Have you ever had someone offend you? Only you don't realize they offended you until well after it is appropriate to tell the person that their words hurt you and you were offended by what they said? Do you know how you can have a conversation with a close friend and not be offended by it at all and yet if a stranger says the exact same thing to you it will completely rock your world?
Let me explain.
I'm weird. I don't really fit in to any one category of person and I am totally ok with it. I have friends from all different places that most would not get along with each other and yet I love them all the same. I know that my sense of humor can be off putting and I am well aware that I don't "fit". It's okay. It really is.
I consider myself an extroverted introvert. I love to make people laugh and I love to talk to people but sometimes I feel like I have to be funny in order to be liked and sometimes I don't feel like being funny. So in the rare occasion that I am in that type of mood and I am around strangers I am going to be off to the side by myself. This is what occurred back before Christmas.
My son's class was caroling at a nursing home and had gone to the mall so that they could have lunch. He was going to eat lunch with some friends and then he was going to come home with me so I had to wait on him. It was Christmas so the food court was pretty crowded and it was a food court so everyone was going to different restaurants to get what they wanted to eat. So, I got my food and sat down at a table with plenty of room. Had I asked anyone to join me? No, but it wasn't like that, it was mass chaos and no one ended up sitting with me and I was not offended I promise. I was sitting there eating my lunch waiting for my son to be done when SHE came over. Her first words to me were I guess I will sit over here at the unliked and weird table.
Now. If one of my close friends had said that I would have not taken offense to it at all. It did look like I was weird and unliked, no one had decided to sit with me. A close friend, however, would know as I did that it wasn't that people didn't like me it was the oddity of the chaos, but when a person you don't really know says that to you, you are not really sure if they are being sarcastic or hurtful.
The lesson to be learned from this post is . You never know what a person is going through from day to day. Joking around can be appropriate and it can be hurtful. Make sure that you are close enough to a person before you are offensive and even then realize that offensive can get really old really fast. We are here to build each other up and even if you are ribbing someone in jest it can get old.
I'm still ok with being weird. I promise.
