I'll start at the beginning: I think the eight-hour car ride with a complete stranger (now known as Tom) is what sealed this summer's fate.

I've never had to spend so much time in such a confined space with someone I don't know. By the time we got to Tallahassee on June seventh, I was fairly pissed off at Tom. At one point, he talked shit about Indians for a solid thirty minutes before asking me what I thought. He was shocked that I, as a future archaeologist, said, "Well, I have a different opinion; I'm a Native American Studies minor." He seems to think "they" get in the way of archaeology; I think he should be a lot more grateful - without their ancestors, he wouldn't have had a job for the past twenty years. He went on to complain about the French, which made me want to strangle him - and doubly so, for at that moment he acted as though he had forgotten his last name is Des-fucking-Jean. I'd like to think he cringed when I told him my surrogate family, of which one of my best friends is a member, is entirely French, but he didn't care one twit. There are many things I can't stand, but when you insult someone, however far removed you are from that person, you generally apologize - or at least act contrite. He was thoroughly unashamed, so much, in fact, that he proceeded to bitch about the French for another ten minutes (until he missed the I-75 turnoff in Chattanooga - then he let out a string of expletives).

You'd think those two misses might have deterred him, but no. This trend continued all summer, and he kept harping on those two groups. There were others he subjected to scorn from the safety of his office, but he always mananged to bring it back to those two. I can only hope that he'll one day say those things to someone who will take much greater offense than I did (ideally, this person will be a full-blooded Native American or a French national).

There are so many other stories, chock-full of my bitching ... but I have to go to MTSU and get my paycheck. And yell at Smith, who told Tom over the phone yesterday that I wanted to come home. (I stupidly sent a two sentence-long e-mail to him on Monday after Tom mentioned that I might need to make sure I was up there until the eighteenth. I wrote something to that effect, then added in parentheses, "as I'm about ready to come home." I can't be entirely sure what he told Tom, other than that he'd "read between the lines" -- I swear Smith can read minds. Tom, being abysmally daft, said, "Yeah, her little friends down at the dorm left last week, and now she's stuck with an annoying old man." Make that two annoying old men, Tom. Anyway, now I'm embarrassed, and I'd like Smith, who so grossly betrayed my trust, to know that.)