I apologized and told her that I didn't have anywhere else to park. The nearest empty land plot had construction materials piled high on it and there were two scooters parked in the middle of her front yard for me to be able to squeeze in my tiny electric car. She waved me away and told us to sit. A minute later, my aunt asked me to go the kitchen and make tea for her and my mother while they discussed some financial matters. I didn't find the powdered milk and went back to ask her, upon which she replied with a smirk that it was right next to the sugar on the shelf and perhaps I needed glasses to see better now that I was getting older.
She came into the kitchen, and when she didn't find the jar where she had said it would be, fished around for a while, moved a stack of newspapers and other vessels and finally handed me a huge jar with two spoonfuls of powder milk at the bottom. "Yehi ta cha," she said and left me completely bewildered and I admit, infuriated. When we left an excruciating two hours later, I told my mother I was never coming back. I don't know what had prompted me to go in the first place. I knew she was rude and she almost always got on my nerves whenever our paths crossed. Maybe, I thought, age had mellowed her but I was only blatantly reminded that age had messed up my eyesight instead.
I have some other relatives who are as blunt and rude. Almost everything they say offends one person or the other. Dinner gatherings in my family are almost always mini fiascos because for a month or two after the event, someone or the other will be harboring grudges against someone else. I don't understand why people are this way. I mean, it's a very basic notion to be pleasant to everyone, isn't it? "It's nice to be nice," our mothers said, right? So why is it that most people can't say anything nice but won't hesitate to complain, whine, and be sarcastic?
This incident with my aunt prompted me to start thinking about my own behavior – whether people perceived me as polite, or rude, or both. Also introspections like these are quite common when you have a five day weekend thanks to back to back government holidays. While I don't believe in the Gandhi principle of offering the other cheek when you're slapped on one, I do believe that you need to be conscious of your words and actions when you are out in public (or home, but especially in public) so as not to come across as rude and offense. I don't like it when someone is rude to me so I make it a point to be nice to people.
I'm not a perpetual people pleaser but I do make a conscious effort to be polite and courteous. However, I don't want to be liked all the time and I don't seek approval which is what makes it easy for me to speak my mind and not put up with nonsense. Ideally, I would like to avoid confrontations but if you are asking for it, so be it. I don't believe in staying silent and letting you trample all over me, while I respect you because a) you are older to me, b) you are 'direct' and blunt, and c) I'm the daughter or the buhari, basically someone who should keep mum no matter what you do.
I believe it's because we excuse rude people's behavior under the pretext that 'they are like that' or 'he doesn't mean anything by it' that they tend to get away with it and never realize that their behavior is offensive and wrong. My husband tends to do this a lot. His most common excuse for his relative's harsh words is that they speak like that. The funny thing is I have seen these men get really upset when someone speaks with them they way they speak with others. I have also seen many relationships sour because of someone's insensitive remarks. After all, how much can anyone take?
What people fail to realize is that they don't deserve respect simply for being elders if their behavior is bad. Being 'older' doesn't give you the right to disrespect anyone and make hurtful remarks. You have to earn respect, not command it because of your age. Most of us seem to know exactly how others need to speak and behave while being blissfully unaware of our own habits and manners and how it tends to rub people the wrong way.
I teach my children to be respectful and polite, to say please and thank you, and not act cheeky. But if someone is wrong, I tell them, they are wrong. And while you might not be right in putting them firmly in their place, because you can't correct the world, it's far too gone, I tell them to stay a hundred kilometers away from such people because they will drag you down with them, and make you ungrateful beings. And that's the last thing I want my children to be, even in a world where selfishness seems to rule.
For me, I'm just glad that I take after my mother, who always said that kindness is a virtue and you have to be kind to people even if they are not. But I'm also glad that I've tweaked the rules a bit now: If you are not kind to me, I won't be unkind to you but I won't let you get away with it either. Nobody has to take anybody's shit – that's my mantra. I just wish more people lived by this school of thought and we could change people's attitude one person at a time.
ip_bista@hotmail.com
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