Our school PTA is a bit cliquey and not my scene - I don't have much in common with them. They say those slighty-racist-Daily-Mail type things that make my teeth itch. Which considering it's an inner London primary is all a bit weird. I really don't want it to be 'my clique' at the school gates even though I'm happy to chip in for the cake sale, or do a few hours helping out a few times a year.
Trouble is I get collared at the school gates every single day and constant e-mails asking me to do stuff for them and when I say 'no' I get so much martyrdom 'Oh fine then, I'll do it, even though I've got the same flu as you, and our skiing trip to organise, and our dog's just died and the children are devastated, but FINE then, I'll do it...Unless you can do it for me instead?'. Every time I say 'no' it gets bounced back to me over and over again, so I've said 'no' to the same thing ten times before they accept it and even then it's treated it was like my responsibility that I have shirked (ie this thing they've asked me to do that was never my idea in the first place) - am collared at the school gates and one of them will say 'Oh by the way, I did do that thing for you.' 'What the thing you asked me to do by e-mail?' "Yes I did it FOR YOU" How is that doing something for me - I'm not on the committee, it wasn't my idea to do it in the first place, I had nothing to do with it apart from saying 'no' to it! My trouble is that I don't even agree that the things that they are asking me to do actually need doing at all (ie. why does our school's winter fair HAVE to be bigger than the neighbouring school's? Because apparently, it does...) My friends have all managed to steer clear, or to help out occasionally without being grabbed all the time. How do people do that? That's what I need to know...
I'm so on the defensive and nervous as I walk up to the school as they literally physically grab my arm if I try to just say 'hello' and walk on by. One of them told me I was going to be president of the PSA next term. I said that since I don't attend any meetings that's not going to happen. He said that once I'm president I'll have to attend, and I said 'I'm working at the time you have meetings, it's not going to happen.' He said 'We'll have to change the day of the meetings then because no-one else can do it' (Really? In a school with 400 kids? Or am I the only English person with a posh accent who can do it, which is what I suspect... I think they've mistaken me for 'one of us' - otherwise I can't explain why they stick to me like glue - I'm not particularly charming company 
And I'm actually rubbish at organising stuff.). Have any of you got tips to get a bit of distance? I would hate the PTA to become a big part of my life as I really don't enjoy anything about the stuff they do, and the people just aren't my cup of tea. If they just did a bit of fund-raising without it being super-competitive, if they weren't the only middle-class English people in the whole school all collected together in a huddle isolated from the diversity of the school, if they weren't so goddam pushy, if they didn't make snotty comments about Muslims (in a school where Islam is the majority religion by far), if they didn't get on my nerves so much... but they are and they do and it is. Help!