Questions: Other

One thing that would happen to me a lot in my time as a bouncer, a football player, and now as a (heavy air quotes) hockey player is people actively disrespecting me, maybe trying to goad me into something, maybe not, but always them being an asshole without provocation from me. You can think it’s ridiculous or not, but disrespect will get the worst out me. I could throw my whole life away over intentional disrespect, which sounds crazy when cool-headed me is typing it, but seems like the logical solution when I lose control of myself. Needless to say that has caused some negative situations in the past, to put it politely.

I have to own my response, as unintentional and unconscious as it might be. There have definitely been times when people have just been like “holy fuck, dude, take it easy!”, and I get it, but it really pisses me off that no one is mad at the person who brought this out of me, because it’s not like I just flip for nothing. You have to do something egregious to get me there. What you do might not be as loud, or as physical, but you’re still every bit the asshole for creating the environment for a situation like that to transpire. I’m not blame-free, but I’m not even there without you doing something first.

So I guess I’m saying I feel like the quiet “cause” gets dismissed, and the blame just completely shifts to the noisy “effect”, and I think that’s pretty off-base if you ask me. I very much reject the notion that I or anyone else should just be able to absorb whatever mistreatment we experience and not react, and if we do, everything is our fault. That really feels like a cop-out for the more common “quiet offender” to get away with doing stupid shit and then spinning it around on whoever calls them out or reacts to their bad behavior.