I was going to post this on Facebook, but figured I owe this neglected thing some attention. Plus, if someone googles “assholes” or “douchbaggery” maybe they’ll stumble upon this little blog.
#BeginRant
I have a veteran friend who’s in grad school. She just
started a new semester with a new crop of students who don’t know about her
veteranness, and, like many vets, she doesn’t necessarily advertise it when
making introductions. So she enters the classroom and kindly expresses her need
to sit on the perimeter of the room—a need driven by deployment-related anxiety—and
another student points to a seat in the middle and rudely suggests, “Why can’t
you just sit in that seat?” My friend says she can’t and moves that desk to the
perimeter. And the other students laugh and make fun of her
Really, people? In grad school, where everyone is supposedly
at least a somewhat mature, mostly completely brain-developed adult?
Lack of veteran context aside, so someone has a quirk—any
quirk—must you be all Douchy McAsshole about it?
I was recently a guest in my husband’s college freshman
English classes, talking about narrative distance and empathy in writing
memoir/personal essay. I said something that’s applicable here—a super sophisticated
and eloquent analogy along the lines of: “Everyone has shit. Some people’s
piles are just bigger or more smelly.”
People are different. Sometimes people are weird. Sometimes
people have things bubbling under the surface that you know nothing about. Get
over it. Or at least have the decency to save the laughter and gossip for
behind closed doors
#EndRant
