The other day I was at the dog park with my dog Sam, and Cheryl was there with Buster and Rob was there with London. We were having a pleasant chat while the dogs rolled in the snow and sniffed each other’s butts and stuff.
Then Koko came in with her dog Marley. Koko’s kind of eccentric – loud, outrageously opinionated, always on a soapbox about something – but she has always struck me as kind of raw and tender underneath it all.
Cheryl’s dog Buster is neurotic and attacks other dogs before they can attack him (kind of like Bush, except Buster’s motivated by fear). He’s only got about five doggy friends, so Cheryl takes him out of the park if other dogs arrive. Anyway, Koko and Marley come in and Cheryl puts Buster on the leash and starts to leave. Koko confronts her: “Hey! Why do you always run away when you see me?”
Cheryl very nicely explains about Buster, and apologizes to Koko for giving the wrong impression. Koko is a talker, not a listener, so it took several repetitions for her to understand what Cheryl was saying.
Then Koko says “Ok, I get it. You just never know with people around here, there’s a lot of strange people. Some people who come to this park are gayer than gay and flaunt it all over the place.”
I stood there wondering where THAT came from, since it didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything, and it seemed unnecessarily offensive. Cheryl looked equally taken aback. Rob, who is gay, bristled. He’s not one to mince words either, so he challenged her. I forget what was said exactly, but a not-too-neighbourly exchange followed, and then Koko took her dog and left the park.
I felt kind of bad for not saying anything, but I rarely think well on my feet. (I’m a master of the retrospective “I should have said…”)
A few minutes later, Sam and I headed home, and suddenly there was Koko. She starts in about how rude some people are (Rob). I told her that I thought what she said was offensive. I tried to say more, but she cut me off.
“I call it like I see it,” she ranted, “People can be who they want to be, but they can’t expect everybody else to pretend it’s okay. I tell it like it is. I’m not afraid to call a faggot a faggot or a nigger a nigger or a wetback a wetback!”
She had more to say (she always does), but I didn’t want to hear it. I just shook my head and walked away. She yelled after me “If you can’t handle the truth then you can go fuck yourself!”
I don’t understand why someone who so fiercely defends her own right to be herself is so intolerant of other people’s right to be themselves.
Great post Zoom! I don’t understand it either. Here they are, defending their own rights but forgetting all about the rights of others. Everybody has the right to be who they want to be. Maybe it is just easier to judge then to accept for people like Koko.
I think you’re right – for some people it’s easier to judge than accept…and also easier to talk than listen. It’s such a waste though. I have a feeling she lashes out to protect herself (you know the old saying, the best defence is a good offence).
Sue,
Moxie and Tobique’s owner here. How do?
I know where you’re coming from. It’s hard to say the right thing in these sorts of situations. The urge to be polite and the urge to club the person over the head with a pipe compete, and I end up saying nothing.
I was at the drugstore up the hill, waiting in line at the postal counter. One man who works there is tall and blonde and has the mannerisms of a gay guy. Some older idiot in front of me was complaining that “I don’t want to be served by some faggot!”
I was so stunned by his statement that I couldn’t even speak. It was so alien to me, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him right. He didn’t really say that, did he?
It was only later that the perfect response came to me:
“What makes you think he wants to serve you?”
Nik
Nik, what a pleasant surprise to find you here. Just curious – how did you happen to stumble across my little ion in the blogosphere?
Michelle, who works at the Ottawa Humane Society, somehow stumbled across your blog and then wrote me an email and said, “Guess who else in our neighbourhood has a blog?”
I’ll ask Michelle how she found it.
Ah. Apparently you found her. She says you posted on her blog, which is Green Colander. It’s a small spherical object in the heavens.
Okay, this is getting odder and odder. I didn’t realize Green Colander was Michelle, or that your last name was Maack. I think I might have had other online encounters with both of you in the past.
About four years ago I found a book outside at 309 Cooper Street, with your name and email address in it, and instructions to pass it along. I can’t remember what the book was called, but this was before the Bookcrossing phenomenon. I sent you an email saying I found it, and then I added my email address to it and left it in the Toronto bus station. I never heard anything about it again. Did you? Does this ring any kind of bell?
And then, a couple of years ago I got into the whole Bookcrossing thing, and scattered about 85 books around Ottawa (many of them in the dog park). Very few were “officially” found and tracked, but I do recall that one of them was found by someone named Green Colander. For some reason I thought it was Linda who found it, because her icon looked a lot like her dog, Emma. Would that have been Michelle?
Oh man, now your name is starting to trigger other distant memories. Did you used to be a regular on the local BBS’s back in the late 80s and early 90s? Pre-Internet?
Just call me Flog Sonata.