So have I written before about how sometimes I think it takes seeing other people behave badly to inspire me to behave well? It seems as if, when I'm feeling all surly and antisocial and rude, I have only to see some other moron behaving in exactly the same way to change my tune post-haste?
Case in point (And I'm hoping you'll forgive me if this is a repeat rant... I've got the feeling I may have written about this recently, but I'm too damn lazy to go look it up): Not long ago, I was on a really crowded subway car, on the way home. And as the car was crowded, I was being jostled and annoyed by all sortsa people cramming their way onto the car rather than waiting for the next train.
Just when I was about to go a mild form of postal on the people who were bumping into me, a woman comes barging onto the train, knocking a guy aside and taking his tenuous grasp at an overhead hand rail... the guy was stretching to reach it before, but she shoved herself into the train and blocked his reach completely. Without so much as even an "excuse me," she shoves him aside and settles into the train.
Now, once the train starts moving, the guy's clearly in trouble; he's got nothing to hold on to, and riding a subway car without a handrail is a dangerous business. Owing to the jerky movements of the car and the fact that he's got no way of steadying himself, he begins bumping into the people around him, one of whom is this woman who's the cause of all his problems anyway.
So she starts getting all annoyed and offended, and finally, using polite words but with a tone that could not have been nastier, she says to him, "Excuse me, sir, but could you please stop bumping into me?!?" The guy, who clearly wants to kill this chick and tell her she's an asshole and a bitch, says, "Sorry," and jams his hand up against the ceiling of the car to try to stop his own swaying.
I was, apparently, even more offended on the guy's behalf than he was... I wanted to beat her with a baseball bat. Clearly, I didn't do so.
I was telling this story to Kevin Lageman while we were waiting for Burn This tickets the other day, and bemoaning the fact that I was every bit as bad as that lady, when Kevin weighed in with his opinion. I was not, he reminded me, behaving badly... I was frustrated and wanted to act out, but I didn't. This woman was just being rude and insensitive... there's a difference.
Another reason to love Kevin: He's right, of course. I was boiling on the inside (and, I'm sure, setting up a future stroke), and this woman was acting out. Still, had I not seen that chick behaving like a nasty little child, would I have remained quiet any longer?
In the long run, though, my larger point still holds, I think. It took seeing her behave the way she did to make my own anger evaporate; to make me realize how stupid that anger was.
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