To start on a complete tangent, and remark on something completely unrelated to the title of this post, I frequently sit in the #WordPress chatroom. It’s quite a popular room, and 95% of the people there have their own blogs and such. Just checking out blogs that other people run makes me really, really envious of the writing I see. It actually makes me want to study English so that I can ramble on as if I have literally swallowed and digested a dictionary.
Anyway, has there ever been a substantial or completely insubstantial figure in your life that has some how or another taught you a very important lesson that you wish others learned? I was on the bus with Tallis today, going into town. As we passed HMV somebody was being arrested and searched. He was surrounded by two or three officers, and the streets were relatively crowded. As the bus went past I watched everyone turn their heads, shoulders, bodies, legs, so that they could execute a thorough inspection of this man, silently judging him as the bus trundled through the parting crowd that never fail to walk in the middle of the road.
I wasn’t one of the ones that turned my head. Instead I sat there and watched everyone else turn their heads. I saw the man being arrested because I naturally look out of the window, but I didn’t purposefully turn my head to look more.
When I was at high school I had a music teacher, Mr Parsons. He used to walk around with two spray bottles filled with water. He would often squirt a student with water for misbehaviour, which I think is something only he could get away with at school, because he had such a comical, light-hearted attitude and personality. He didn’t just squirt people with water when they misbehaved though. During the time when he was directly asking somebody a question, or telling somebody off, if anyone turned to look he would squirt them with water and announce “It’s none of your business!”. I think this is a really, really valuable lesson to take on board in life, especially if you can actually acknowledge it when it is relevant, for example, when somebody is getting arrested and you are on the bus.
All of the people on the bus that saw that man getting arrested judged him. They don’t know who he is, what he does, or even if he was actually stealing. However, I bet they’re all pretty much willing to bet that he is a bad person that was doing a bad thing. They don’t know all of the facts, and in my opinion, they shouldn’t have the rights to judge. I don’t know who he was or what he was doing, all I know is that he was getting arrested, which says to me that no matter what he was doing, he could have been having a better time.
This “none of your business” craziness bothers me most in the media. I hate the fact that there are so many reporters and editors that want any dirt they can get on any celebrity in the world just because they’re famous, and the sick, idiotic cunts that populate the majority of this world will pay to read about it. People discussing personal stories and rumours about celebrities is actually one of the most pathetic things I can possibly think of.