Not my preferred career path

I have a low patience level, a high frustration level, and absolutely zero tolerance for other peoples' learning curves. The whole world is breathing a sigh of relief that I recognized this about myself many years ago and chose not to become a teacher (and to those handful of students I traumatized while I was in grad school, well, my heartfelt apologies). D. and I decided to teach some neighbors how to play euchre yesterday. Now those of you who are not from the midwest have probably never heard of euchre, but I assure you, it is a fun game and easy to learn--provided you don't have D. or me explaining it to you, especially when one of us has had a bit to drink and the other is working on serious sleep deprivation. How the neighbors didn't just chuck us out into the yard and bolt the door behind us, I'm not certain, but they didn't. Instead, they chose to stick with the game and watch my blood pressure reach dangerously high levels. That must have been the draw, because they clearly weren't having fun. And I could never tell if they were just being polite when they declined each time I offered to throw our hands in and abandon ship. I tell you, I was never so happy to reach the end of a game as I was last night! And we should have known better. We've been to an evening where the goal was to teach other folks the joys of euchre and I felt like I was wearing a hair shirt all night. So while others may find euchre difficult to master (it's really not), I obviously don't learn from my mistakes. What a good idea: I am not now and never have been cut out to teach anyone anything at any time (I didn't even bother to toilet train my kids, allowing them to decide to train themselves--this is how unsuited I am to teaching) so let's repeat one of the most brutally frustrating evenings in recent memory and showcase my mad card teaching skills. Brilliant, wouldn't you say?! ARGH!!!!

On the plus side, the neighbors (who we really do like a lot--and as a result of which we will never, never suggest euchre in their presence again) seem to still be speaking to us. So while it was pretty obvious I was frustrated, I must have taken it out mainly on D. instead of our friends. This is good. He's stuck with me. They're not. (But I still say euchre is easy to learn--afterall, I learned in college in the course of one short evening when I was, shall we say, at less than my most coherent and best self. Just sayin'.)