Crumbled Dignity

. . .It has been said that "poverty is no vice", to which I must whole-heartedly agree, being less-than-rich myself. And yet, can there be a dignity to being a pauper?
. . .What does it mean to offend? To hurt somebody's feelings, I'd imagine. But then what does it mean to hurt? Certain insults are culturally acquired, such as verbal attacks on one's gender, culture, age, height, weight, etc.
. . .I may as well tell my crazy Waterloo adventure first before going on about my lil' social rant that nobody really has a care for or possesses the ability to identify with (you insensitive lumoxes! o':)
. . .So yah, I stayed up the entire night, caught the first TTC train (at 5:42am) down to Dundas Stn. to catch the 6:30am greyhound to Waterloo. It was a relatively peaceful ride, except for the fact that my cap was too high and the sun was too low, it being early morn. So while those fiery javelins of Amaterasu pierced my eyelids, I managed to get some sleep... somehow.
. . .Got into Waterloo at around 9:00am, at which point I went to my room and started packing stuff. Finished sorting everything into boxes by around 11:30am, feelin' mighty proud of myself and decided to take a short rest, noting that I had the elevator booked in my new apartment from 2-3pm. I woke up at 3:00pm, clutching my alarm clock in my left hand. (I'm sure it went off at 1:00pm, and I somehow turned it off subconciously.)
. . .Ah, schreiss! was my first thought. Then figuring that I didn't have the money to spare for a taxi, I thought I'd carry it a box at a time. (How bad could it be, right? I mean, it's only a 10 minute walk normally, so with the box...20 minutes?) The first trip took me FORTY minutes, and that was just travel time (without disloading time). At the time, I figured I'd carry the heavy stuff first, that way it'd get easier towards the end when I was tired to carry the lighter stuff. But as everybody knows my body, like my complexion is very weak and fragile. These two VERY nice ppl took pity on me and seeing me struggle with the box (towards the end I was just dragging it with a towel, which I had originally used to wrap around the handles to protect my weak hands from developing callouses.) gave me the shopping cart they were originally using to carry their backpacks. So now I had a shopping cart! (From like, Loblaws or sth.) I finished making my first trip, and the next two trips happened almost without incident. Except that I was now a sweaty asian in a cap carting around his books and clothes in a shopping cart. Nothing conspicuous about that...
. . .K, so that was my fun story about Waterloo (that happened on Wednesday). Back to my rant about society's ails. So as some of dear readers may be aware, I'm easily offended. And not in the nit-picky sort of way either. It's just freak incident that I take more after my mother in terms of personal principles and values. Polite Society, as we'd like to call it. And my sister seems to have taken more after our father, a ... ... ... personable and open individual who knows how to laugh even in the face of disaster.
. . .Two incidents are being described here. The first was a most shocking one to which I thought could never happen in real life. A certain hence-forth-dubbed-"Beach" female openly voiced her disapproval and disgust at the way I was consuming a watermelon. Now, I shan't detail how exactly I was eating it out of some embarassment, and partly because it's not the focus of my rant (but really... I was in my apartment; not in public). What was extraordinary was not that she possessed some sort of etiquette that I didn't expect (which, in fact is quite the opposite), but that she would openly offend and maim my feelings IN MY OWN HOME without a second care in the world, seemingly more concerned for the virginity of her thoughts than to the general mood of the atmosphere. Sufficed to say, the air turned deathly cold. Well, after an initial few moments of immense pain and shock, my blood ran cool with indignation and anger. And after that subsided, I started thinking about whether my actions have ever evoked such feelings of hurt, shock, hatred and anger in anybody else as I experienced that evening.
. . .A beautiful mind, a beautiful soul depends not upon one's physical beauty, clothes or riches, but rather on the personality and being of a person. Why I had a distaste for ppl wasn't because I thought them below me, but because they weren't beautiful on the inside. Brash, coarse individuals who cannot consider the other individual and just speak their minds. Is that "sweet" in any sense of the word? I think not. Yes, the idea of Bienséance is very antiquated, but that doesn't mean it's any less relevant in today's world.
. . .The second incident involves a ... ... ... sth friend of mine. I can't say close friend, though certainly somewhat of a good friend. He's dear, after a fashion, though horribly blunt without a sense of tact or verbal retinence. Of course, there's the fact of differing cultures to consider. But he can't even see that I'm in a different culture. He just knows that I'm not in his culture and therefore I'm 'uncultured' (a remark that to this day I'm particularly sore about).
. . .So anyways, what's the point of this rant? Basically, that ppl are cruel, cold animals and that it's sad, nay, a SIN that today's society has allowed the intellectual mind to be forgiven for its social transgressions. So what if you have a shard of physical beauty and a spark of intelligence? Your tongue is so vile that it's a wonder that society has allowed you to continue as you are. And it's obvious, Beach, that it doesn't matter what I do or say because you've already locked a certain preconception of who I am, which while I no longer am that whom you saw all those years ago, it doesn't matter because you're just filled with judgement instead of perception.
. . .Why can't we all just be nice to each other? Oh, I don't understand it at all...