I’ve always known that my sister and I showed aspects of my Dad’s personality. We both have a rather dry sense of humor, and it’s rather obvious that we both love a good turn of a phrase. We like to use sarcasm and wit to make a point, and words are critical for both of us.
Recently, it has been brought to my attention that I’m getting bolder with my sarcasm. Until then, I hadn’t noticed how much like my Dad I had become, but being with my sister and our friend Lisa, who have both known me most of my life, they noted it and I started seeing it myself. Twice in the course of a weekend, I spoke my mind to total strangers.
The first time, we encountered 2 little barefoot boys rushing us at an elevator. They wanted to go down on the elevator to head to the swimming pool, and we were simply trying to get off the elevator on our floor. I stopped them with some remark and made them wait for us to get off. I wasn’t really mean to them. I just firmly told them to wait while we exited the elevator. And as we walked toward our room, we heard them snickering.
I love kids. I really do, but one of my pet peeves, if you will, is unattended children that have no manners and are just running around wild. Now in my defense, we saw a lot of this the whole weekend. There were several little league teams staying at our hotel, and it just amazed us how trusting their parents were being as they let the kids out on their own without adult supervision. But at the same time, where did I get the idea that I needed to address those 2 little boys as I did? In the past, I would have talked about how annoying they were later, but I wouldn’t have addressed the boys myself.
The next day, as we started into the Princess Diana exhibit, there were 2 women that were sort of stopped in the middle of the entry way. They were listening to their headsets and not really paying attention. Now since I had been there before, I knew where to go, but since neither of these women made a move so that we could get around them, I just started heading through the other entrance. Well, one of the women spoke up and said, “You enter through here, girls!” and pointed towards where she was. We turned and headed her way as she finally moved out of the way. And I made some comment to Lisa and Barbara about how “we would have gone that way in the first place if someone hadn’t been standing in the way.” Now, what I said was honest. She and her friend were standing in the entrance blocking the way, but did I really need to say that out loud? No. I should have just bit my tongue, but for some reason, I opted to be more abrupt than usual.
Now, I’ve run into ruder people than myself more often than I can recount. And the truth is that I was not all that mean, but was I really kind either? I don't think so. I was just thinking of myself and felt free to give out my opinion. Hmmmm…I think I’m going to have to work on this. Sometimes taking the high road means keeping my thoughts to myself!
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