words can hit you harder than you think. In my pub days I would routinely be called a fat cunt by disgruntled punters. Scenesters would often call me a sellout for having popular acts or booting them out for taking drugs in the toilets. Once after introducing myself to Spencer P Jones as Paddy his watery eyes clouded over and he shook his head. "Fatty?" he queried. "People can be so unkind." He was so troubled by it I didn't have the heart to correct him. So I'm not unused to words as weapons. Which makes me wonder why the aggro chat at Vicroads gets to me so much.
Its mainly the kids I guess. They're so nakedly aggressive towards authority with relatively little provocation. A sixteen year old girl calling you a fucking tool, or eighteen year old lads calling you a Vicroads dog. Or just totally losing their shit at you for five minutes. I guess I just get really taken aback at the ease in which they slip into the role of the aggrieved spitting victim of the system. For every small part of me that feels wounded while my ears redden, there is a big part of me worried about these kids. How do they deal with coppers, transit police, teachers and even their parents? Its not some sort fogeyish lack of respect that concerns me, its more how the world treats you when you don't want to embrace its social conventions and how the system firstly produces and then deals with youth with so much aggression. I get the feeling they'll have a hard road of it. The poor little fuckers.
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