June 24, 2011
--The shelter
Last night, things didn't improve after I logged off Weebly. The conversation among the group of 3 or 4 residents behind me had gone from flooding to scabies, with the guy who initiates a lot of it lately doing even louder coughing.
I heard the scabies comments, but it was the coughing that got to me; he was really loud, it was late, and I turned around and said “Would you shut the f--- up?”
I would like it if I had a better way to respond to people than saying things like that, even when it has gone on and on with the person deliberately trying to upset me and the person succeeding in making me angry.
He denied doing anything, saying “I wasn't talking to you,” and I told him he knew exactly what he was doing; he raised his voice, and we argued until the shelter staffperson came out. The female resident who might or might not be a pedophile (great; a new, male resident is starting the coughing thing, as I write this) said to me, without my having mentioned their previous conversation at all “Scabies? We were talking about it, that's all; it had nothing to do with you.”
I laughed and said, “I don't know anything about scabies; if you do, that's your problem.” Then I walked out of the room and went to bed.
The only thing I know about scabies is having filled people's prescriptions for the stuff that kills it when I worked in a pharmacy. Also; I bet people who do get it feel horrible about it. They always looked that way when they picked up their prescriptions. Nobody should be trying to get to anybody by trying to imply that they have problems such as scabies. I've been saying exactly that for 2 years now; there are ways in which it's ok to make fun of people, a little bit, and there are even ways in which to be sarcastic or degrading that aren't great but that aren't degrading on the level of trying to imply that someone has something like scabies.
Here's another thing, because I don't want to go through this for weeks with the big harassers; I don't have any money, and if I had scabies, the prescription for it would show up on my state health insurance.
The two women who have become part of that bullying group at the shelter were restless last night. They share a bunkbed; the one who does a lot of coughing did that from her top bunk, and I think that maybe the other one in the lower bunk might have been pretending to talk in her sleep in order to be threatening, saying things such as “F--- Her!” I think there were a few hours in the middle of the night when one or both of those things were happening.
(I don't know which guy in the shelter is doing the gross cough/sneezing from the other room, but it's gross.)
@7:30 p.m.
--I've never put it this way before
I never use the "n" word. Unlike some other swear words, such as the "f" word, the "n" word isn't a word that I ever say or that I ever have to exert energy to make myself not say.
I'm going to try to explain what's happened to women over the past year and a half in a way that I haven't tried to explain it before.
Say that you are someone who looks at all black people and both thinks and says the "n" word to describe them, in general, all the time, with no second thoughts, qualms, or belief that you're doing something wrong. Say that you think that you're being nice to and about black people when you describe them as good "n-----s," and you can't understand why they get upset when you're trying to compliment them by calling them that. You think that you're being nice when you're not calling them bad "n-----s," and variations of that, but what you don't realize is that whether the preceding adjective is "good" or "bad", you're still calling them the "n" word, and thinking about them that way, and that's the problem.
@7:34 p.m.
Copyright L. Kochman June 24, 2011
--The shelter
Last night, things didn't improve after I logged off Weebly. The conversation among the group of 3 or 4 residents behind me had gone from flooding to scabies, with the guy who initiates a lot of it lately doing even louder coughing.
I heard the scabies comments, but it was the coughing that got to me; he was really loud, it was late, and I turned around and said “Would you shut the f--- up?”
I would like it if I had a better way to respond to people than saying things like that, even when it has gone on and on with the person deliberately trying to upset me and the person succeeding in making me angry.
He denied doing anything, saying “I wasn't talking to you,” and I told him he knew exactly what he was doing; he raised his voice, and we argued until the shelter staffperson came out. The female resident who might or might not be a pedophile (great; a new, male resident is starting the coughing thing, as I write this) said to me, without my having mentioned their previous conversation at all “Scabies? We were talking about it, that's all; it had nothing to do with you.”
I laughed and said, “I don't know anything about scabies; if you do, that's your problem.” Then I walked out of the room and went to bed.
The only thing I know about scabies is having filled people's prescriptions for the stuff that kills it when I worked in a pharmacy. Also; I bet people who do get it feel horrible about it. They always looked that way when they picked up their prescriptions. Nobody should be trying to get to anybody by trying to imply that they have problems such as scabies. I've been saying exactly that for 2 years now; there are ways in which it's ok to make fun of people, a little bit, and there are even ways in which to be sarcastic or degrading that aren't great but that aren't degrading on the level of trying to imply that someone has something like scabies.
Here's another thing, because I don't want to go through this for weeks with the big harassers; I don't have any money, and if I had scabies, the prescription for it would show up on my state health insurance.
The two women who have become part of that bullying group at the shelter were restless last night. They share a bunkbed; the one who does a lot of coughing did that from her top bunk, and I think that maybe the other one in the lower bunk might have been pretending to talk in her sleep in order to be threatening, saying things such as “F--- Her!” I think there were a few hours in the middle of the night when one or both of those things were happening.
(I don't know which guy in the shelter is doing the gross cough/sneezing from the other room, but it's gross.)
@7:30 p.m.
--I've never put it this way before
I never use the "n" word. Unlike some other swear words, such as the "f" word, the "n" word isn't a word that I ever say or that I ever have to exert energy to make myself not say.
I'm going to try to explain what's happened to women over the past year and a half in a way that I haven't tried to explain it before.
Say that you are someone who looks at all black people and both thinks and says the "n" word to describe them, in general, all the time, with no second thoughts, qualms, or belief that you're doing something wrong. Say that you think that you're being nice to and about black people when you describe them as good "n-----s," and you can't understand why they get upset when you're trying to compliment them by calling them that. You think that you're being nice when you're not calling them bad "n-----s," and variations of that, but what you don't realize is that whether the preceding adjective is "good" or "bad", you're still calling them the "n" word, and thinking about them that way, and that's the problem.
@7:34 p.m.
Copyright L. Kochman June 24, 2011