Today I called an aquaintence, a local shop owner, to pass along some advice about websites. Near as I can tell, she must have thought I was trying to sell her, because she was extremely rude from the get-go. She completely blind-sided me with rudeness on the phone, then called up another potential client and yelled at him about me. Now I'm sure she was just having a rotten day and was blowing off steam, but I've been floored all day by the degree of her rudeness, particularly since I was just trying to be helpful.
It's always a surprise when others assume I've got some ulterior manipulative motive, since I pretty much mean what I say and say what I mean. It's just how I live. Whenever I realize someone just doesn't trust me, it's a shock. Why so much fear?
Last year, we had about a dozen deer that slept on our lawn every night. Last hunting season, most of the adults were probably killed, as I rarely see older deer now. They've stopped sleeping on the lawn. During hunting season, I wanted to say to the deer, "Just stay on our lawn. You're safe with us. Just trust us, we won't harm you." If they had listened, they'd still be alive.
Here's the thing: even if the deer could understand my plea, they'd have absolutely no reason to believe me. Here's why ... all the hunters would be saying the same thing. After a while, the deer would wise up and stop trusting.
Same thing with people. I'm not a hunter, but they don't know this. They haven't nothing to fear from me, but there's no way I can convey this. All I gotta say is I'd hate to live in fear like that. It'd truly suck.
Posted by timothy at June 7, 2002 11:11 PM | TrackBack