No, really, I was reading one of Tinkertink's latest blogs, which refers to and responds to a lovely piece of spam he received, and it occurred to me that sometimes that stuff could be really entertaining.  Would you like to enlarge your penis?  Why, sure, because right now it's so small that it's a clitoris.  My Gmail is so good at catching spam that I don't even read that box anymore, and it almost never slips through.  With my old email, my initial reaction to spam in my box was to snort in disgust.  But sometimes it would then strike me as funny, and I'd read it for a chuckle.  And that was the beauty of spam-- in a second or less, I knew exactly what I was dealing with, and I knew how to react.  It's harder with people.

When I meet someone at work, it's usually when they are first hired, and I'm usually involved to some degree in their training.  I have to remain objective, lest I taint the employee-supervisor relationship.  I am of course allowed to befriend my coworkers, but I can only do so after long, careful observation and interaction, because I don't dare befriend anyone who doesn't know how to separate work and personal life.

When I meet a neighbor, even in my friendly neighborhood, I again have to remain neutrally pleasant until I get a sense of whether this will be a, "howdy, neighbor!" neighbor, or a "you stole my damn weedwhacker" neighbor, or even a "I have a couple of heads in my deep freeze" neighbor.  I know then that this will be a long relationship (whether it's good or not--except maybe in the last case), so I tread lightly for a long time.

Strangers in this town are even harder.  I'm in a town with a large...LARGE...elderly population, and many of them are snowbirds.  (For you non-Floridians, they winter here and summer up North.)  The elderly here, I have learned, can not be counted on to be at least polite as it was in my Mississippi hometown.  Culture does seem to play at least some role in whether or not someone is rude, because I know it's just not possible otherwise that a majority of people from a certain state which shall remain nameless (MASSACHUSSETTS) tend to be publicly nasty.  I can't see a person's attitude at first glance, so I must tread lightly even at the Publix market.

You might say to me, "judge not, lest ye be judged..." or something similar.  As I get older, I find this is one of my least favorite biblical directions (for the record, I'm not a Christian, but was trained as one and played one in a theatrical production).  I feel it is misleading.  I believe in practicing compassion--meaning that I try to remember everyone has a story that might explain why they do what they do, and I therefore don't take it personally.  I generally try to alleviate any suffering, or at minimum not make it worse.  However, this doesn't mean I must then insert myself into their story, or allow them to drag me into it.  To conduct my life in a peaceful, happy way, I must judge people's actions, at least enough to determine my role in any scenario that might result from our interaction.  To do otherwise puts me at risk for a world of hurt.

So, yeah...I miss spam.  In the real world, I generally am honest when asked, but I've learned to hold my tongue unless it really matters, at least for now.  I  miss being able to freely say, "Bullshit!" and suffer no consequences.