I was trying to talk to Josie today in Psych, and I was telling her how I had never really danced with anyone before Prom. KC sits next to Katie, and she heard, and half-yells how weird that is and why don't I dance, what's wrong with me? Thank you, KC, for your impressive show of tactful restraint. What's wrong with you?
(Sit tight for a moment, there's a point to these little stories.)
In Spanish III, Kayla sits in front of me, and Kalyn sits next to her. Now it just so happens that Kalyn is homosexual. Personally, I don't believe homosexuality is right, but it is not my place to tell others what to do, and it is certainly not my place to make them feel inferior or outcast because of their choices. I am friendly with Kalyn, because she is nice and we both enjoy running. What I don't understand is why Kayla would think it is acceptable to sit there in class and complain about how gross gay people are. Kalyn is right next to her. What good does it do to make Kalyn uncomfortable?
In art today, Mr. Cox got annoyed that stray cats had been rounded up and neutered and re-released in order to control stray animal population. He didn't think it was dumb to bother with it, he just thought they should have killed them all instead. Now, if he'd said that he thought it would have done more good to put them to sleep or something more humane, I could have accepted his opinion, but he went on and listed several different very sick ways of killing cats. I love animals, and cats are one of my favorites. It really upset me to have to listen to him flippantly talk about killing them like that.
People say and do rude things all the time, often with little care for how it will affect others, or often just to make others uncomfortable. What good does this do? Okay, so this girl made a mistake, do you have to talk about her like she's not right there, or like she doesn't have feelings? Would it hurt to keep your tactless comments to yourself? Words have power, that's why we have presidential debates, and that's why people get beat up over things like cyber bullying. There are such things as emotional and verbal abuse because words have power.
I bet all your rape and sex jokes don't seem nearly as funny, now that the girl in front of you has read her poem about being sexually abused since childhood, do they? And you'd probably think twice about all your drug jokes if you knew your boyfriend was on steroids.
Maybe people should think about things like that before they make jokes and insults regarding homosexuality, rape, abuse, appearances, and murder.
Now sometimes, it can't be helped. You can't sidestep every potentially insulting thing you might say, that'd be impossible. I secretly get upset when other girls talk about their breasts, because that is one part of my body in which I am particularly insecure, but it would be unreasonable for me to expect all the girls to stop talking about their bodies at all because of that.
My point is, don't go out of your way to hurt someone. And don't talk about seriously painful subjects so flippantly. The high you might get from recieving so much attention for your witty comments might not make up for the embarrassment or shame you might cause someone else. There is nothing to gain by disregarding tact.
Remember to take your prescribed daily dosage of Tact, and don't eat yellow snow!
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p.s.: The images are once again from postsecret( postsecretcommunity.com or postsecret.blogspot.com )
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