How Rude!!!

 

Rudeness! 

It’s September. Fall is coming, and I can’t wait! This is my favorite time of year. The temperature is cooler, the sunshine is bright, and the air is fresh and clear. I love taking long walks around the trails near my house. This one is a particular favorite, and right when I start to really enjoy it—wham! A dirty birdy decides to leave his mark on my head. How rude!

It’s not the bird’s fault. I guess he mistook my blue hat for the lake water I stood near at the time. It was both annoying and amusing. But it got me thinking about rudeness. How we as humans have gotten used to not being so nice. I’ve noticed an uptick in this behavior, so I thought I’d share.

What’s the point of being rude?

What does it accomplish other than to make one feel good for half a minute after insulting someone else? I say half a minute because I think that’s all it takes before “normal” humans begin to think about what they’ve just done or said and then start to feel guilty for behaving badly. 

I think rudeness is mean, unnecessary, and pointless. If unintentional, it’s poor form at best. You can be blunt, frank, evasive, curt, short, assertive, insistent and other words that escape me at the moment to get your message across overtly without hurting someone’s feelings. To do that is at least honest. But blatant rudeness borders snarky with a middle finger up the “you know where” and, at best, passive-aggressive.

The Bible tells us that the tongue can be a mighty weapon. It warns against using it as such. We have to watch what we say to avoid offense, and most people do. But, nowadays, being rude seems to be de rigeur and is far from decent, respectful or nice.

Don’t get me wrong. As humans, we will have our bad days now and again.

But it seems easier today to say something and run from the situation after. I heard someone call it drive-by insults of the hit-and-run variety. Some are hard to recover from. It’s incredibly pervasive in our politics and online internet culture. We can easily hide from our intended victim anonymously without ever being found out. With our fingers on a keyboard, we can purge all of our inner jealousy, resentment, and just plain meanness by posting something online that would tear the guts out of our unfortunate victim without so much as batting an eye.

A second twinge of consciousness at doing so doesn’t arise for some time afterward—but it does, eventually. On the flip side, the victim finds himself at a loss and tries to apologize and/or justify the reason for being insulted. Which, by and large, I think is a waste of time, but who asked me? Hide behind insults all you want, but rude is just…rude. It spills over into our everyday lives, leaving us scratching our heads in wonderment over what has happened to civility.

What has modern technology wrought?

I’ve run into rudeness more and more lately and find it repulsive and irritating. Clever words, or witty comebacks, to put the rude person in their place doesn’t always come to mind when it’s unexpected. I either answer as if they haven’t said anything disrespectful or just look at them without saying a word—then feel stupid afterward.

But why should I?

More to the point, why should I give them the satisfaction of any response or the idea that they’ve made me feel bad? Do I defend myself and attack, or just let the event pass? Should we laugh, shrug it off, or confront the offender? Confrontation could lead to escalation, and no one wants more of that. We have enough in our culture already. We ran out of “chill pills” a long time ago, and frankly, I think we need to bring those suckers back. 

Does anyone else have this problem? Just asking.

More importantly, the problem is not mine but theirs. Of course it is! In the broad scheme of things, I don’t want to think about what their “problem” might be. After all, rudeness doesn’t deserve any more of my time or consideration, than I care to give it.

However, I do wonder, like the dirty birdy, where we go from here. He just flew off without a care in the world. But as humans, we have feelings to contend with. Maybe we need to consider the source. Not to compare humans to birds, but that animal didn’t give a sh*t (literally) about my feelings, and maybe neither should we when it comes to rudeness.

If you can’t laugh at it, I think a dead stare in the face of the offender or simple silence is the best comeback of all.  

Yeah!

 ~DaMarie

From my book Looking In from Outside: Poetry & Prose, titled “Rudeness!”

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Photo Courtesy of Andre Hunter