No! I'm not going to blog about you.
I simply refuse to.
There we were having tea and conversation with Belinda and Susan. With our schedules we manage to do this three or four times a year and I always look forward to the get togethers. We laugh a lot. We share a lot. We make each other think. We distract each other from thinking. It's a perfect couple of hours.
Today before we left Belinda read us a passage from a book that was really meaningful to her. I loved it too, both because of it's overall message but also because of it's 'pro-disability' sentiment. It lead us to conversation on a bit deeper level.
Suddenly, perhaps because I hadn't had a blog moment all day, a guy at another table gets up and inserts his opinion into my conversation with the others at the table. Not only is it an opinion that I personally find a bit revolting, his intrusion was incredibly intrusive. It also signalled that he'd been sitting there listening to us ... well, OK, I listen to others, too.
On our way out someone said, 'Well, you've got your blog post tomorrow.'
And I thought, 'Oh no, I've got some control.'
So I'm not blogging about what he said or how it upset me or how typically dismissive of the disabled point of view it was. So I'm not going to tell the story of how a jerk felt that he could just co-opt a guy in a wheelchair talking with his friends. So I'm not going to give him the space.
Hey, you, asshat, You probably think this blog is about you.
Don't you.
Don't you.
Don't you.
That was incredibly, incredibly rude of him. I would be aghast if anyone ever tried to do that to me.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Kate, that was very rude of him.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that is ironic/funny is that not 5 minutes before seeing this post I heard a remake of 'You're so Vain', by Matthew Sweet and Suzanna Hoff. lol
What Kate and Brad said (except for the bit about hearing the "you're so vain" remake ... I had no idea that was quoted from a song!)
ReplyDeleteDave, I had a lot of trouble reading the new white print against the light blue back ground. I had to copy/paste the text into my email window (so I could see it as black on white) before I could read it without hurting my eyes! Can we have a return to black print on a light background? Or if you have your heart set on a "white on color" scheme, consider a much darker background? Thanks!
Andrea, I have the background as a darkish brown ... let me know if that's NOT what you are getting and then, of course, I will change it.
ReplyDeleteHm, on my screen it is not brown at all, it is some shade of blueish purple or purplish blue! And, not dark enough to contrast well with the white text.
ReplyDeleteNo idea why the colors are apparently so dramatically different on my screen vs. yours, but ...
Thanks!
Hi Dave
ReplyDeleteHe was so vain that I am not going to say any more on his rudeness.
Just to let you know it is coming up a dark brown background on my computer. I can understand Andrea's difficulty seeing it if she is getting a blue background
That would be hard to see
Andrea, I've changed the colour slightly and I've increased the size of the text significantly. Does this help?
ReplyDeleteThis is a complete aside.....Are you going to do anything to mark when you hit 1/2 million hits on your blog?
ReplyDeleteAfraid not, Dave. The color still seems nearly the same on my screen. The text does seem larger (which I'm sure is good for people with low vision) but the main problem is the lack of contrast.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes a difference: I use the "Flock" browser on an old Mac computer. It may be that my browser, for some reason, is interpreting the color codes for your background differently than for others, though I've no idea why that would be!
Thanks for trying!
I have often wondered how one person can find themselves in the midst of so much "bloggable bounty."
ReplyDelete"He gets way more than his fair share," I have thought!
And yet,there we were yesterday, and it happened again.
Do we have very loud, funny and fascinating conversations? Maybe--but it takes me by surprise that someone will lean over or walk over and join in!
"Oh-oh," I thought nervously, as Mr. No Boundaries strolled over--and disagreed with a point that had been made!
It is at just such times that I am prone to blurt out something inappropriate, having entered Etiquette No Man's Land; hence the nervousness.
Next time we must get a sign for the table, "Private Tea Party--Not a Cocktail Party."
Either that or sell tickets. :)
Andrea, completely changed colours to a very dark background. Is that working for you now?
ReplyDeleteHm ... in Flock (my usual browser) it looks identical to before -- if you hadn't said you changed the color I wouldn't have known. I momentarily switched to Safari, one of my back-up browsers, and did see white text on a completely black background. So it does work in Safari. Maybe I could just read your blog via Safari from now on, since your experimenting with the colors doesn't seem to be bringing about results on my end.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I don't "get" your post, because I think that I do... but I have to admit. I'm still dying to know what the conversation was about, and what the jerk said. I'm really one of those people who is 1000 times more interested in the things people choose not to tell me, than if they'd just told me. :)
ReplyDeleteKristine, the book I read from was Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, and a section about twin sisters. They are both described beautifully as individuals with separate personalities and giftings. Then Gilbert reveals that they also share a blood supply and tissue. They are conjoined at the head--and neither of them wants to be separated. They are happy as they are and would choose to be no different, although many people cannot imagine that they would be anything but depressed and sad. The author reminds the reader that we also wouldn't think about the intimacy they share and which we could only dream of having with another human. That got us talking about Tracy Latimer and Dave shared how a man with her physical condition (but not the same intellectual capacity) was not allowed to testify at her father's murder trial. That led from a discussion of mercy killing to a 13 year old girl in England who has survived Leukemia but now wants to die--and her parents say it's her right. At that point the man walked over and said she had the right to choose to die. Dave said, "She is 13." The man insisted she had the right to die and then made a strange remark about not being disabled "like you,"-- "but I have a rod in my leg." Not sure what that had to do with the conversation.
ReplyDeleteEveryone around the table was by then at various levels of awkward!
Belinda, how does Dave feel about you making public what he decided to keep private?
ReplyDeleteJan,
ReplyDeleteSomeone not invited into the conversation intruded. The readers of Rolling Around in My Head were included when Dave wrote about it.
The subject wasn't a secret or confidential--and wasn't key to the point of the post, but Kristine was interested.
Loved the You're So Vain rewrite and I'm glad you aren't giving any more space to such an asshat.
ReplyDeleteHehehe. The comments are a lot more fun than the original blog sometimes! I just HAVE to dive in. :)
ReplyDeleteI doubt very much that there is ANYTHING (almost) that Belinda could do to offend Dave. When people spend years building a strong bridge of friendship like theirs, you can drive a Mack truck over it and it's gonna hold just fine.
But if she did... I'm sure they'd be able to work it out just fine. They are two of the finest people I know, after all.
I loved how you handled this blog-opportunity, Dave! And you too, Belinda. Blog on!
Haha, well, I hope I didn't kill Dave and Belinda's friendship. :) But assuming they're fine...
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, Belinda! Based off that section anyway, the book sounds great. I made a note of it. Friends and conversation also sound great, until the layers of awkwardness intruded. Weird... Sounds like one of those many moments where I know I have a million things I could say in response, but they never seem to come to me in the moment!