Living stereotypes!

The BBQ Pit
1

I think we’ve had several hundred threads here at the SDMB complaining about parents who can’t control their children. And we’ve probably had a similar number of threads bemoaning the antics of SUV drivers.

But never before has there been a thread about both of these scourges! Friends, I present you with the living stereotypes!

I was eating dinner in a small cafe the other evening. At the table next to me was a young family with two children. The children were running around, screaming in high-pitched voices, jumping on the furniture, and generally making nuisances of themselves. They were not, I must admit, throwing any food, but it was small consolation. The parents sat idly by, enjoying their meals, whilst subjecting the rest of us to their children.

I indicated my resignation with the situation to my girlfriend, but I’m used to it. No big deal. Being a parent is a long and arduous process, and sometimes you just need to let your children run around out of control in a public place, right?

Anyway, this family soon departed, leaving me to eat my meal in peace. Or, I thought they had departed. Midway through dinner, I happened to glance up, and took in an interesting sight. There, in front of the restaurant (which was in a strip mall), was a Ford Excursion pulling up. Inside was the same family with the unruly children and indifferent parents! Imagine my shock.

But it gets better. The female adult of the clan needed a haircut. She needed to go to Great Clips.

And so the alpha male parked his monstrous vehicle in front of the restaurant. Diagonally. Across two handicapped spaces. For a half an hour. While there were many other spaces – albeit none as close – available.

I had no choice but to laugh. Parents and SUV drivers, there really are people out there giving you a very bad name. I can only imagine that from Great Clips, they proceeded to drive to a movie theater, where they then took their children to see “Night of the Bloodsoaked Sex Dinosaurs” (rated NC-17), during which they answered calls on their cell phones.

2

Necros, that was funny as hell! I’ll say this much: Some people are very quick to take offense when any stereotype is offered up, yet there are thousands of people working hard every single day to uphold each and every well-known stereotype out there.

Stereotypes are not pulled from thin air. They are based on many, many real-life incidences with real people over a pretty good length of time. (Disclaimer: However, none of that makes it right to ACT on one’s prejudices when dealing with any one particular INDIVIDUAL.)

3

You know the stereotype of the pasty, overweight geek with no hygiene or social skills?

There’s a reason such a stereotype exists. Go to any comic book convention or gaming tournament and you’ll find the Avatars of Geek. Sure, most of the people there are quite normal and pleasant, but there’s still enough Living Embodiments of Geek to keep the stereotype rolling full-tilt.

4

As soon as I saw the title of this thread, a certain individual leapt to mind. Skinny, pale, oily-haired, acne-ridden, unnaturally attatched to his parents, graduate student in an appropriately geeky field, wardrobe consisting only of white button-down shirts with with ink-stained pockets and cordouroy slacks, not only a gamer but a munchkin extraordinare. . .

shudder

5

I myself once witnessed a living stereotype while sitting on a Metro-North train outbound from Grand Central in NYC. Please keep in mind that I in no way harbor any of the following stereotypes. The situation was as follows:

As I was waiting for the train to depart, two young African American (AA) guys walked onto the train. They were talking loudly to each other, spewing copious amounts of profanity and mangling the English language while doing so. They both had several large gold pieces of jewelry on their hands and around their necks. One of them was carrying a large bucket of fried chicken. They hassled the conductor when he asked them to quiet down, even threatening violence if he continued to pester them. All in all, they embodied several stereotypes I’ve heard (usually from ignorant racists) regarding young AA males.

I have the same theory as bordelond regarding stereotypes; They’re developed by assembling all manner of negative traits of individuals within a large group and assuming that all people within the group share all of these traits. However, these two guys were doing an excellent job of convincing those who already held certain stereotypes concerning young AA males that their assumptions were in fact correct.

Is is wrong to find such situations humorous? I found the whole thing fairly amusing in a “that’s life” sort of way, and both I and my friend laughed about it later when I told him about it.

6

Not wrong at all, IMHO – so long as you don’t hold that stereotype against the next few AA persons that you interact with. And it’s sounds like you don’t, so no problem here. What matters to me is more what you actually do on a daily basis in the course of human interaction, not so much what you get a kick out of.

7

Very rarely have I been more amused than when I went to ski with a buddy of mine at Attitash, in New Hampshire. He used to be my roommate here in Alabama, and over a period of a couple of years, he learned that most of his cherished preconceived notions about the South were not really true.

He was looking forward to showing me how the North doesn’t really conform to all my Southern-fried preconceptions either.

The two guys in front of us in line for a lift ticket were the biggest, ugliest living stereotypes of New Yorkers I could have imagined.

They were greasy, swaggering, loud assholes stuffed into neon-orange ski suits. They were both wearing mirrored State Trooper sunglasses. Both had their suits unzipped to show off hairy chests with gold chains. They were complaining very loudly about the service, the weather, the length of the line, etc.

“Can youse FUCKIN’ believe dis line? I mean WHATDAFUCK?! I coulda been out dere skiin’ half da FUCKIN’ day.”

My ex-roommate was mortified. I laughed my ass off.

8

Shit…time to buy a new ski suit…:wink:

9

I’d just like to say that seeing the thread title “Living stereotypes!” listed next to the OP’er necros really set off my sense of irony.

