Me: Steve, I see my own wayward exit through the “in” door has caused us to collide mid-stride. You must be furious at such reckless abandon.
Cowardly Mumbling Steve: Sorry…
Me: Of course you are.
I’m sitting at my table at Plaza 900 enjoying a nice lunch with a couple friends. Plaza 900 is great because not only does the 1,000-mile walk successfully burn off all the calories and nutrients consumed there, but the food selection is humongous and, for a college dining hall, pretty alright. But there’s a limit to how many Fruity Pebble patty melts I can inhale before I have to give up and wait another few hours to start over again.
After a quick prayer to Demeter, goddess of the freshman 15, I stand up to dump my spoils onto the tray conveyor belt. The way the system works, you take your tray, go in through the “In” end, place your tray on the belt and leave out the “Out” end in a neat and orderly fashion. But that takes too long. I had seconds to shave off my exit strategy and people to inconvenience, so I turned a quick 180 off the tray deposit and hurtled out the “In” door.
My acceleration was magnificent and unstoppable, except by the girl’s body right behind me. In a high-speed human fender bender, I grazed her shoulder, moving her slightly off-balance. And as any good citizen should do, she apologized and bowed her head, effectively bewildering me as to why.
Apparently, I command respect. There must be something in my smooth posture, my generally aloof gaze or my awkwardly long neck that brought fear to this girl. She clearly wanted nothing to do with my dominating presence and arrogant disrespect of those around me, and her pupils slammed to the ground like there was a puppet show on the floor tile. Or perhaps she was rewarding my nonconformity with absolute submission. Either way, I’m a little mad I didn’t knock her tray down afterward, just to see what she would do (probably faint or ask me on a date). I haven’t yet pinpointed which superior quality of mine it is that defeated her, but my hope was that this was a repeatable attack.
I eventually started learning that social respect (or maybe just social victory) is birthed from completely not giving a fuck. For the most part, the average person seems to have resigned himself to avoiding all conflict or slight inquiry by any means necessary. I mean, when that crowd of upperclassmen is coming at you on the sidewalk, why not slip through those six inches of space between the parking meter and the curb to let them through? People love being convenient way more than they like being winners. Bullying couldn’t be easier.
This really inconveniences my ideals. Our flight instincts are much more developed than our fighting ones. We’re very good at ducking under the social covers. Truth be told, it’s sort of annoying to be apologized to when, to anybody with a functional brain, nobody is at fault except the receiver of the apology. “Sorry” often no longer means “sorry” but instead “please relegate your path of destruction somewhere else.” Hell no. I’ll continue bowling over the weak until someone who isn’t completely jacked stops me. My utter domination of my peers is not due to a conquering spirit but to a frustration with a system of conflict avoidance. I don’t care from whom, but I demand an apology for that.