Those Without Preschoolers Need Not Apply

I've been thinking a lot about taking people for who you think they are instead of who they are. It's hard sometimes, because you have no idea who strangers really are. This has been in my head the last couple of weeks. Then yesterday at BSF, this happened:

There's a woman in my BIble study group who seems to treat me that way; like some person she thinks she's figured out, but she actually doesn't know who I am. She pointedly ignores me and only speaks to those who have problems with their toddlers. She seems to enjoy telling then how she fixed hers. (like, a year ago, because her kids aren't that old yet and she's still nursing one.) I tried to join a conversation she started about 5-yr. olds, because a girl my age was saying that she homeschooled hers. (I'm curious about people who homeschool and why they choose to do it, since it was the default setting in my life for so long.)

But this woman wouldn't let me. I felt that she thought I had nothing to contribute. She does the same things with her answers in our group discussions. I don't have any children, I have a pink streak in my hair, I wear scarves and heels, feather earrings and weird second-hand Michael Kors leather loafers. I seem young, I guess. She seems to treat me like a "whippersnapper, " some young hipster, because I don't have kids; like I'm some young spoiled person whose experiences in life are meaningless because changing diapers isn't yet part of my daily routine. I was terribly annoyed. I shouldn't have let it get to me, but I could hardly pay attention in lecture. She's the kind of stiff-minded person who would think I haven't been a Christian very long because I have a streak of pink hair.

I wanted to go to her and tell her that I practically grew up at BSF headquarters, that my grandmother is mentioned in the founder's memoir, that my mother and grandmother have some of Mrs. Johnson's and Mrs. Hertzler's china in their china cabinets. That I am one of seven homeschooled siblings who used to memorize whole chapters of the Bible in King James as part of their grade school curriculum. That I had probably changed more diapers by the age of 14 than she has so far mothering career. That I watched my mother breastfeed from a very young age. That my mother had six of us without any pain medicine whatsoever. (For some reason, I'm proud of having been had with no pain meds. haha! It's not like I was the one in pain!)

Why does my blood boil? It doesn't matter what this woman, this obviously in-a-tight-box, uncreative woman, thinks of me. But see what I did there? I put her in a box, not any better than the box she has me in. I don't like it. I don't like any of this. It's pride, I know, on both sides. But so bothersome. Really, what would it look like if I just sent her an email, so that she could think of me correctly? Horribly arrogant, but since I don't even care what she thinks of me, she can think I'm horribly arrogant, as long as she's sufficiently impressed that I know as much about kids as she does, and more about BSF.

Who is this hideous, arrogant person inside of me?