Life Is Not L A R P

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There are many rude, idiotic, inconsiderate, aggressive and selfish people in the World and I feel as if I am cursed with meeting each and every one of them before I die. Today alone I had a little old lady in a supermarket berating me for not packing away my shopping quickly enough into my bag when she wanted the same spot to start packing her own. Her impatience was breath-taking. Sometimes it is people I consider friends who get rude towards me and others. I recently had some interesting and eve important conversation interrupted by someone being pedantic, gate-crashing other conversations often in mid-sentence, nit-picking every slip of the tongue or mistaken observation to divert the conversation hi own way, watching in a rather predatory attitude for the slightest opportunity to tear through. To me, a conversation is a social, and friendly chat between twio or more friend, not a monologue reducing everyone to doting audience for one over another. To some however, conversation is rather like live action role playing, in which a perceived higher dice role gives you strength and permission to dominate the scenario. Imagine the conversation concerns The Battle Of Hastings. Someone drops a simple verbal equivalent of a typo, and says the event took place in 1067 instead of 1066. In polite company this would draw a few smiles and a quick correction, allowing you to finish your observations easily. Alas, the predatory, bullying pedant with a Narcissistic love-lock on his (or her) own voice is present, quickly and loudly deriding the minor vocal glitch as if it is a full on display of ignorance, before not only fixing the date but demonstrating the extent of his knowledge with an uninvited but not entirely rejected history of the battle that falls just short of a power-point presentation to illustrate it. The other listeners simply accept the intrusion, rather than eeing or caring about the wilful derailment of the original doomed observations. That is the saddest part, no one actually seeing or saying to the invasive great gob almighty that the intrusion is rather insensitive. It leaves the original commentator deflated and disheartened as if everyone considered him or her boring anyway and welcomes the changeling as a saviour from a more tedious anecdote. It feel like you have just lot a board game through a dice role that sends you back to the start, or out of the game, or having your live action role playing character killed off needlessly. Defending yourself by challenging the aggressive Narcissist becomes dangerous. Their observations are not wrong, just their ue of them to belittle you, an abuse of knowledge to just pettily dominate parties and group conversations. Expressing concerns about it makes you feel like a bad loser, even though the conversation was never a game, as there are no prizes at stake – all you have faced is rampant egotism, which others rather too readily -it can really ruin your night out. I guess it adds to my love of writing, enabling me to set out my thoughts freely without a many triggers for Chattus interruptus, Premature Interjection sufferers to hook into to draw the attention to their favourite topic – themselves. Arthur Chappell