I have an unhealthy relationship with Facebook. Sometimes I think, “Wow. A chick from high school algebra ran a marathon!” And other times, I’m like, “Who are these people?”
I don’t mean to brag, but… I have a lot of friends on Facebook. Yep. I’m THAT cool. I happen to have lived in lots of cities, and I don’t say ‘no’ to someone who wants to be my friend. I’m too codependent to hurt someone’s feelings, and that’s just mean: No, I don’t want to be your friend even though it only entails NEVER seeing you ever. There are the comedians I meet after shows who hear me talk about my vagina on stage. There are the people in advertising who post ads they’ve made. There are my spiritual friends who post about chakras and moon cycles. And then there are my high school friends. Lots of them post about their kids, going clubbing in Chicago, or Farmville. My feed is schizophrenic.
The moon is in its seventh ray.
I just bought an imaginary cow!
This casting sesh is, like, so boring.
My root chakra is singing.
Look at my kids!
Look at my wedding!
I’m depressed. Come to my comedy show.
Sometimes, late at night, I find myself checking in on people from my high school. I get all Sliding Doors and wonder what I would be like had I never left Addison (dubbed the blandest suburb of Chicago by ‘The Onion.’). I love seeing the arcs of the lives I didn’t live.
A post came up the other day from a guy I used to think was ‘the cutest.’ He was, like, totally popular. A direct quote:
Why is it every time I go to walmart there is a fucking bomb tosser in the parking lot that can’t walk an extra 17 feet and has to wait for the closest spot. Not to mention the fact that it takes 47 seconds for them to actually get into the spot once it’s open! (no offense to my bomb tossing fb friends)
This post caught my attention because popular people in my school would never have admitted to a trip to Walmart back in the day. We had Zayre back then and those were NOT cool. I chuckled at how far we have come, at how we no longer care about what we cared SO MUCH about in high school. I exhaled at the calming thought that we’ve all sort of realized there’s no such thing as social hierarchies except in India, Hollywood and on any Real Housewives show. Phew.
The only thing I didn’t get was the bomb tosser reference.
“What’s a bomb tosser?” I replied in the comments with a gust of comment verve that I never usually have. I figured he was in the sporting goods aisle at Walmart by then, so I Googled it.
Oh. According to Urban Dictionary, a Bomb Tosser is “a person of middle eastern decent.”
This blog is the place to learn all about racial slurs. I also went over the term ‘mulanyan’ once HERE (also learned from people in the blandest suburb.).
Then I felt sad. And so much anger. First of all, my town’s population has more Indians than Middle Easterners, so they aren’t even using the correct derogatory terms. HELLO! GET YOUR RACISM RIGHT, jerks.
And then other people commented:
-bomb tosser lol.
-That’s why you should just go to Meijer instead.
GROSS. In that town, it’s acceptable to assume anyone other than Italians are inferior. I’ve already shared about the time when a guy at the town bar asked, ‘What are you?’ and then said ‘sorry’ when I replied ‘Spanish.’
A barrage of rage filled the sausagy links of my brain. I let the memories flood back in. The times when people yelled at me for having ‘jungle fever’ or tore down the wrinkled up ‘Racism Sucks’ poster I kept putting right back up on my wall.
I wanted to cry because people hadn’t changed. Yeah, they were no longer ashamed about getting a discount on dish rags, but they still think it’s okay to call people bomb tossers. How can you make fun of other people when YOU are at WALMART?!
These people make the worst racists.
I couldn’t take it. And I let my fingers type in a comment that I thought was least mean but still made my point:
Oh. Just googled it. So, you’re still racist? I thought people stopped being racist in the 60s. Apparently, not people in Addison. Thank goodness I moved as far away as I could.
I felt triumphant. There. I showed them. They would all see the error of their thinking RIGHT after they read my comment.
And then someone commented:
Why is it better to get a Muslim sex doll? Because they blow themselves up.
WHAT?! They hadn’t changed after reading my comment?! I was shocked. They would surely realize how small-minded they were any minute now?
After a few more comments directed at me, I suddenly felt horrible. Not because a set of people were turning their hatred toward me, but because I was being just like them. I was on my own high horse. If they were thinking themselves higher than people who share skin color with a few guys who may have thrown a bomb, then wasn’t I JUST THE SAME for thinking I was better because I’m not racist? Or because I moved away? My own comment even sounded generalizing. I could have even written: no offense to my Addison fb friends.
I AM ONE OF THEM!
I guess we’re all human.
That guy wanted some specific people to change, and I was doing the same. And, guess what? No large group is going to change just because I happen to deem them wrong. How annoying is that?
My rage and my comments weren’t going to change or ‘fix’ anything because those people don’t think they’re broken. And getting mad about it is only causing ME anxiety. I heard that it’s around 30 when people realize they can no longer change the world. Maybe that’s where I’m at. I can only be a good example and that’s it. Getting mad about it doesn’t help. And judging it helps worse. Bah.
So, I leave the Facebook commenting to others. And I’m dropping the judgements of those people. Whatever. Go be racists. Fine. That’s just who you are. To make up for it, I’m going to go have sex with bunch of bomb tossers. I told you I care about others’ feelings. See you on Facebook.
{ 25 comments }
That will be protected sex, right? Love, MOM.
duh. most of the time.
