MD wrote: “I always get frustrated when people blame me for things that I am guiltless of.”

Welcome to the party, pal. I’m thinking of having jackets made.

What I’ve discovered is, no matter how old we get, we are still, essentially, children. As adults, we’ve learned a certain behavior modification that is forced upon us largely by society. But I think wars are basically temper tantrums, set off by one kid who refuses to stop picking on another.

What really irritates me, if I’m really honest about it, is not the behavior so much as that the behavior now forces *me* to be the adult. In any given situation, *somebody* has got to be the adult. When the other guy beats you to the punch—when he starts acting like a moron or, more accurately, a six-year-old girl—he’s now taken up all the space in your universe that is available for that function. There really isn’t space enough in my universe for me to start acting like a butthead when this schmuck’s already beaten me to it.

And it’s really not fair. I wanna lose it just like he’s losing it, but now I have to be the adult. I really wish we’d all adopt some simple rules of decorum: if you got to be the butthead last time, I should be allowed a turn to be irrational and girl-like.

Being accused—no, found guilty—of wrongs I haven’t committed (or, just as bad, people having outsized reactions to perceived slights) is, more or less, the story of my life. I’ve got pretty thick skin about most things; insulting me is fairly hard to do. But it really burns me when I’m around immature, ridiculous people who both try and convict me without hearing a word—not one word—of what I might have to say about whatever they’re flipping out about.

Usually these are people who either do not know me at all, and therefore are assuming stupid and immature motives on my part (usually mirroring their own behavior; most people assuming all people think the way they do), or, worse, these are people who have known me for seven and a half years and yet chose, time and again, to distort my words or actions to fit some stereotype of me they’ve got playing in their heads. I mean, after seven years, they really should know better.

Which makes their accusations false and makes them liars because they know me and they know what I am and am not capable of. They’re just flying off of adrenaline and, like the six-year old girl with the cookie, stomping their feet and acting irrational. Or, even more heinous, glossing over things they know are true about me in order to make me fit some ridiculous caricature they are—seven years later—insisting on clinging to; a vision of who they *need* me to be in order to justify their prejudices, fears and childish outbursts, such irrational hatred having but only a few sad and terrible origins.