Mrissa's Correct And Cranky Rules for a Monday Morning

[mrissa]

(applicable other days as well)

1. It turns out that legality is not the only standard of behavior required in civilized circles. If pointing out that you have broken no laws is all it takes for your circle of acquaintance to approve of your behavior, you need a better circle of acquaintance. This is true of presidential candidates, of Harry Potter RPGers, and of any other circle you care to name: it being legal to do something does not make it kind, tasteful, interesting, or a dozen other things that a person might wish it to be.

2. Until nanotechnology progresses further than it has to date, neither soaps nor linens are traps for the young or unwary guest, nor should they be treated as such. If you don't want someone washing their hands with something, don't put it in a soap dish by the sink. If you don't want someone drying their hands on something, don't hang it on a towel bar in the bathroom or set it on the bathroom counter conveniently close by if guests are on their way. If you suspect that you have left something unsuitable in the bathroom because your guests have caught you unawares, for heaven's sake dart in and check.

3. If someone is clinging to someone else's arm in a public place, please consider that she may not be doing it for affection's sake, and do not attempt to bully her into letting go. Your failure condition if you navigate around her is that you may have given leeway to someone who is fluttery with new romance: not necessary, certainly, but not catastrophic. Whereas your failure condition if you attempt to bull through her is that you may cause great inconvenience and further suffering to someone for whom walking around in an ordinary fashion is already more difficult than she would like it to be; anticipation of this problem may keep her from useful or enjoyable activities when she's having a difficult day. If you feel the need, you may glare discouragingly in case she's doing it for fun, because by this point she does not give the proverbial rodent's hindquarters what you think as long as you don't try to knock her down.

Comments

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

Do people still have decorative towels in the bathroom? That seems like the most ridiculous thing to me. If you want a decorative wall hanging made out of fiber craft, go buy something like a small quilt or a tapestry. Decorative towels in the bathroom make as much sense to me as decorative meat in the fridge.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In our downstairs bathroom, we have a dark green towel on the wall and a cream towel with a dark green leaf embroidered on it on the counter. The latter was a gift, but the point is: they are both for drying one's hands. If we're having a large party, people are mostly using the downstairs bathroom rather than traipsing up into our bedroom space, and having two towels seems only sensible for more than a handful of people. But some poor people have been yelled at in the past, so they teach their children not to use the one with the small embroidered leaf on it, and I just want to go kick the people who yelled at them. It's a towel! Dry your hands!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'd say that the discerning observer can tell the difference between your two conditions in Item 3, but the odds say that someone who would "bull through" either couple wouldn't be into subtleties...

Etiquette permits you to kill such boors. However, your Item 1 appears to forbid it. Item 2 remains neutral on the subject.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"If someone is clinging to someone else's arm in a public place, please consider that she may not be doing it for affection's sake...."

I know this is your particular situation, and what you're really saying is "If I am...," but I don't think the advice is good in the general case. The situation you're describing is very unlikely, and if people should consider this particular unlikely situation then they should equally consider every other equally unlikely situation. The ability to quickly and invisibly discount rare situations is one of those amazing things that the brain does automatically, and undoing that doesn't seem like an evolutionary step forward.

B

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

But in what situation is it actually better to bull through two people who are clinging togeter, whatever their reasons?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I really don't see how walking straight at the middle point of people who are holding onto each other's arms for affection's sake is generally necessary.

Also, I have found it astonishing how many more people who are unsteady or having walking difficulties I've noticed now that I've joined their number. There were at least five others at MIA in a two hour period on Saturday afternoon -- just people who were unsteady on their feet and using someone else for assistance, not counting the ones in wheelchairs. The number of able-bodied people who brushed past them, often knocking into them, and clearly never noticed that they'd done it, was also quite eye-opening.

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is why any reasonably sane and/or decent person would think it was any of their business why someone might be hanging onto someone else's arm (unless either party somehow "belonged" to the observer). I'd also like to know why the aforementioned reasonably sane and/or decent person would find it necessary or desirable to insist that such a couple disengage. For crying out loud, is it really that difficult to take three or four extra steps to go around someone?

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Except...why the heck should someone push their way between two people anyhow? Even if it is "just" affection and not affliction, that's still uncouth in the utmost. When one adds in the possibility that there may be more people than Mrissa in the world, even, perhaps, in Minnesota, who are receiving support or directional assistance from such contact, that's only emphasizing what should have been baseline for acceptable behavior, anyhow.

Trust me, if I felt skipper as a lamb and was leaning on the arm of a close friend as we walked along, I would not be excited by evolutionary steps forward that stepped forward between the two of us.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, rah.

That first one needs to be writ across the sky in letters of flame, I think.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Also, I knew I fallen through into a new level of trouble with my supervisor when she started inserting "It's my right as your supervisor," or "I do have the right, you know!" into her conversations with me. At one point, when she had me completely off kilter, with my usual filters absolutely disarranged, I told her, "Of course you have the right! You have the right to do anything you want. And then I have the right to quit. And we don't want to go there, so can we talk about--"

::cough:: I am not advocating this sample of dialogue. I should never have said it, and quote it only as an example of how completely derailed I'd gotten by that point. But she's said it several times, only starting in the last three-to-six months, and the first time she said it, a hundred warning bells went off in my head. For me, this translates blatantly to, "I feel threatened by you! I am looking for indisputable ways of shoring up my authority!" and if I made her feel like that, then I was doing even worse at dealing with her than I thought.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

The only plausible situation I can come up with, for deliberately walking between a couple that's holding hands, walking arm-in-arm, etc is that the safe pedestrian zone is narrow, and walking around them might be dangerous.

