Random Acts of Meanness

I don't understand unnecessary meanness. Now, I'm not always that nice and was occasionally told off by MuleBoy for excessive rudeness to people. On one occasion, he did catch the rudeness but not the reason as one of his colleagues who I met for the first time asked me the same question in a couple of minutes so my second answer was rather shorter than my first, which had been quite pleasant and enthusiastic. On another occasion, I was told off for being mean to his now-girlfriend because she was starting to edge in on my territory and I am pissed off in retrospect that I apologised to her. So I am no stranger to the mean; I have little patience and am a bit of a bitch. However, what I don't understand is being mean to innocent bystanders. On several occasions, I have just walked past somebody and had an insult shouted at me and I'm sure that this is a shared experience (I hope it is, otherwise this implies that my mere presence is enough to rile people to the extent that insulting me is the only option). Last night, I had one of these experiences and it was one of those things that made me question not myself but just the mentality of other people. While waiting for the loo in a pub last night, a drunk guy, waiting for his equally drunk but much funnier girlfriend to come out (we waited together for a few minutes and she kept confiding things to me in a stage whisper about how drunk she thought she might be), started talking to me. He asked me if I was pregnant and my heart just sank. I said no and he said, no, you are, when's it due? I said, I'm not pregnant, I'm fat, and then he tried to touch my stomach at which point I told him to fuck off and walked away at speed. I don't mind people thinking I'm fat because I think I am too. I do mind strangers telling me I am, because their motive is to try and hurt me, otherwise why would they say anything at all?

On the flip-side, for some reason it reminded me of something that happened last year that, whether for the right reasons or not, gave me something of a warm feeling. I was walking home from work and had fallen into step behind a petite girl. I noticed that we were coming past a group of blokes, drinking beer and got that sense of dread that one gets in that situation. They shouted a comment at the girl in front, and I was surprised that they were complimenting her eyes. Then they shouted a comment at me and it was "look at that lovely red hair". I was really taken aback. It was almost as if they were going out of their way to be nice, and not in a predatory, sexual way. So, thinking about it, I might start talking randomly to strangers and tell them nice things. It's odd but, ultimately, quite nice!