In Chapter 11 of Stephen King's IT, "Walking Tours", some members of the Losers' Club are walking about their childhood home of Derry, Maine. Eddie Kasprak does so and reminisces about his childhood. As he walks through what was a more affluent part of town, he recalls a little crush that he had on Greta Bowie, a snooty rich girl. On page 551, we read the following:
"He fell in love with [Greta] a little that day---her shining blonde hair falling to the shoulders of her culotte dress, which was a cold blue. She glanced around and more a moment he thought she had seen him, but that proved not to be so, because when he raised his hand in a timid hello, she did not raise hers in return but only whacked her [croquet] ball back onto the rear lawn and then ran after it. He had walked on with no resentment at the unreturned hello (he genuinely believed she must not have seen him) or at the fact that he had never been invited to attend one of the Saturday-afternoon croquet games: why would a beautiful girl like Greta want to invite a kid like him? He was thin-chested, asthmatic, and had the face of a drowned water-rat."
I can identify with Eddie's ways of coping with what may have been a rejection. I try to give the person who may be rejecting me the benefit of a doubt: Perhaps the person is blowing me off because she's busy, or preoccupied. And then there are times that I put myself down and seek to justify the rejection: Of course the person is rejecting me, for I can be opinionated! Or perhaps some people don't like my blog because it's not for everybody!
And then there are people who are simply cliquish, or are just plain jerks. I suppose that I can try to identify my part in them being that way towards me, since that can help me to believe that I have a degree of control over what people think about me or how they treat me. I think that it's good for me to identify ways that I can do things better. But there are some people who are just jerks---who believe that you have to impress them to be a part of their club. What can you do then? It's like Peter Griffin told his daughter, Meg, on an episode of Family Guy: You have a mind of your own, and people don't like that! (And, just for the record, I'm not in the habit of drawing life lessons from Family Guy!)