|
03/06/06
by Craig Hello and welcome to what is my first, and also, quite possibly my last (we’ll see about that), rant for the site. Now, those of you who know me know that I don’t rant. I never whine, or whinge, or moan about anything. Those of you that don’t know me now know where I stand on ranting. So, to find myself doing this week's rant is somewhat surprising as I only took this on as a last minute favour for Neale, not for him or myself, but for the good of the site… So, I thought long and hard (for all of three minutes) trying to decide what really wound me up. What, above all things in this world, really gets my metaphorical goat… And then it struck me: egos. Now, one thing I can’t stand is people with larger-than-life egos. I mean, fair play, if you have reason enough to be proud of your abilities or possessions, great, more power to you, just don’t go rubbing everyone else’s faces in it. But, there’s one thing I can’t stand even more than egos, and that’s false egos. We’ve all been there, someone that thinks they’re all that when really, they’re just a regular day-to-day person like we are. But they feel the need to appear better, they feel the need to pump themselves up by making everyone else around them feel small, like a common playground bully. For example, I was walking home from the bus station the other day and, after a brief chat with a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for a long while, I found myself being followed by two (what would commonly be known as) scallies. These were the really sad kind, they had to be pushing their mid-twenties if not early thirties, but there they were, skinheads, tracksuits and “Oh my word, I don’t know how you can bear to carry that lump” sized gold curb chains, Rockports, the works. And needless to say they took delight in giving me grief about my appearance, e.g. my hair being different, me being of a slightly larger than average build, the usual routine. Now, this was all well and good and nothing I haven’t experienced before. Heck, Afros’re like marmite, people either love them or hate them - these guys were clearly the latter. But then came the attempted leg tripping. It was amusing really, I turned around, stopped blank and just said “Heck, God made me beautiful, so what you say and do doesn’t matter…” and then had an internal breakdown as I thought they’d beat me there and then in the street. Thankfully, they had no comeback and just traipsed off down the road… I guess the main thing about false egos is that, sure, as the old saying goes, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” But if you’ve not got it, you can’t flaunt something that you don’t have. It’s like saying “I don’t have this, but if I did, this is how I’d act…” Possessions and abilities shouldn’t be used as tools or weapons, it’s just a shame that in this materialistic, Adonis-obsessed society that we live in, with the vogue image being of the stick thin runner or football player with all the designer gear and accessories, is it any wonder that there are so many misguided and self-obsessed people out there? In my opinion, and I’m sad to say this, no, I’m not surprised at all… Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a new X-Men comic I need to go and read… |