Health Study Cliques and Personalities

I'm sitting here watching a dvd of the Muppet Show (yay!) and thinking about my weekend as a human lab-rat at Covance. Each time I get into a study I get amazed at the increasing number of heavy-duty Christians participating. This weekend there were two major Christian cliques representing. The pretty Bible-college co-eds who all must have signed up together as a class project, and the pluppering-blonde moms. One night I had to tell the guys in the room next to mine to kindly turn down their REVIVAL MUSIC at 11:30 at night so my roommates could sleep. So weird! And you couldn't escape the moms as they paced up and down the hallways sharing every bit of knowlege about every cousin's Latin American mission work, daughter's engagament party, and son's football team scores that they could regurgitate - usually in the middle of someone else's sentence. I tried to be nice to them at first, mostly because they made a point to remember my and everyone else's name, but my head started throbbing soon after and I gave up and tried to hide in my room. There though, I had a Russian immigrant roommate who asked me if I was married or single. I told him I wasn't married - mistake! I shouldn't have even responded. I had to try to follow him in his broken English for what must have been a couple hours on how horrible marriage is, how his wife refuses to get a job, how he has to drive his step-kid to school even though he works a third-shift job, and how he was going to use his health-study money for a divorce. Yikes!

Back to the Uber-Christians though: I felt like such an outsider to them! On one of my walks through the research facility I saw a group of tables shoved together and them all with their bibles out. They were having a bible study - in a medical lab! I swear over half of the study participants were there. Jeeze, and to think I wasn't even invited! Hrmmmph! (my Miss Piggy voice!) I felt like I was back in high-school. Back when I didn't fit in with any clique at all. Such a misfit! The bible co-eds were like the popular kids, all pretty and perfect - the girls without a blemish or hair out of place and wearing their pink sweat pants with paw-pads printed on their heinies; and the guys all looking like young gung-ho all-star, all-american bible jocks talking like future car salesmen. I wasn't sure, but I think they could smell my misfitness. It was weird, but I swear I could feel their collective judgement upon me and everyone else. Shudder! Just like high school!

Anyway, I hope you, my Bull-Roar readers don't think I'm too much of a BITCH now! I'm sure these people are all very nice, I guess I'm just feeling a little sensitive!