Medieval Nightmare

I think I mentioned previously that I was not looking forward to taking Medieval History II. I now have one more excellent reason to drop the class.

I walked into class with a kid I had two classes with last semester. We were talking about the professor. The kid (I believe his name is Michael Braxton) has had classes with him before. Dr. Thomas Morrissey. He seems rather eccentric. Anyway - he's not the problem.

I was about ten minutes early for class (funny how much my habits change from early in the semester to later on...). About three minutes after I got there, I heard my name exclaimed from the far side of the room. I hesitated to turn, not really believing my ears. I slowly turned toward the source of the outburst. It was as I feared. Standing and waving excitedly with a huge grin on her face (and her normal amount of eye make-up required for leaving the house) was Destini's mother, Lori.

Yep. My ex-girlfriend's mother is in my class. Does this kind of shit happen to anyone else? No? I didn't think so.

Before I go trashing the woman, I will say that at many points during and after my relationship with Des, Lori was nice to me. Not necessarily on a regular basis or anything, but there were occasions. She bought fifth-row tickets for Destini and I to see Robert Plant in Toronto. She also made sure to say before and after the event exactly how much she paid for the tickets... She could often be very generous, but she never quite let you forget about it, if you know what I mean. And many people are like that.
The problems that Destini and I usually had with her mother involved occasions when she wanted to exert her control over her daughter (Des and I were 19, 20, and 21 when we went out). She was one of the primary impetuses behind our attempted move to Durango, Colorado in August 2001. She was also the reason that Des decided to move in with her grandmother when we came back to New York instead of moving back into her house. I won't go over the many times when Lori would not allow Destini and I to see each other or the idiotic curfews she imposed from time to time. Those complaints will sound quite childish now. Essentially, she is almost a textbook example of a bipolar (manic depressive) person. She was directly responsible for many of Destini's mood swings as well, just by being very demanding and controlling. Des was a very sensitive person. I can't say what she's like now, although I know she's changed. But some of that blame must also be attributed to me.

All that said, Lori has not exactly had an easy go of it in life. She's had to deal with a lot of shitty things that have happened to her that were not her fault. Many times, she made me feel very much at home at their house, obviously those were the times when she was in a good mood. I have fond memories of sitting down to great dinners and being comfortable as part of the family.

See...when I encountered her today, it was mostly the bad things that I remembered, but when I looked back on the whole time I was with Des, I certainly can't dismiss her as an entirely negative force. However, she did make things difficult for us a significant amount of the time.

Anyway, so I felt that I had to cross the room and say hello. The first thing she did was hug me, tell me that I was looking good, and asked if I had been "pumping iron." Keep in mind that we were basically standing in front of one side of the class. Then picture my reaction to such an embarrassing interaction. Yeah. I'm sure people were staring, but I didn't have the guts to look around and confirm that suspicion. So then I got the update on everyone in the family (excluding Destini, who is presumably still living with the cokehead she moved in with after she and I broke up, although last I knew, she was not actually "with" him anymore. I guess she goes out a lot. Did I mention she's changed quite a bit?) and what she was doing in the class. I have very little recollection of the conversation, because I was just trying to reconcile this monstrous development in my life. Now I'm going to walk around campus dreading random unexpected encounters. I was completely thrown off for the remainder of the class, barely able to focus on what the professor was saying. I was able to hear her laugh above all others when Morrissey told amusing anecdotes. Later, she was the only one to raise her hand and offer some inconsequential tidbit about her own life - something about an aunt in 1962 - which might signal that besides her mere presence being an enormous distraction to me, she might also be one of those garrulous "adult learners"/"non-traditional students" who seeks to dominate every class discussion (and would therefore become a distraction to the entire class and not just to me).

I have this to look forward to three times every week. I'm not sure I can take it. It might be worth checking into alternatives that would satisy whatever history major requirement that this class is meeting for me.