I relate the following minor incident, not because it in itself is terribly noteworthy, but what it says about a major shift in our society over the past decade or two. Also, because it's so very common.
Tonight I attended the Radical Cinema screening at a downtown coffeehouse. Tonight's feature was "Blackout" about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections' disenfranchised blacks in Florida and Ohio, respectively, and the other African-American candidate for president in 2008 and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's ongoing struggle to tell truth to power. My friend and I sat on a couch behind two older men on bar stools, all of us facing the TV screen. The organizer of the event, a late 30s-ish or early 40s-ish man, was standing next to the bar stools, facing me but talking with the men.
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Sunday, February 13, 2011
An All-Too-Common Mini-Tragedy in Today's Society
I addressed the bar stool guys with a lilt and a playfulness in my voice: "OK, now, guys, that's perfect. Don't move. Well, you can lean back a bit, but don't lean forward."
The organizer sternly reprimanded me, "That's nerve-wracking, Heidi."
What not so long ago would have been considered playful, fun-loving, even flirtatous is now considered insulting and irritating, even to grown men. Why and when did we become so hyper-sensitive to the point of blocking out fun and possibilities for further communication or flirting? Why is everything taken first as an insult unless proven otherwise? What does this say about our national character? Where will this hyper-sensitivity end? With people refraining from communication except through some officially sanctioned, PC-sanitized New Speak? Oh, yuk!
I am going to continue to be playful and have fun. Perhaps someday I'll meet someone who also wants to have fun and we'll become famous friends or, if he hasn't forgotten how to flirt, crazy lovers.
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About Me
- Heidi's heart
- Southern California, United States
- Perhaps my friend Mark summed me up best when he called me "a mystical grammarian." I am quite a mix--otherworldly, ethereal and in touch with "the beyond," yet prone to being very precise and logical, when need be. Romantic in the big-canvas meaning of the word, I see the world as an adventure, as a love poem, as a realm of beauty and wonder.
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