It was supposed to be fun, but still...

We were at the annual Christmas party last night, and participating in the annual white elephant gift exchange. We played with the usual rules - a gift can only be exchanged 2 times and on the second exchange it is no longer exchangeable. That person gets to keep it. It was my turn to open a gift and I opened a gosh-awful ceramic robot lamp. I remembered the snap-together model car that Brian had exchanged for and went to claim it for the second and final time. I figured Jim would appreciate it. I went and sat down, feeling very satisfied. A short time later "Jeff" opened up a gift which included some hokey vinyl LPs - The Heritage Singers and Freddy Fender. Blah... Well, Jeff walked over to me and asked me to hand over the car. I said the gift is dead, and he said not it isn't it's only been traded one time. I was positive he was wrong, no one said anything in my defense, and I very unwillingly handed it over. I was given the stupid records and sat there feeling embarrassed for my "mistake"of thinking I'd been the second trade. The longer I sat there I realized that I had been right - I had been the second trade. I said that to Dan and he just said hey it's not a big deal it's supposed to be fun. I said I know and decided to just suck it up and have fun. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd felt bullied and pushed over. I am sure it was just a mistake of Jeff's part. Stuff like this challenges me to examine my life. I am so tired of being a pushover my whole life and this just pulled a trigger. Perhaps I need to take the frustration I feel over something so silly and transfer it to something more important that needs to be addressed - like maybe my storage space at work that I keep losing more and more of. Or maybe the fact that I have never had a raise at my job, even though I've worked there for a year and a half and do a darn good job. I need to realize that I have every right to speak up when I have something to say, and not everyone has to like what I have to say, and they don't even have to like ME.