on holding grudges

Since moving to this small, blue-collar town and making friends with such few open-minded people as here live, I have had the good fortune of making the acquaintance of someone who holds grudges. I say Making The Acquaintance Of instead of Befriend because, just yesterday, this individual chose to respond to my pointing out, in jest, a typo he had made on a popular social-networking-site by compounding this slight jab on top of all of the other confrontations we have had in the last six months and letting the cauldron of hatred that seems to burn within his chest boil over.

It all started about six months ago, when he and I and a few others would go out for friendly disc-golf matches and he began to curse out any other person who made a good throw while also being verbally self-abusive every time he threw poorly, which accounted perhaps for 85% of his attempts. After a couple of afternoons of getting told to go fuck myself and that I was a bastard and a fucking asshole for having thrown a circular piece of plastic through the air in such a was as to have it land close to an upright, basket-equipped metal pole, I told this man – let us call him Wilson – that his negativity was poisoning the group's fun, leading to an overall dampening of of the collective mood, and would he not please keep his anger and resentment to himself and not keep cursing at everybody all the time? Wilson, who claims to be a follower of the One Love mentality espoused by such musicians as Bob Marley, instantly went on the defensive, causing everyone so much grief for the next few days that the others in our disc-golfing group and I decided it best not to invite him to our friendly matches anymore, given his proclivity to whine, moan, and belly-ache every time someone did well or he did not.

The second major confrontation between this worthless whorphan and Mr. Wilson came about two months ago, when, after he had been telling a story to me and a number of other people during a weekend bout of drinking, I cautioned him to wear sunblock if he should happen to be out in the sun for the amount of time he had claimed to be in his story. Being from Western Africa and having relatively dark skin, Wilson became once again defensive, immediately and with great passion calling into doubt my knowledge of What It Means To Be Black (whatever that means), even asking me if I, in my life, had ever been black, or if I had ever seen the masses of his fellow Africans all out perambulating in the sun lacking hats or long-sleeved shirts, in far more words telling me that I did not know what the fuck it was I was talking about. Never backing down from my position, I pointed out to Wilson that, since he is a human being and since all human skin can suffer skin cancer if exposed too long to solar radiation, he would do well to protect his skin from the sun so as to lead a long and healthy life, whereupon he began to curse me and to call me many bad names, puffing up his chest and treating me with much disdain for a number of weeks after that.

Having pondered my actions and deciding it best for me to keep my dumb fucking mouth shut, I have done just that, staying quiet and not seeking fault with the man, letting him espouse whatever strange and nonsensical views he, a grown adult, should wish to espouse. Sensing that Wilson seemed to be doing the same – generally ignoring me and not spending too much time in my presence – and seeing that we had sat together amiably during a get-together on the 4th of July, I figured that, just as I had done, he had laid aside any past grievances and gotten over any latent animosity toward this corn-fed white boy. In response, however, to a jab, a pointing out of a word he had misspelled on-line, that word being “the,” he launched into a litany of hatred against me, saying to an intermediary that I would get what I deserved for being so know-it-all and smarmy toward him, and that this my latest latest slight was simply too much, one of too many twigs thrown atop the teetering stack of hate-sticks he seems to have been carrying around with him since that one fateful day of disc-golfing.

While I do not fear the man physically, I have come to fear the human ego in general, and to keep a sharp eye out for a bruised ego, which is prone to extraordinary violence, to stabbing persons in the back and letting the air out of their bicycle tires. In the wake of Wilson un-friending of me on Facebook over the weekend, I could perhaps try to arrange a sit-down with him, a having-it-out session during which he might be able to call me all the names he wants to and, perhaps by letting go of his hatred and allowing it to flow from himself mightily, to dislodge some of the sand that has become trapped in his vagina; I might as well do nothing, however, since I cannot in any way control how Wilson reacts to my words or presence. He is a big boy, and he has the power to decide for himself when to be angry and when to be contented, when to fill his being with hatred, and when to let One Love infect every ounce of his soul. Three cheers for keeping quiet! Mahalo.

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