Excuses

I am so utterly sick of excuses.

For instance, I was sitting here with my grandmother and my mother after a wedding reception, just talking and whatnot. My grandmother asks about the bride's sister-in-law, and asks if she was the "Oriental" lady that was at the wedding. My mom told her it wasn't, and I said that she was the maid of honor. This is probably where I should've kept my mouth shut, but I was raised not to, so I didn't. I told my grandmother that "It isn't nice to call Asian people 'Oriental'. They find that offensive." It was the simple truth - I explained that the word is meant to describe things, not people. My mother starts getting angry with me, raises her voice, and growls, "It's what she knows; she doesn't know anything else to call them." We went back and forth, my grandmother trying to defend her rather narrow-minded point-of-view and so on. My mother stormed out of the room, proclaiming that "This is why my neck hurts all the time."

Now, perhaps I was in the wrong for saying anything - I have a bad habit of not keeping my mouth shut, especially when it comes to ignorance, but I just couldn't. Besides, I thought that it was rather innocuous; I just said it wasn't nice. My main tiff with this whole thing was the excuse that she didn't know any better. Like with other labels and things, you use that for people or animals that understandably don't have any knowledge whatsoever. A young puppy messing up a new rug. A child that colors on the walls with his new crayons. Puppies and children do not know that they're not supposed to do these things because they'ven't had the time to learn. However, a woman in her mid-70's ought to know that you don't call people things they don't want to be called. It's only fair. Yet it seems to me that because she wasn't raised in the time I was and all that, she can do whatever she wants. She's old. She doesn't know any better. In her time, things like that were normal. She lived through WWII and Vietnam. That doesn't mean anything to someone that hears that. They don't care what you when through or your reasons for it, all they heard when you call them something derogatory is, "I think you're lower than dirt, and I wish you would get out of my country". Now don't get me wrong, I love my grandmother - I love my mother, too. Sometimes, you've got to stand up for what you believe, even if you're outnumbered 2-1.

But perhaps this is all just an excuse for me being mean. I don't know anymore.

Lovely Misanthropic Me

A few weeks ago, when sitting around and doing my own thing, I noticed a certain show, Nanny 911, entrancing my mother with its primetime trashiness. As I looked on, I noticed that the family in need of assistance was slowly tearing apart at the seams - normal, everyday fare. However, in this particular case, I witnessed a husband tell his wife that he wanted a divorce on national television. We see things far more disturbing on TV all the time, what with the suicides, murder-homicides, tortures, and rapes - just turn on your local news station and watch how the fifty-five year old washout from being the station's first weather bunny barely twitches a eyelash whilst reporting the brutal murders of several children in a residential neighborhood.

That really isn't what it was. I think what was the most disturbing aspect of all this was the fact that these were real people (or at least they were paid to act like them). We just watched a marriage of quite a few years fall apart and a family disturbed by it all. Now, the movies and the dramas can show it to us and it doesn't bother us; but when we see it actually happen, it's sickening. Sickening in that they show people really suffering so we can get our jollies off. Sickening in that what George Carlin once hypothesized is true - it's like we're watching the 24-hour Suicide Channel. I'm sitting here watching a woman that gave her entire life to a man and his happiness to raise his family - an honorable if not onerous task - to see it all shatter when he tells her he can't stand to be around her anymore, and all for us to watch and discuss at our respective dinner tables. Sick, sick, sick.

Another thought occured to me when watching this - suppose this happens to me when I get older and all that. Now don't get me wrong - I don't plan on having a family, and if/when I do marry, I hope that the man that ends up putting that ring on my finger is competent enough to handle helping me run a house and still hold a job as much as I am. But the idea of just being left to rot like that nearly breaks my heart, and I'm nowhere near that involved in another person's life.

I just hope that when it does happen, he'll have the god-given mercy to call off the ten-person camera crew.