If everyone is a certain way…

A friend of mine from Montana is a big, quiet sort who doesn’t say much, but what he says, he means. And he was sitting in a bar in Helena next to some jackass who kept complaining at the bartender. He hated Montana. He hated Helena. “People are such pieces of shit, right?” Then he started in with some homophobic stuff directed at a gay guy in a bar, laying into him with his shitty opinions. Then he tried to talk to my big, quiet friend. My big, quiet friend turned to him and intoned the following words I’ll never forget.

“Hey, do you meet a lot of assholes?”

The guy said, “Yeah, man, the world’s full of ’em.”

And my big quiet friend said, “Yeah, well, maybe it’s not them.”

What I took from this is that any time I think everyone is a certain way, they’re all mean or overly competitive or standoffish or whatever–well, it’s worth considering that maybe it’s not them.