It’s been a long day, so I can appreciate it if no one else finds this funny.

10

The people in the apartment above us are living stereotypes. They are Polish (disclaimer: I have nothing against Polish people!). They have two kids. Aside from the fact that they let their toddler run around early in the morning screaming just outside our door (which actually has nothing to do with this stereotype, but is a good example of the one in the OP), they have done two things since we’ve lived here that are just plain stupid:

Once, our bathroom ceiling was leaking (eww!). So we called the landlord (who lives off the property). He took a look at our ceiling, then walked upstairs. He informed us later that the couple had accidentally dumped a ham bone into the toilet with some soup. Then instead of pulling out the bone, they flushed. Then when the toilet clogged, they attempted to fix it themselves. The “repairs” had been going on for over a day when the landlord discovered this and told them to stop. Also, they only have one bathroom, so I don’t even want to know what they did for that 24-hour or so span when they had no working toilet.

The day before Thanksgiving last year, my husband came home to find a lot of smoke coming out of the laundry room. He went to check it out. The washing machine had all kinds of smoke coming out of it. There was no fire, so he shut off the machine and called the landlord. The machine had gotten jammed. Why? Because the lady upstairs had stuffed a full basket of laundry and a large comforter into the machine at the same time, to try to save the extra 75 cents that the second load would have cost!

So, and I sincerely hope I don’t offend anyone here, you know all those Polish jokes? My neighbors are the reason those jokes exist.

11

Oh, and here I thought this was a thread about Christopher Lowell…

12

The sad thing is, these people only enforce the stereotype views in the minds of racists. Or for me-after viewing these stereotypes, then, when I confront another person who happens to be of their, well, group? I am reminded of these awful people, and I try my hardest to forget.

13

In my town all the stereotypes go to the convenience store at 2 am. Apparently.

Because I’m sitting in my car while a friend buys us some pop and a low rider pulls up. The driver is a black teen with a pick in his hair. When he gets out later we’ll see that his pants are indeed sagging. His companion is a blonde girl with a huge chest. I get to hear this snippet of conversation:

“You can’t get pregnant your first time, right?”

“Yeah, baby, das righ.”

Wait, who’s that coming up on the other side? It’s a single dad. Hmm, he’s parking in the handicap space. And bringing his kid to a convenience store at 2 am and buying him what? Ah, a ton of candy. “Your mom doesn’t let you get this stuff, does she?”

And who’s walking along the sidewalk now? Long greasy hair, stone wash jeans, NIN Tshirt. Blaring something indistinguishable in a rusted out Camaro.

Inside we have the fat toothless couple, lady in stretch pants, guy in tank top, Heaven Needed A Driver bumper sticker.

Twilight Zone visits the Quik-E-Mart.

14

I saw an honest-to-god soccer mom in an SUV the other day. Her and her daughter (still in uniform) were taking up a lane of traffic while looking distraught and talking on their cel phone. They were parked in front of some guy they apparently ran into - I didn’t see any damage at first, but I looked closer and saw a scratch on her left fender. Though I didn’t see the accident, I know what happened because I see it happen all the time - it was right after a place where the service road turns left, and only the left lane can turn, the right has to continue straight. People at that light always get in the right lane anyway and try to cut in front of the people turning left legally, because the traffic stacks up in the left lane and it’s quicker to try and cut ahead, but you risk getting sideswiped by the guys in the left lane who don’t expect you to be there and are used to being able to make a wide turn into the right lane.

It pissed me off for several reasons - first because the poor guy she hit was a 20-something black male, and some of the police here are the type to take the word of a white woman over a black man even if it’s obvious he’s not the one who did something wrong, secondly because the woman was acting like this was some huge traumatic experience, holding her 10 or 11 year old daughter to her chest and looking teary-eyed in between dirty looks directed to the guy behind her, and third because she was blocking traffic due to a non-injury accident, which is illegal - if you can move your car you are supposed to get it out of the road unless someone was hurt, and this was obviously a very minor collision. I was in an accident once and when I tried to move my car out of the road the woman I ran into started screeching at me to leave it where it was until the cops showed up, like somehow the position of my car would disprove that it was her fault, and this is a pet-peeve of mine.

15

I don’t think the Twilight Zone needs to visit the Quik-E-Mart, Yue Han; it’s taken up permanent residence.

I love these people. They just give me such a strange feeling about life. I keep expecting Allen Funt to jump out from behind a bush. It’s just the whole “self-aware” sense of it all, you know?

16

BWWWAHAHAHAHAH…this reminds me of my favorite line from King of Queens:

“Do you have anything GAYER?”

17

Oh Christ, don’t start that shit… Weren’t you around for the pigpile on dalovindj?

18

Working at Kmart, I see the stereotypical mulleted losers with their fat wives with puffy teased hairdos, buying Dale Earnhart posters and cheap snacks from the clearance aisle.

19

Raven, the difference is that dj was using gay to mean stupid or bad or whatever.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate to use the word gay in reference to Christopher Lowell. He’s pretty gay.

20

“The man’s gayer than a picnic basket”-Sophia from the Golden Girls…that line just always cracked me up.