Stories...

After I parked the car at the Esplanade this morning, I started wandering over, as I normally do, to where we meet for boot camp when I heard someone rush up madly behind me. I turned to see this woman charge at me. I side stepped and she rushed forward to then stand bang in front of me and not move. Clearly she was drugged (seen a few in my time), very unwashed and I suspect homeless. I said hello, and started to move. Every move I made she blocked it. Was I concerned? Well, shit yeah. Crazy people do crazy things. So I stopped, thought for a moment then looked her in the eye and started talking calmly to her about the weather. Have you ever noticed that the weather is the most innocuous thing yet it binds all sorts of people together? She blinked several times then nodded and started telling me about her boyfriend, the place she’d been thrown out of and the computer someone stole from her. I listened and kept throwing in the word ‘mate’ - it’s a common leveler in Australian society that indicates no one is better than anyone else and we’re all the same. I then added "I’m headed over that way," pointing to the boot campers, and she continued talking to me as she walked beside me. By the time we got over to the meeting point she was very chatty and I stood and listened to her for a moment before wishing her good luck. She told me she was off to steal back her computer. O-kay then.

The thing that I got from this is two-fold. One – everyone has a story and often just by listening to it you can calm them down and save your arse. And two? I have frigging nerves of steel.        

Confront me not...

The other night an Aussie current affairs show did a segment on a drunken woman driving with her kids. Now the woman in question was an actress pretending to be drunk and about to drive her kids home from shopping or wherever. The show wanted to see if any passerbys would intervene and stop her from driving away with her kids. She was lurching everywhere and doing a really good act of being completely legless (drunk). Did many people stop and confront the woman? Not many and some only after someone else had. Apparently, psychological surveys show most people do not want to get involved because they hate confrontation - but will join in if someone does the confronting first. What this means if no one says anything most people would do stuff all to correct a situation that they know is wrong.

Why is that? Are we scared to meet a fight or stand up for our rights? Is it just easier to back away, pissed off and angry, thinking ‘oh, what I could have said.’ Why don’t we just say it? If we are that affronted or concerned then why don’t we stand up for ourselves and others? Why do we wait to see what other people do? Now, I don’t include myself in this. Why? Because it’s genetically impossible for any of my kin to accept crap or allow others to. Sure, you’re right, sometimes it’s pointless to take someone on who has more power than you. And yeah, sometimes you don’t win…but it’s the trying that counts. It’s the belief that you are as good as anyone else that matters – and all of you are. It’s the inbred knowledge that you cannot let someone be treated badly when you could have said something to stop it.

A woman at work was bitching about another in the ladies loos (ladies toilets). It’s an excellent place for gossip, info and bitchery. I said to her ‘put up or shut up.’ Her response ‘Oh no, I hate confrontation.’ Well, there’s your answer. If you do nothing to change a situation or your lot in life because you’re worried about what someone else thinks then whose fault is it?

“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins. Not through strength, but through persistence.”

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