Liking, evaluation, and ranking

Or whatever Elbow's article was named. I'm going to totally change the meaning for my own purposes, though, to discuss how people "diss" others and put them down, all so that they can feel superior. I endured a hell of a lot of that in high school, despite my being at the top of my class, since I came from a poor family. I could not wear the clothes that others wore. I could not participate in the social activities that others did. But most of all, I did not know how to interact "normally" with others because of our poverty and my mother's alcoholism. The rules were just so different for us. People would often tell me that I'd said something rude or insensitive or tactless (though somehow THEIR saying such things to ME never constituted rudeness, insensitivity, or tactlessness on THEIR part).

Even now, people who have come from more "normal" backgrounds still find it important to "correct" and chastise me. Often they cite experts that I know as well as they know them, if not better than they know them. They talk "down" to me as if I were some sort of crude unwashed heathen with barely enough sense to pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. Sometimes they simply stand on their pedestals of Higher Moral Authority in order to sneer at me. Used to, such treatment would send me into tears of anger and nearly bottomless self-disgust. "Oh, why could I not be as perfect as so-and-so??!!"

Now, I still get angry, but I've come to recognize something: My perspective is as valid as theirs, even if it differs from theirs. For instance: I don't jog or exercise maniacally the way "more perfect" people do. So what. I don't eschew meat for a vegetarian lifestyle, the way all truly "sensitive" people do. Big deal. I don't read Proust or Sartre, preferring instead to read detective fiction. Yee haw. Better get ready to put me right back on that turnip truck, folks, because I fart proudly.

I think most of us can tell when someone else dislikes us. I've been putting up with several of those "someones" for a long time, and I don't know why. I don't need those people in my life. They don't pay me or make decisions that affect me. Some of these people happen to be connected to other people whom I care for, so I've endured the snobbery and sneering, but I learned the hard way, via an ex-sister-in-law, that I do not have to endure anyone unless I choose to. And, as Bartleby the Scrivener is fond of saying, "I would prefer not to." Time for the vorpal blade to go snicker-snack.