On the coach to visit Krissa's parents this weekend, I encountered the sort of person I have to be very careful around. The sort of person whose every action and spoken word I find so irrationally objectionable as to brook violence.
I like to think of myself as a reasonably well-balanced person. I am happily tolerant of most religious and political views by default, on the Voltairian basis of believing that you have a right to believe what you want. But there is something about the sort of person who is self-obsessedly loud and so inconsiderate of others you'd think they were wearing blinkers which instantly raises my hackles.
After our driver appealed for mobile phone use to be kept to a minimum for the comfort of fellow passengers, this guy started to read aloud a magazine article for his travelling companion, in a loud, brash and sarcastic tone, laughing unrestrainedly at his own jokes.
Forced to change buses, we somehow ended up sitting right at the back of the new coach, right behind this guy and his companion. He bounced and slid and half-stood and stuck his legs out and read aloud sections from his magazine and his book in the same nasal sarcastic way, snorting and laughing.
Then came the peak of his annoying streak. This was the moment I was closest to leaning forward and asking politely if he would withhold being himself until I got off if he cared to maintain a full set of genitalia.
After our first stop and the burly muscular man in front of my tormentor got off, the bespectacled little goit spent a good five minutes mimicking him, laughing at the ignorance of any person who would sling their arms over the back of their seat into someone else's lap, all the time with HIS arms slung over the back of his seat. He shook and wriggled and cast doubts upon the cleanliness of the departed man, mentioning viruses and bacteria and germs and probably STDs too, and all the time his hands slid backwards and forwards in my face.
I hate people like that.
I know it sounds like I could justify this now, but really, really, it's irrational. I didn't like him the moment I saw him. That's bad, isn't it. That's prejudice.
Lanky git.
Man, I'm so like that. Some people just get under your skin and then start poking around. This is why god invented iPods. I can shut them out.
Except at the movies, where one day their will be a murder.
I wish I had the type of personality, or the physical size where I could tell people to shut up or die die die die die.
I don't think it is prejudice. You're not pre judging him, you're judging him. You seem to be a bit apologetic for being judgemental, and that is, in general an admirable trait. However, I also think that you have every right to judge the behaviour of someone you have been forced to observe at close quarters and find it lacking.
It may be that in his spare time he does a lot of good work for charidee and helps old ladies across the road, but you are not implying that he's thoroughly evil, anyway. You are simply expressing a disgust for his public behaviour. A public behaviour he has chosen to display.