Lawrence = Pacifist

For reasons I still don’t understand, one of my co-workers found it necessary to introduce her ‘significant other’ to me today. Honestly, I’d have been perfectly happy to sit in my office alone and suffer through my half-hour of not eating lunch, but since she was witless enough to interrupt my crossword puzzle (can anyone tell me a five-letter synonym for ‘feckless’?) with her desire to give me the opportunity to laugh at this putz, I figured I’d go along with it.

“Bob, meet Lawrence. He’s a pacifist.” Okay... is this some sort of a trick? A pre-emptive strike perhaps? Could it be her attempt to hotwire my brain into immediately equating Lawrence = harmless? That’s a little intrusive, don’t you think? She’s bullying me into accepting this jerk without giving me the opportunity to form my own opinion, and I find that downright offensive.

“Oh, a pacifist, eh?” I countered, and kicked him in the nuts.

Well… that’s when the screaming started-- from her and him.

“You BASTARD!” she roared. Lawrence, to his credit, wasn’t saying much at all, unless the sounds I heard coming from the fetal-positioned lump on the floor beside my desk could actually be construed as language.

Lawrence = pacifist… Bob = bastard… yea, I think I’m getting the hang of this. Plus, as an added bonus, watching Lawrence made me think of a five-letter word for ‘feckless’— inept.

My co-worker then went to the boss with her complaints about my problem with controlling negative emotions. Personally, I can’t understand why anyone would conceive of this as a problem. Some situations dictate that anger, hatred, or even blind rage is a perfectly acceptable and reasonable response to some stimuli. For example, have you ever stood in the cash-only, 8-items-or-less lane at the supermarket for thirty minutes behind a dozen other dopes while some gormless twit attempts to purchase two months’ worth of booze and cigarettes for her entire apartment complex with an expired debit card and $50 worth of stolen food stamps? I’m willing to bet that even Lawrence the Pacifist might be just a tad testy.

Instead of attacking me for not being able to control my negative emotions, why the hell do these people have problems expressing them? Have you noticed that it’s never the obnoxious bastards, but the ‘quiet, polite’ individuals who march down to the police station and turn themselves in after wiping out an entire wing of the Golden Age Care Center with a tire iron and sledge hammer?

So, next time I take a sip of your drink without asking or feel the necessity to try your patience by giving you a quick punch in the balls, please try to be just a bit more empathetic. Saying “thank you” is optional, of course.