Have You Reached a Place Where You Stopped Playing NICE?

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Are you there? Are you a BS hound? Do you have zero patience for fools and idiots? Do you say EXACTLY what's on your mind and make zero apologies about it?

I'm <this> close.

Come on mofos make my day!

I used to try to be nice even to people who weren't being nice to me, but gave up. These people were (and still are) harassing and trying their best to provoke me and it's best to ignore.

Now that I'm not stressing over them as much, I've actually got more patience, in fact. Good thing.

I'm starting get more like that by the day. When I was at the airport the other day this guy walked past me and my Dad, he was like "guys you're not helping, standing in the middle of the floor" and I just said "be quiet you twat". In the past I probably wouldn't have said anything.

Well that's alright - but what if they get into your face? Do you let them get away with that? Or do you suckerpunch them upside the head?

I used to let people get away with stuff, just worried if someone goes too far i'll snap. I just need to be more assertive.

I prefer referring to this as my current state of "curmudgeonliness".

I have my days. The other day my BS meter was at ZERO!

I still play nice. A lot of people around me are very nice, so that makes it easy.

I'm trying to mellow out as I grow old.

I've had problems with authority my whole life, particularly undesevered authority.

I used to really go off the deep end when I was younger. People have sworn that my eyes have literally glowed with rage.

I'll avoid them if at all possible. If that's not possible, and they actually get ugly to me to my face (which fortunately hasn't happened in a looooong time), I do my best to remain at least outwardly calm and let the other person make a complete fool out of themselves - this usually works, as they can often take just enough rope to hang themselves. Especially in public. In fact, it's probably best to confront me like that in public - in private I might not be so restrained.

I try to remember that when someone is behaving in an over-the-top aggressive way toward me, it's not about me, it's about THEM. And what scares me most about such people is, if they'll do this sort of thing in PUBLIC, imagine what they're like behind closed doors!?

When I see crazy coming, I try to cross the street.

People are frustrating, but in my experience there's very little to be gained by shouting or name-calling back at them. It doesn't teach them anything, doesn't help their behavior, doesn't make them sorry - they're obviously damaged people if they're adults and still acting like that. Blowing up back at them might make me feel better for about a minute, but I'm not proud of myself - I feel like I failed because I couldn't figure out another way to handle it. I guess I'm more Picard than Kirk, in this regard.

In "The Art of War," it says that if you must fight a battle, you have already lost (in a sense) because you were not skillful enough to avoid the battle in the first place.