It's a petty, childish revenge but I'll take it.

A thousand years ago, when I was dewy and innocent (or perhaps just young and clueless), I took a class in English paper piecing.

Now, I was in the midst of a rocky period. Things weren't as rocky as they were going to get, but they were nasty and I didn't know how to deal with them. I was about twenty, a couple thousand miles from anyone I knew, supporting myself and a graduate student "husband". (I put the "husband" in quotations because, although we were legally married, I now know that calling him a husband was about like flavoring your ice cream with grains of sand instead of vanilla beans.)

It's a story that's been told thousands, maybe millions of times. Young upstart graduate student from a fourth rate school gets to go study under a Nobel Laureate at a big name university. Young immature wife gives up education to work. Except, in this case, the grad student happened to be an abuser and I was just as promising a student he was. However, I gave up my education because I increasingly believed I was crap. We had no telephone and I really didn't know anyone locally, which was incredibly isolating.

So there I was, supporting the household. I'd go to work - at this time, plugging along as a secretary rather than in a technical capacity - and I'd run into harassment there. Gynecologically detailed posters in areas I had to work in. Sexually aggressive comments from the men I worked with. "Do you like sex?" one individual asked me, undressing me with his eyes. At the time, I didn't know how to respond to such nonsense, so I stuttered. Perhaps most vexing of all, one of my bosses liked to undress with his door open. He'd do this when only I was around. Believe it or not, I didn't know how to handle it. I lived in dread of walking past his office door, in case he was in a state of undress. Of course, walking past his office door never had been that great … he had some poster on the door for, I think, the Rolling Stones. It showed a woman, full frontal naked, with eyes plastered over her breasts but the pubic area left furry and uncovered. I didn't know how to deal with it. I felt unbelievably uncomfortable.

Such a wonderful, professional work environment.

I asked my "husband" what to do about all of this stuff. His response: "What are you doing to cause all of this stuff?" Surely I must be doing something to cause it, he thought. Surely it was my fault. He expanded on that theme for a couple of hours, then continued on to one of his other themes, how I was mentally unstable/crazy and "needed professional care and medication". (Another story with plenty of nasty rocks to turn over. Just to summarize, I'd go see counselors, partly at his behest and partly because I was genuinely unhappy. "Perhaps there is something wrong with me," I'd think, "after all, my mother is nuts." When I'd start to make some progress toward improving my life, he'd decide the counselor was evil and harangue me until I quit seeing the person. When I finally left him, according to him, the counselor I'd been seeing at the time was a "lesbian whore bitch".)

Okay. No help there. I started blundering around, looking for help other places. I wrote my friend from high school. "You need to quit that job," she told me initially. Um. Yeah. There's this little detail of the job putting food on the table. "You just tell him that that's not how we do things in Texas!" she said. (Here I pause, listening to the mental echo of Marge Simpson telling her kids "You just march up to that school and tell them not to eat you!" during one of the Halloween episodes.)

Actually, if I'd had the fortitude to pull it off, that might not have been a bad approach: "You people need to knock it off!" But I didn't. I was falling apart. Harassment at work, abuse at home.

In the meantime, I signed up for this quilting class. After a few classes, the instructor struck up a conversation with me. "Oh, where do you work?" "Thus-and-such-a-place," I told her. As she drew me out, I mentioned the harassment. Perhaps this nice older lady might have some useful advice. Instead, she bridled. "My husband works there," she told me, "the people are VERY professional! Things like that don't go on there."

In other words, I was lying to her.

It was like being slapped. Yet another person in a whole series of people doling out crap. It really, really didn't help.

I've thought about that over the years. Why did she respond in that manner? Was I out of line?

Maybe she was simply defending herself. There's a whole world full of wounded people out there. Train wrecks of people with problems we may not care to know about, much less get involved with. Get too involved and we can get drug down too. Maybe her gut response to my admission was "This person is seriously messed up and I need to keep her at arm's length." Because, let's face it: most people who have their acts together don't go blurting their problems to acquaintances. And, realistically, my crap wasn't her or anyone else's problem to fix. Only I can fix my own crap or work on my own happiness.

Still, surely there's some response that isn't equivalent to calling a desperate person a liar. How would I respond in a like situation? I'd like to think I'd say "That sounds really awful. I'm so sorry that I don't know how to help," or Have you talked to someone up the management chain?" or, if the person really seemed in the mud, "I don't know how to help. Have you considered seeing a counselor? They often have lots of resources."

So, yes. When I remember that period, I have a little bit of anger toward her still. My problems weren't her responsibility, but a kind word or two would have gone a long way.

Yesterday I happened to remember her. Huh. What ever happened to that lady? Google came to the rescue. It turns out, ironically enough, that in addition to moonlighting as a quilt teacher, she was a well known cartoonist whose works revolved around humanitarian and women's issues. This person who told me that I couldn't possibly be getting harassed was known as a feminist and an activist. She spearheaded a traveling quilt exhibit, a group quilt full of blocks depicting women encountering various struggles. Yet when told about my own struggle, her gut response was that I must not be telling the truth. So in my opinion, in addition to being a cartoonist, quilt teacher, feminist and activist, she was a hypocrite.

She has dabbled in art quilting in the ensuing years. Google had some images of her work. I try to keep a kind tongue about others' work, because we are each on different paths. However, in her case, I'm happy to make an exception:

Her work is utter crap. Mine is far better.

It's a petty, childish revenge for an old hurt, but I'll take it.