who needs love like that?

A guy on the Utilikilts Yahoo discussion group was "assaulted" by a self-appointed woman playing Tartan Police. She gave him hell for being a non-Scot and wearing a kilt (even though Utilikilts are NOT Tartan kilts...) and my response to him was "as for people like her, i just feel sorry for them. i feel sorry that they need to waste so much time and effort judging the choices that i have made for me, the choices that do not impact their lives beyond the fact that they made eye contact with me."

which reminded me of a story...

a couple years back in my hometown, i stopped at Pick-N-Save to buy beer. The clerk was nearly old enough to be my mother, and there was one customer in line behind me. The clerk decided to strike up a conversation with the customer behind me... a discussion about ME and my nose ring... "Wow, don't cattle wear rings in their noses? Maybe put a chain on it and get lead around by it..." Comments like that. Of course, the man behind me agreed with the clerk 100%.

so, unfortunately it is only several years later that i came up with a great comeback... but i'll tuck it away hopefully to use at another time...

"I'd get FIRED for talking about a customer like that." and then insist on talking to a manager. i don't even care what she was commenting ON, it was that she was speaking negatively ABOUT ME to another customer... What if i had my nose pierced because i was from India? (or married to someone from India, since i with my reflectively white skin am CLEARLY not Indian...) a comment like that would be tantamount to commenting to a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke "So, where's the propeller for your beanie?" or saying to a veiled Muslim woman, "what, are you too ugly to be seen in public?"

i got my nose pierced while living in London fourteen years ago, and i got lots of compliments on it from the Indian women working at the local grocery store (my neighborhood was predominantly a mix of Middle Easterners and Asians). Now, i would have felt BAD and apologetic if the Indian women were offended that i had it done (since it's "their" thing) but if THEY like the nose ring on this white chick, then i have every right to wear it...