The lifeguards in life

I can still hear the lifeguard’s loud and shrill whistle as I came up out of the water. Me? Normally I was the kid who never got into trouble. Apparently, this particular swimming pool had a rule about not climbing up the ladder behind someone else on the slide. I did not know about this rule. It was not a rule on my playground at school. As you can imagine, I was a bit startled when the lifeguard loudly got on my case about it.

As I consider my old personal story from many years ago, I think about how similar situations continue to happen to me as an adult. I’m sure you can relate to dealing with the lifeguards in life. For instance, the guy who gave me the finger on highway 65 a while back because I erred on the side of caution and waited for some oncoming traffic, causing him to be 10 seconds late to his appointment. Then there was the driver at the four-way stop who got there before me, but waved me on impatiently with that “go-you-moron” look on her face.

I’m not going to make many friends by saying this, but in Springfield, Missouri, if you even breathe the wrong way, someone will overreact and give you a good cussin’ or a preachin’ about it, depending on the person. I have found something even more frustrating and very prevalent here: unsolicited advice. So many people in this area of the country have a better idea about how to handle situations than you do. This is one of my worst pet peeves. Yesterday, someone told me not to buy a certain kind of car. I did not ask for his opinion about it. I’m sure it was well-meaning advice, but again, it was unsolicited (and aggravating).

I saw two past coworkers over the weekend while out doing various activities around town. The first person was a young man who worked with me at the store a few years ago. What a great employee. He was friendly, had a good work ethic; he did not rock the boat or get into employee politics. He just did his job and you enjoyed being around him. The second former coworker I saw was from the university—let’s just say she was the polar opposite. She was constantly stirring up trouble. On the surface, she gave the impression that she was the sweet motherly type. But once you really got to know her, she was overbearing, uptight, into power struggles, bossy, etc. I think she must have been potty trained at gunpoint. It was such a relief to move on to a new job so that I didn’t have to deal with her garbage any longer.

I think we really need to consider the way we treat people these days. Do we think we have license to cut someone down just because he has a different political affiliation or social background? Furthermore, do we have the right to stick our noses in where they don’t belong?

The word respect has come up so many times in the past few months. It is obvious today that many are lacking respect. People who are overbearing and constantly giving unsolicited advice are just hard for me to deal with. I struggle to show respect for people who are like that. I need an extra dose of patience, but I’m not kidding when I say it is REALLY hard for me to deal with people who overstep their boundaries, well meaning or not.