today, I’m here to share an account of an incident that happened to me this week at my job at the Buena Beach Division of Parks and Beaches – a story of rejection.

Now if you’re new here, you might be scratching your head asking, “Where the heck is Buena Beach?” And I’d tell you that that great city exists somewhere in the imagination of the Buena Beach website creator – maybe crowded in there with make-believe friends from childhood and images of her accepting an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. But simply put, Buena Beach is the setting of an urban online soap opera, and I am one of its characters. How progressive is UTC – to have a fictional soap opera character as one of its bloggers!

But I digress. I just want to chat with you about a risk I took this week, and why I’m unlikely to put myself out there again. Rejection hurts, y’all. The wound still hasn’t healed from the time in eighth grade when I took the advice of all my girls and asked Joey Butler to the spring dance. His resounding “no thanks” still rings in my ear from time to time. Or the day I tried to eat at the cool girl table as a sophomore and was rebuffed, loudly and with the quickness. And I won’t even drive by Cal State Long Beach anymore, after they rejected my application to transfer there after community college. Scars from hits like these have kept me from taking risks in most cases.

But on Thursday, I took a gigantic risk (for me, anyway) at our Division’s Juneteenth Potluck. You might be impressed, first off, that our division even has such an event, but don’t be so quick to give us props – we celebrate practically everything. This was our 2nd Juneteenth celebration, instituted last year after our offices received a permit from an organization wanting to host a Juneteenth event and parade at one of our parks. We review new permits at our weekly staff meeting so of course, as the sole sistah in the place, every one of my colleagues whipped around to ask me, “What’s Juneteenth?” when this permit came up for review.

“Well,” I began. “Juneteenth is celebrated by black Americans in June because…” Cough, cough. “Excuse me.” More coughing. And a little more. “I’m so sorry. My allergies are acting up. Pardon me one second while I go get some water,” I told them, taking the opportunity instead to run to my desk to look up Juneteenth on Wikipedia. Upon returning, I informed my colleagues that Juneteenth is a commemoration of the ending of slavery, which has been celebrated for over a century.

Immediately, Tony (who I might add is the portliest of the Division of Recreation staff) suggested we have our own Juneteenth potluck – and so it began.

And boy, did my colleagues step up to the plate, putting our Black History month potluck to shame. They must all have some sort of homie hook-up, bringing in homemade platters of black-eyed peas, collard greens, hot water cornbread, seafood gumbo, and fried catfish. I was more than a little ashamed when I walked in with my offering, resorting to stereotype with my bucket of fried chicken.

So this year, I wanted to redeem myself by bringing a dish worth bragging about, made with my own hands. A dish that they’d still be talking about next year, saying to one another in the hallway “Boy, I can’t wait until next year’s potluck to see what Di’s gonna bring.” The decision? A deep-dish peach cobbler. I’d never made it before, but had watched my aunt Elsie prepare it dozens of times. So I worked on my own version for hours on Wednesday night, and proudly dropped it off Thursday at a quarter to noon in the Division conference room.

Twenty minutes later, the potluck was in full swing, and the group once again didn’t disappoint with the fixings. And I was game, trying honey ham and coleslaw and baked beans and macaroni & cheese. So I fully expected everyone to help themselves to my cobbler. I mean, I’ve sampled all sorts of new and different things in this conference room – pancit, empanadas (both fruit and meat), tres leches cake (which is the bomb, by the way); so of course, I anticipated that all would be equally willing to try my dish.

With time, however, my little dessert I’m sure started feeling like that last kid chosen on the playground for teams. Or even worse – at least that kid eventually got picked. Then I started thinking that maybe people were avoiding my dessert because they didn’t realize that it was mine. So I strolled around our little conference room, making small talk with random folks just so I could drop in a plug for my cobbler.

“Oh, that’s yours?” said one of my colleagues. “I’ll have to try a piece later – I’m so stuffed!”

Not too stuffed since she was still able to finish the candied yams and turkey on her plate, and go back for a hefty piece of chocolate cake.

The rest of them didn’t do any better, humoring me by taking a little portion, only to poke at it with a plastic fork like it was some sort of science project until the get-together ended. Or taking only the tiniest of bites, and then covering up the remains with a napkin. Yes, I was watching them, mentally documenting everyone’s reaction. I even crept into my boss’s office late in the afternoon to check the status of the piece he told me he’d take back to his desk as an afternoon snack. I could have guessed what I was to find when he didn’t bother to take any silverware back with his plate of syrupy peaches and flaky crust. But my optimism took a nosedive when I found my cobbler had been dumped into his circular file, cleverly hidden underneath an old plastic binder and a several crumpled up piece of tissue (yes, I did go through his trash).

Hurt and bitter, I took my half-full casserole dish home after work, where I’d planned to sulk in bed all night while watching bad reality television. Before settling in under the covers, I found a big spoon and dove in to give my dish a try (I hadn’t wanted to sample it before, in order to preserve its beauty), taking a huge bite.

And then I spit it right back out.

Something had gone terribly wrong. Immediately, I went to my junk drawer to find my label maker so I could properly and clearly mark my sugar and my salt jars accordingly to prevent any future mix-ups.

Thinking back, I’m actually very flattered and pleased by how my co-workers dealt with me and my salty cobbler. For their safety and my self-esteem, I will not be taking any more risks in the immediate future. At least not with anything involving a stove.

Diane is (quite) a character on the online soap opera Buena Beach (www.buenabeach.com). Her weekly insights on what’s happening at the Beach are featured exclusively on Urban Thought Collective.