Respect

I’ve talked about respect before, but it’s really important to me.  And it relates directly to a conversation I had recently.

I’m not going to share details about who the conversation was with or what it was regarding.  That would be inappropriate, and that can be construed as disrespectful… and I’m all about respect.

I feel that everybody deserves at least a modicum of respect, no matter their age, position, physical or mental condition.  There’s no reason I can think of that I would consider justification for disrespecting someone outright, unless possibly they disrespected you first.

You can hate me, distrust me, despise me, or any of a dozen other things, but don’t disrespect me.  Don’t be condescending or patronizing (which is offensively condescending).

I had a conversation the other day where I was disrespected through use of condescension.  Or maybe through patronization.  I’m not sure which, and I don’t think they were necessarily meant to be so, and a lot of it was, I think, based around a bit of misinterpretation.  But it made me angry.

I’m not the kind of person that gets angry easily.  I might get a little upset, or I might “snap” at someone, but I don’t get angry.  And when I say angry, I mean rage.  I mean the kind of thing that causes an upsurge of adrenaline.  The kind of thing that makes me go quiet.

A lot of people might get boisterous when they’re angry, yelling and hollering.  I get quiet.  Really quiet.

I had a really hard time staying near this person.  Due to our… “relationship,” it wasn’t the kind of situation that would allow me to just say what I thought.  And what I thought was that there was a pen just BEGGING to be jabbed into this person’s face.  I could barely breath I was so angry.  I’m pretty sure my face was all red, too, while I pretended as though I were listening.

If it had been anybody else, I would have made them squirm.  My angry voice would have come out.  I would have stood right in their face, my nose to theirs (after bending over, of course), my finger ramming into their sternum to punctuate every word.  And just maybe I would have slammed a door.  And the last door I slammed cracked the frame, and I’m pretty sure did a fair bit of damage to the wall itself.

What would you do when a fairly well-built, 6’5″, 300 lb angry man gets in your face?  Respect me and you’ll never find out.