Sunday, May 24, 2009

The lady calls her post on this "Don't talk to the furniture",

which pretty much covers this idiocy:
When the landlady of my Toronto apartment building said an outraged neighbour had filed a complaint about me over an apparently inappropriate hallway interaction with his wife, my mind raced through the countless conversations I've had with fellow tenants, none of which seemed a possible source of offence.

It turns out, it wasn't a salacious transaction that had caused the complaint, but rather a neighbourly and -- to me -- entirely forgettable greeting, little more than a brief "good morning" as I passed my neighbours on the way to work.

Still, it was enough of an affront for the man -- once a doctor somewhere in the Middle East, my landlady clarified -- to feel I had broken a cultural taboo. The incident started an awkward feud which has involved warnings not to repeat my indiscretion and one face-to-face shouting match, which included allusions to my impending death
.
Oh, GOD! He said GOOD MORNING to the woman! He should die for that! Etc.
His Muslim upbringing has ingrained in him a sense of entitlement to demand I not speak directly to his wife; and my prairie upbringing has ingrained in me a duty to strive for polite cohesion with my neighbours.
'Multiculturialism' my ass; this guy moved to another country and is demanding that everyone conform to what HE wants. Which is, no other term for it, bullshit. And threatening the guy? I'm tempted to say that only happens in places where the moron figures the authorities are so 'PC at any cost' that they'll back him up instead of the one he threatened; in other places, it might happen once. Upon which the one threatened would inform the moron that if he tried something, he'd be leaking air and bodily fluids through numerous mid- to large-caliber punctures. Or if he simply called them, the police would say something like "I don't care what it's like back where you came from, you can't threaten people's lives here for saying 'Good morning' to your wife."

My landlady, who has handled the complaint with tittering trepidation, hasn't helped dispel the friction. She has told me to adhere to the demands because the man "could be dangerous," directing me to literally turn my back to the couple as they pass, never make eye contact and never hold the elevator for them, no matter what.
Which indicates to me that the guy scared hell out of her, possibly threatened her; we'll never know.

This is absolute garbage, and brought on by well-meaning and/or submissive fools who think the way to deal with a threat is to bend over. Which is fine for a servant or a slave, not for one man or woman to another.

Found thanks to Five Feet of Fury

3 comments:

Thud said...

Nothing some good old fashioned English post football match violence wouldn't solve...not clever I know but I'm not a sensitive sort.

Anonymous said...

Got to wonder where this happened.

Windy Wilson said...

the police would say something like "I don't care what it's like back where you came from, you can't threaten people's lives here for saying 'Good morning' to your wife."
When did this change? In the day of my Grandfather, this sod would be told, "you're in America, now."

Also, this business of facing the wall, back before the Great War, when you could still get servants in Great Britain, it was customary among some houses to have the help turn and face the wall when the master of the house passed. Watch "Angels and Insects" for an example of this.
By having you turn to the wall, the landlady is making you a servant to the sod.