Interesting blog post here.

The blog author works with and for disabled people. He and his partner were making fun of the way people in the mall were dressed, until he started making fun of one person and his partner told him to stop, because that person was disabled. Then the blog author wondered if he was right to stop, because the disabled person deserved to be made fun of too. I am probably not telling this right.

Because it seems to me that it's wrong to make fun of other people's appearance, period. I assume that everyone is doing the best he or she can. God knows that if the blog author ran across me when I had to go somewhere right after work he would have some things to say. As I've said before, you don't dress like a beauty queen to work in a laboratory, and sometimes it's just too hot to wear that lab coat. And my hair is floppy by the end of the day, no matter what I do, and it seems that the makeup slides right off my face. So go for it.

But it reminded me of something kind of funny. I irritate R and others when I answer their questions before they finish asking them. Some people repeat themselves and others keep adding qualifiers, and I KNOW what I'm going to answer, and I sometimes don't want to take the time for them to wind down before I do. Sometimes I answer the question three or four times before the questioner hears me b/c I think they're done, and while I am answering they are tacking more words onto the question and not actually changing the answer at all. I will say that under many circumstances I am an extremely patient person. Usually I am less patient with smart people b/c I think they ought to be able to express themselves clearly and succinctly.

Anyway, I used to work with a man who had a profound stutter. I know that you do not jump in and finish sentences for people who have stutters. (Of course, it's always rude to do that anyway, she said guiltily.) So this guy would call me at my desk to ask a question. I'd answer the phone, he would start the complicated process of greeting me and telling me who he was, and I would wait for him to manage to get his name out before I'd say, "Oh, hi, Bob," like I didn't know who he was. All of our conversations continued to go that way. I tend to think while it's right to be patient with a person who has a speech problem, I should actually be patient with everyone. But now it appears that my stuttering coworker deserved for me to be rude to him like I (sadly) am to others. Is that right?