Laurenne, I had to look up all the words your high school friend’s used. It is sad but it is becoming a common place attitude. Just defriend and move on. I have gotten in some fights because I don’t like Arizona or Texas and some people were offended so I defriended so I could still say what I wanted without worrying I was hurting people from the those states. I have friends in those states but it doesn’t mean I need to like the politics of their leaders. So now you know and I am glad you moved to the land of nuts and chews where we fit in better:) Love you.
I assumed when you wrote ‘bomb tossers’ that it was someone who walked and farted so it made sense that they couldn’t walk the extra steps because maybe they really had to poop.
I think those kind of bomb tossers are at WalMart too.
I didn’t think about it literally. I thought maybe the person was disabled, heavy, lazy, or not into healthy activities or were in a hurry.
Humans. Why do we always have to hate? I used to feel such outrage and despair over racism and intolerance, then I realized how I felt made no difference at all. I decided the only way for me to deal with that is be totally glad I’m not one of the haters.
good! I think it’s the only way.
So you have had a case of ‘jungle fever’? So that means I still have a shot!
I never, NEVER take people and their Facebook post seriously if they are someone I KNOW… for instance, my sisters or some of the random cats from the Motor that I am ‘friends’ with… not that I don’t make my own judgments of them or anything but it is like high school one stepped removed… so I go about reading and participating on Facebook just like I did in high school, which was to mind my business and let the ignorant and dumb be ignorant and dumb.
But it prolly does mess up your ideals of who these people are and that they are still the same. You are pretty, enlightened, and funny. So you evolved while they sunk to the level of their own ignorance… man, I am jus’ ramblin’ ain’t I? Take care and be well..!
Laurenne! You’re not a “good” example, you are a GREAT example! Have fun having SAFE sex!
ALWAYS!! Kinda.
ha. you and i have the same problem with highschool facebook friends. there is this one chick on my feed who keeps posting bathroom/mirror photos of how hot she looks after having her baby. (a baby that was 8 weeks premature due to her daily weed-smoking and is still in the NICU on oxygen.) and most of them are close-ups of her bulging, lactating jugs. a part of me wants to comment and ask her where her priorities are, but the better part of me has decided there’s no point.
it’s sad that some people don’t change after high school…let’s just be glad that we have (or that we never had to because we were super kick-ass to begin with, right?!)
Nothing like a lactating boob to get me going.
I wouldn’t say that I was super kick-ass to begin with in HS. I was definitely bossy, weird, mean, and extremely insecure. Just not racist. You were definitely kick ass though.
The person who posted this should be shot: My root chakra is singing.
Also – excellent realization, thank you for opening our eyes!
p.s. i’m racist against racist people too.
ha! That might have been me. What? My root chakra likes to sing when balanced.
i think i made it to about 35 before i threw in the towel. the “towel”, not the “towel head”. that’s the regional slang i get to see for middle-eastern, or indian, or pakistani, or other brown humans here in ohio.
like you, i have a schizophrenic collection of people who feed my ‘eff-books’ page. i have learned to use it only as a data-collection point. a ‘pulse’, if you will, of snippets of the random neural firings in the brains of other humans. sometimes i laugh. other times i am convinced we have achieved “Idiocracy”. but i usually like the videos of animals. especially animals riding other animals. because that’s just funny shit…
yes, I like your pulsey idea. and truly there is nothing better than a cat video. I admit it. dammit.
One of my high school friends defriended me because I was different when he knew me in high school. I am liberal, he is so conservative and he couldn’t handle it. Come on don’t live in high school. Mine was 45 years ago. Defriend!!!!
Is it bad that I kind of want to know who said it? Being from Addison and all, I have to keep up with these things!
But yeah, Like 90% of the backwards, racist shit I see on my feed is from someone from high school. It’s funny, I didn’t think we were a bunch of racists back in the day. On the other hand, it makes sense that the junk posts don’t come from my current group of friends; why would I hang out with them if they were pulling that stuff? So I guess the racist duties belong to the high school friend crowd.
ha! well… it really doesn’t matter who said it. Just know that it was someone I thought was cute back in the day before I knew about the wide world of men. He had lots of gel in his hair and a tan.
I got stuck in a car with a racist the other day. It’s the worst. He was throwing around racial slurs and I was threatening to punch him with my one good arm. And then he yelled the N word out the car window. And I did punch him, despite the fact that I have a broken arm. And he called me a cunt. Which didn’t offend me anywhere near the hours of racial slurs. He was confused because I didn’t get angry the one time he tried to direct his anger at me but I felt like at least that was him reacting to something I had done instead of insulting people based on something as stupid as skin color or sexual orientation.
In retrospect I should have gotten out of the car and walked home. That would have been less stressful than attempting to define the word “bigot” after he asked, “what does that mean?”
Racism Sucks.
I’m glad you write about racist slurs here, because otherwise I’d have to join Facebook to learn them. You change my world. One bomb tosser at a time.
I am often embarrassed by our hometown. It’s good that we left. It helps us see that the world is more open-minded than our high school classmates would have us believe.
I would write more, but I have to go back to talking about my kids on Facebook.
I like when you talk about your kids on Facebook! I SWEAR.
You were the Harriet Tubman of that Wal-Mart! I heard. Cannot confirmy nor deny that story. Also the part I’m most offended by in that Facebook status string is someone writing “lol”. I know that person didn’t lol or do any loling of any kind. I’m willing to put that out there. PRobably on Facebook.
Do Indians count as bomb tossers? I hope so if only for your last paragraph.