Woot two posts in the same day!
I have a drabble! A self-insert drabble in which I am not the perspective character, yikes!
Switching Sides.
I winced. I felt my heart crack, my stomach twisted up with hurt, my cheeks screwed up, my eyes dripped.
I opened my mouth for an apology, but the barrage kept coming, drowning out my end of the argument. Attacking my opinions, flogging me for an interpretation of events which happened to be different, though not in majority.
She had no right to do this, I couldn't help but think, but I held my tongue, determined to remain the mature one in this hopefully one-sided argument. I would not turn this into a war; I was better than that.
She didn't relent, though. Pulling up evidence which had no clear effect on her end of the argument, though I had none to offer which would support mine either. Two people, supposedly united in a common interest, scrabbling at each other without even proper weapons. Weren't these kinds of misunderstandings exactly what we were both supposed to support the distillation of?
I bit my lip, gripped my hands; her attacks upon my person, while verbal, communicative, were painful still, as though she were truly reaching over the undisclosed distance between us and slapping me silly. She had no right to make assumptions about me this way. She didn't even know who I was. I didn't claim to know her, either. We only knew one thing about each other, and it was something we had in common.
I decided to reach out to her, gently, calmly, rationally. No answer came for a long while. When she finally responded, she was less violent, but still hostile.
"I just want to understand," she said. "I have yet to hear anyone explain it to me so that it seems plausible. So help me understand."
I floundered. What could I do? She had failed to convince me with her argument, and I had no more ammo than she. I tried my best; laid out my way of thinking as clearly as I could put it. Civil the whole time. At the very least I hoped I would set an example.
"You didn't show anything new there," she said. She seemed heavily unimpressed, even condescending.
I tried a different approach, yielding a little, attempting to show the way between her point of view to mine. I was met with the equivalent of a blank stare.
At last, I bowed down. I conceded that neither of us had much to go on, and that it was silly to disagree about something we both enjoyed so much.
"It might help if you took another look at the original source," was her response. "Maybe if you read it more carefully this time you can get a better perspective on what it's actually saying."
Her audacity in this cheap accusation utterly infuriated me. Here I was, trying to be nice! It was hard enough to contain my rage as it was; it seems this girl was everything short of actually baiting me into a rage.
Having had enough of her behavior, I gave her a long-overdue lecture on interpersonal respect and told her exactly what I thought of her.
"Not only are you tragically mistaken," she said, "but it appears you have a poor taste in just about everything."
I gaped at that response. Was I kicking at air for attempting to reason with her? Unable to bear it, I turned away. I didn't return for a long while.
She appears to have held everyone sharing my opinion responsible for my angry explosion ever since.
Switching Sides.
I winced. I felt my heart crack, my stomach twisted up with hurt, my cheeks screwed up, my eyes dripped.
I opened my mouth for an apology, but the barrage kept coming, drowning out my end of the argument. Attacking my opinions, flogging me for an interpretation of events which happened to be different, though not in majority.
She had no right to do this, I couldn't help but think, but I held my tongue, determined to remain the mature one in this hopefully one-sided argument. I would not turn this into a war; I was better than that.
She didn't relent, though. Pulling up evidence which had no clear effect on her end of the argument, though I had none to offer which would support mine either. Two people, supposedly united in a common interest, scrabbling at each other without even proper weapons. Weren't these kinds of misunderstandings exactly what we were both supposed to support the distillation of?
I bit my lip, gripped my hands; her attacks upon my person, while verbal, communicative, were painful still, as though she were truly reaching over the undisclosed distance between us and slapping me silly. She had no right to make assumptions about me this way. She didn't even know who I was. I didn't claim to know her, either. We only knew one thing about each other, and it was something we had in common.
I decided to reach out to her, gently, calmly, rationally. No answer came for a long while. When she finally responded, she was less violent, but still hostile.
"I just want to understand," she said. "I have yet to hear anyone explain it to me so that it seems plausible. So help me understand."
I floundered. What could I do? She had failed to convince me with her argument, and I had no more ammo than she. I tried my best; laid out my way of thinking as clearly as I could put it. Civil the whole time. At the very least I hoped I would set an example.
"You didn't show anything new there," she said. She seemed heavily unimpressed, even condescending.
I tried a different approach, yielding a little, attempting to show the way between her point of view to mine. I was met with the equivalent of a blank stare.
At last, I bowed down. I conceded that neither of us had much to go on, and that it was silly to disagree about something we both enjoyed so much.
"It might help if you took another look at the original source," was her response. "Maybe if you read it more carefully this time you can get a better perspective on what it's actually saying."
Her audacity in this cheap accusation utterly infuriated me. Here I was, trying to be nice! It was hard enough to contain my rage as it was; it seems this girl was everything short of actually baiting me into a rage.
Having had enough of her behavior, I gave her a long-overdue lecture on interpersonal respect and told her exactly what I thought of her.
"Not only are you tragically mistaken," she said, "but it appears you have a poor taste in just about everything."
I gaped at that response. Was I kicking at air for attempting to reason with her? Unable to bear it, I turned away. I didn't return for a long while.
She appears to have held everyone sharing my opinion responsible for my angry explosion ever since.