FROM: Rachel Simmons

TO: Friends, Family, Colleagues, Readers, Old Students, Current Students, Parents, Teachers, Random People I Went to High School With & Spammers

DATE: February 18, 2010

RE: The Curse of the E-Good Girl

I’m so sorry for taking this long to write you back. I was away for a few days and am digging out from the emails that piled up! It’s a giant, digital deluge.

I need to confess something: If even a few days go by without me replying to you, I start to worry. Am I making you feel bad? Am I being rude? And the most fifth grade fear of all: will you be mad at me?

I find myself apologizing constantly. “I’m sorry for the delay in replying, but…”. “Sorry it’s taken me so long.” I do it so often I can cut and paste the phrases into each email reply. One day, drowning in electronic apologies, it hit me: I have the curse of the e-Good Girl.

Sure, everybody’s got email problems. But if you’re the kind of person who worries about disappointing others, who wants to be liked, who wants to do everything right, a mounting pile of email lights your Good Girl issues up like a Christmas tree.

Hi Rachel,

There’s this girl that I’ve been friends with for several years and I’ve always considered her as my best friend. Lately, though, she hasn’t really been acting like a friend. She has been putting me down a lot with little teasing remarks. I mean they aren’t that major just small things, but I’m a very sensitive person and they really hurt.

I had just started a fifth grade class when a student began waving her hand and doing that “Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!” thing that I used to do when I couldn’t contain myself.*

“Okay,” she said, “what if, like, my friend asks me if I like the dress she was buying and I didn’t like it and I wanted to tell her but I was afraid she would get mad at me?”

Dear Rachel, My friend and I have been best friends for about 5 years now….The problem is, I feel like I’ve matured over the years and…she has not. Also, we keep having arguments over so many different things. We always disagree and she ends up basically screaming at me and blaming me for being a bad friend. Another thing is, she constantly acts clueless when I talk to her about something she should know. It is honestly frustrating.