The Sky is Falling!

Have you ever met a Chicken Little? Do you even know what I'm talking about? When I was a little girl, I was a voracious reader. I knew how to read by the time I was 3, and was reading upside down to my class in Kindergarten just to keep me occupied. My teachers said it was the only time I wasn't a handful. They wanted to skip me straight to third grade... I was just too far ahead to be engaged in class, but I was so physically small... and already had loner tendencies (I related to adults, not children) with my social group - so my mother wouldn't allow it. I hated reading books on my level, but every once in a while one would get to me. One story that did was the story of Chicken Little. (I swear all of this will come together eventually.) There's a pretty good entry on Wikipedia about this story too, I read it as one of the fables. Here's an excerpt from the wiki:

There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King, and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. In most retellings, the animals all have rhyming names such as Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey. Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy, a fox who offers the chicken and her friends his help.

After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy eats the chicken's friends, but the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chicken and she escapes. Other endings include Foxy eating them all; the characters being saved by a squirrel or an owl and getting to speak to the King; the characters being saved by the King's hunting dogs; even one version in which the sky actually falls and kills Foxy Loxy.

Depending on the version, the moral changes. In the "happy ending" version, the moral is not to be a "Chicken", but to have courage. In other versions the moral is usually interpreted to mean "do not believe everything you are told". In the latter case, it could well be a cautionary political tale: The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit, some times as supper.

In my office there is a girl who you've read me complaining about much too many times before. Officechick E, who should have always been referred to as Chicken Little. Her sky is ALWAYS falling, and she constantly wishes to get all of those around her to believe along with her and join in her hysteria. The self centeredness is palpable when she enters a room. She's someone who reminds me anytime she's around that she's just waiting for her turn to speak 95% of her life. (And makes me revow to not be like that! In this way, it's nice having her around.)

I've vented to others when I need to, written some e-mails I never intended to send to ward off any sniping I might have done, explained to Favorite Officemate what the deal was and cleaned up any ugliness with a minimum of fuss and bother. My feathers haven't appeared ruffled once. However, while I think superficially this resembles taking the high road.... I'm just allowing it to draw out because it gives me somewhere else to look and something I technically control (because it's unfinished business) and I'm using the situation to distract myself from much more important things in my life. I'm also in violation of my own resolution to Be True. I will address this with her, tomorrow, in a casual friendly way - face to face. That's the real high road in this situation - the moral of courage.