However, one can imagine feeling satisfied at giving that yappy dog a squirt with a garden hose. You might feel a bit bad later, but in the moment…
I have to say, I preferred the alternate ending, where the mom called security just in time for them to see Scylla lead a very small child off. Security then witnesses Scylla yelling at the child, who understandably flinches, falls down and cries.
Security moves in, and takes Scylla into custody. Knowing he’s in the right, Scylla of course puts up a fuss, and security is forced to tase him into submission, and zap-strap him to a rack of discounted hair spray. Customers who witnessed the abuse of the child are disgusted, and as they pass they curse (or sometimes spit) on the now semi conscious perp. In the subsequent court case, Scylla pleads out, in order to avoid getting a more serious charge.
Youtube footage of the incident surfaces, which forces Scylla to move to Elbonia, where he becomes a farmer of turnips.
-fin-
schadenfreude - delighting in the misery of others
Yeah, it reads as insecure and petty to even engage with such a request beyond maybe a perfunctory chuckle and turning away.
Why do some people get so pissed off and defensive about being occasionally approached with unreasonable requests by people who have zero right to make them but also zero power to compel them? I see this same kind of overreaction from many people who get upset that a homeless person sitting on the street asked them for money as they passed by.
Rational folks who don’t want to give money to beggars either just ignore them or (my preference) politely refuse. But I’ve seen so many people in whom such requests trigger prolonged rants about the unjustified audacity of the beggars presuming to beg from them, not to mention elaborate descriptions (which I hope for their sakes are fictional or mostly so, like Scylla’s story) about how they pranked the beggar by, say, pretending to be willing to give them money and then refusing.
Congratulations, pal, you’ve now spent at least fifty times as much of your own time and energy stewing in your resentment and anger about this unjustified request as it would have cost you to earn the money to comply with it, and maybe five hundred times as much as it would have taken to simply ignore/refuse it and move on. If you imagine that your response is making you look in any way like any kind of stand-no-nonsense folk hero “justifiably” giving a bullying encroacher a “proper comeuppance”, you are deluding yourself. If your petulant overreaction made you “feel good”, that’s something that to save your own face you should probably be trying to conceal rather than bragging about.
Eh, not really.
Again, I work with kids and deal with kids having meltdowns, and I see why they’re having them, every day. Sometimes it’s autism. Sometimes it’s parents who don’t know how to set boundaries. Sometimes it’s PTSD from the crazy trauma they’ve experienced. Sometimes it’s low blood sugar, or illness.
I know it can be really unpleasant to be around a kid having a meltdown. I know it can even trigger poor behavior; I’m no angel, and I’ve lost my shit when a kid just gets on my final nerve on a bad day.
But I’ve never felt justified. I’m the goddamned grownup in the interaction, they’re not. On the occasion when I’ve lost my shit, nobody learned a lesson from that. Everyone just felt shitty afterward, the kid had even less trust in grownups and less sense of safety, I felt terrible about myself, and all I could do was apologize to the kid later and try to do better.
Scylla, I know you see this as a justified reaction. I see it from the point of view of a caregiver who has to pick up the pieces left behind after you threw your little tantrum at the kid.
There’s nothing justified about being shitty to a kid who’s having a bad day.
And if you gotta call me a woke scold or something for not cheering on a grown-ass man who’s shitty to a kid, you do you.
I remember you from ATMB. You’re the one who keeps getting the vapors because you think they’re gonna make us be nice to each other, to the point where even a moderator called you out on it, so maybe you should go snorkelling in a septic tank.
It’s possible that you are a jus a genuinely super nice person, devoid of maliciousness. I’ve met several. I don’t know you.
For me though, and I think for most people, there is a certain attraction to being an asshole on occasion. Most of us recognize it and usually resist the urge the same way we resist the urge to eat a whole bag of potato chips. It may be satisfying in the moment, but it’s really not the way to go. Occasionally though we do slip, or allow ourselves to do so.
Again, maybe you are awesome and have no attraction to assholery. For me though, and for most people I observe it works like this: If I or they don’t recognize the attraction to being an asshole and don’t recognize that we are occasionally an asshole, and we think we think we are good all the time, than what that really means is that we are being oblivious self-righteous pricks. This is worse.
Well, you did warn us you were going to be high.
I think you are projecting yourself into me, and I don’t think you understand what I wrote. The latter is prolly my fault.
And some people like eating shit while others do not. As long as we are exchanging earth-shattering revelations.
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Yes! Give me the hate! Feed me with your anger. Give in to it! I bask in it and my power grows!
Bwahahaha!
Well, I was pretty neutral about this whole mess until
I realized that you…never…once…said…
What picture was on the lunchbox.
For that, I may never forgive you…unless you grovel. Grovelling works.
Well, yeah, if you wrote “I was justified and justifiable in my actions, and it felt good to have such a satisfying encounter” and LHoD responded “Scylla, I know you see this as a justified reaction”, and you don’t think he understands what you wrote, then that’s pretty much gotta be your fault somewhere, because he’s accurately paraphrasing exactly what you yourself said.
I have to admit that I did not read the OP in question with the same attentiveness that I might dedicate to something in another medium.
But it did not read to me like an attempt at self-deprecation, nor did the follow-up posts seem consistent with that intent.
“In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.”
There’s little utility in recognizing your assholery if you are not interested in doing anything about it.
Telling a fictional story that you pretend is true, only to work people up, that’s the literal definition of a troll.
My oldest was always off the charts when she was young. Combine that with the fact that she spoke with the vocabulary and grammar of a much older child and she would get asked “what grade are you in?” They would be shocked when told 3 year olds don’t get put in grades. Those that were shitty and judgmental would also give stupid looks when she acted 3.
And Steven King (the author) is a demonic wannabe Hitler-vampire whose ambition is to immolate the human race in nuclear fire.
Also a compassionate former prison guard. Who took a job as a caretaker for a closed-for-the-season haunted hotel and went a little nuts.
How about James* and Danny?** They probably deserve apologies too.
*Thurber
**Kaye