Sweeping up humiliation

Somehow, somewhere, fate decided to make my most humiliating moments come from sweeping. I don't know what it is about a broom and and a left-handed person that makes for disastrous moments. If you recall, at Shoshoni, the most non-judgmental place on the face of this planet, was embarrassing moment number one, where I got critiqued for my "on the knees" floor sweeping technique. Cue the tears, the "why me"s, and the "om namah...oh, screw it, I'm pissed."

Incident numero deux, as you may have guessed, happened tonight. I was assigned to sweep the floors during the last fifteen minutes of my shift, and let me tell you, even though I'm quality at dustpan sweeping, the regular sweeping leaves me looking like an elephant on roller skates...or at least feeling about as graceful as one. Perhaps on the outside I look like an average girl with larger than average hair, but when everyone's staring at me (or so says my brain) as I clunk around the floors, I feel somewhat like this:

Congratulations. Now everyone in the history of the internet is able to blackmail me. You're welcome.
So maybe my sweeping was clumsy, and I'm already the quiet, awkward girl in my work environment (shocker, I know), but for whatever reason, the 3 people who made passing comments about my skill level in that area seemed to hold the most power in the world, and I was about the size of a peanut M&M. By the time I tried to "jokingly" bring up that I'd been hurt, they had forgotten about what they said. Because, let's be real here, nobody is walking around thinking, "hmm, I wonder how I can judge that girl with the white girl 'fro here?" They're just making conversation. They're teasing, presumably to break me out of the timid mask I've worn for the past year I've been working.

So why do teasing comments leave the sensitive of sorts feeling like they've been trampled by an army of rocks? My sweeping skill has nothing to do with my personality, or my attitude, or any important traits besides quality chore-doer. I guess it's telling that one of my embarrassing moments happened at a place where you just let it go and the other happened at a place where you just move on. The second time, I've noticed, I was hurt a little less, and able to tease back a little more. Maybe during my third sweeping snaffoo (it's bound to happen), I won't feel bad at all. Maybe when I'm pretending to laugh it off, I'll feel a genuine chuckle come out of it.

No one's maliciously trying to critique a person's best efforts. It's a form of friendliness that the "soft marshmallow" personalities have to work harder to understand, but maybe, with time, I can sweep up the humiliation I feel, and laugh along with some people who would never actually try to hurt anyone.