For example, if ducklings had imprinted upon you, and the oncoming couple were walking between wolves.

Other scenarios involve the sudden flare-up of old jealousies related to one member of the couple or the other, packages with inordinant mass and momentum, or lava. but I'm not mentioning them because I promised to restrict myself to plausible situations.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ninjas. One must never neglect the possibility of ninjas.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

The only plausible situation I can come up with, for deliberately walking between a couple that's holding hands, walking arm-in-arm, etc is that the safe pedestrian zone is narrow, and walking around them might be dangerous.

I would note that in nearly all such situations, simply slowing down and following the couple until you're through the narrow spot and can easily get around them would seem to me the best solution.

I would also note that in nearly all such situations were simply slowing down, etc., isn't an acceptable solution, the next-best solution would seem to me to be a polite and audible, "Excuse me," to indicate to the couple that you'd like to get around them and would they please move out of the way.

I can understand running through a couple if, say, one has just spotted a small child in the path of the aforementioned lava flow and is rushing to get the child out of the way. But I don't think many of us run into those situations very often.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I think that 1 should be amended to "and whether it's illegal or just unwise, not being caught doesn't change that fact."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes. "It wasn't illegal," is a really shaky leg to stand on, but, "It was illegal, but I didn't get caught for it," is even worse.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

very right and proper, all. *nods*

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of someone I met who carried a cane, not so much because it helped her to get around, but because it served as a visual signal to others that she wasn't fully mobile. Not that people should have to carry visible badges of impairment to be entitled to consideration. (And not that the aggressor in #3 is likely to respect a cane short of it being applied to their backside, I suspect.)

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

I actually did that briefly when I had just begun walking "normally" after recovering from a broken ankle. I didn't so much need the cane to help me walk per se but I did use it as a signal to others that they ought to give me space to walk, not attempt to crowd past me, etc. And it did help quite a bit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And it doesn't always work: if my visually impaired friend cares to retell or link to the story of when the guy assumed he was faking blind and didn't really need his white cane, that might be of general interest.

B. is right above: some of the things that people do to (temporarily or permanently) disabled people that are rude are not rude because of the disability. Attempting to remove someone's property from their person would be rude (if not criminal!) even if it wasn't a blind person's white cane. But the impact is greater because of the disability.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling this happens a lot; someone recently told me a story of doing the same thing when she was a 12-year-old with a not-visibly-damaged foot who needed to rest often.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

#3: Jesus fucking CHRIST, people.

What if it IS for affection? Why on earth are you trying to barrel through? W. T. F!?!?!?

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

Because people hate love. They're love-haters. Or perhaps LUVHATRZ, because that's how the kids talk these days.

No laws broken here (pending appeal).

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=1= I work amongst lawyers. The minimal standards for behavior is somewhere below "not breaking the law." Actually, that's more like whatcha call a maximal standard.

=2= Non-guestworthy soap should be clearly labelled, for liability reasons. Oh, wait, I'm not at work right now ...

=3= W.T.F. indeed!

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

My best friend, and all of her family members, have this habit of putting out towels and soap that are "just for show" and I use them every time, and I always get fussed at. Her mother has actually yelled at guests for "ruining the good towels" by touching them with wet hands when they ought to be able to see that they're clearly "just for show" and not regular towels. I am still baffled at this. I think this preference for touch-me-not bathroom paraphernalia is a genetic form of towel-induced insanity or something. It's definitely been passed from a mother to all of her children, and the cousins have it as well.

If you visit me, you may rest assured that anything visible in the bathroom that can help you wash or dry your hands is fair game for you to use. :P

When I crushed a spinal disc and couldn't use my legs properly for two years, I had to drag myself along walls and hobble from chair to bench to whatever I could hang onto, often winding up sitting down in the middle of my route wherever I went on foot. (I had no insurance and thus no wheelchair.) I only had one semi-functional leg and the other was dead weight. People knocked me down CONSTANTLY. Some even laughed and said I was faking! You're right, I had noticed disabled people before but until I couldn't navigate just on campus because of all the barriers to access, I had NO IDEA how horribly difficult it was for folks who were mobility impaired. And some selfish asses without tags would ALWAYS park in the TWO handicapped spots at the dorm and I would literally cry when I saw I had to find a space in the endless sea of regular parking spaces. Getting to my room from the lot took sometimes 30 or 40 minutes, going from car to car, setting off alarms on occasion and being angry when people would yell at me to get off their car (it was either lean on car bumpers or get run over).

Those of us who have invisible but real difficulties take a lot of abuse, whether it's by accusation that our issues are not "real" or by facing physical or attitudinal barriers to our ability to enjoy everyday things. Thank you for bringing attention to these (unfortunately easily neglected) issues.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Anything that can be ruined by touching it with wet hands should not be in the bathroom! Honestly.

And yah. It's astonishing how many people assume they can see any possible disability, so if they can't see it, it's not there.