In Memoriam
Never speak ill of the dead, they say.
A laudable enough sentiment, but there are times when one has to make an exception.
I heard yesterday that an old bête noire of mine had shuffled off his mortal coil. I didn’t exactly cheer but the day did somehow seem a good bit brighter.
You see, this chap was a cunt of the highest order. For years he has had it in for me, though he was never quite brave enough to talk to me face to face. His methods mainly consisted of trying to blacken my name and generally bad-mouth me at every opportunity. I am also more than a little suspicious that it was he who brought his rubbish and tipped it into my garden on a regular basis. And then there was that nice little incident where my front hedge was sprayed with weed killer [but my hedge is made of sterner stuff].
So what had I done to deserve such lavish attention? Well, nothing really. He hated my mother and used to terrorise her by posting nasty letters through her door. When she went the way of all elderly, he seemed to transfer all his affections to me. I don’t flatter myself though as I wasn’t the only recipient of his love. Anyone who crossed his path would be sure of some kind of retribution, be it shouting obscenities at them or just doing his damnedest to make their lives miserable.
I have also heard tales that he beat his wife to the point where she attempted suicide a few times and eventually moved out of the house. She then had to get a court order to keep him at bay. There wasn’t much love lost between him and his kids either.
My reaction to all of this was to ignore it. If I saw him around the village I would always greet him cheerfully by name, as if he were a long lost friend I hadn’t met in years. This really pissed him off, as I was supposed to cower in fear and at the very least not greet him on such familiar terms. He never knew quite how to react and usually grunted and scuttled off somewhere.
Apparently he died at home and it was a few days before anyone discovered the body. I suppose that’s what comes of having few friends and an alienated family?
Who says there’s no such thing as Karma?
I also always find it a good strategy to be especially friendly and cheerful towards those who are anything but. Throws them without fail each and every time. 😉
I’ve always maintained that being kind to your enemies really pisses them off because they thrive on hate.
‘Kind’? No. Firmly polite yet always smiling at your tormentor in passing like you know something they don’t, yes. Drives them crazy guessing.
Aye, be unfailingly nice, cheerful and friendly to enemies. Puts them on guard, you see, because they assume that everyone else is a vindictive arsehole like they are, and anyone happy and seemingly very pleased to see them must therefore be in the process of enacting a horrible revenge.
At this point, paranoia takes over and they get all worried about what this horrible revenge might be, and worried that their intimidation tactics aren’t working, and worried that if they step matters up a bit they’ll land themselves in the smelly. Oh, but the life of the unpleasant bastard is one long path of worry and woe!
It started off as a simple determination to show I wasn’t afraid of the fucker. When I realised how uncomfortable it made him, I racked it up to being positively cheerful in his presence. In fact I was probably more pleasant to him than to anyone else. Even I got a bit nauseated at my good cheer. At least now I can return to my normal self….
Here we see the cultural divide between our nations; An English gentleman will always be the most charming and polite to those he detests the most. It’s genetic. More than once in our life here I have had to inform The Bestes Frau In The Entire Universe that *insert name of some Britisher* was neither friendly nor polite but actually being rude enough towards her that had I been there they would have gotten a smack in the gob. Phrases like “You foreigners are so clever”.
Mind you it works the other way round too; I can recall my then young German wife responding to an elderly British woman’s “Oh my son is in Germany in the RAF” with a look of total shock but from her sweet German lips came nothing but “Oh really, how interesting” (one of those ‘Survive In The UK’ Phrases I taught her before we left Germany along with “You must let me have the recipe”).
You reminded me of the book “How to be an Alien” by George Mikes, which attempts to explain stuff like that. As Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit) says:
“deals with important English topics as the weather, tea, how not to be clever (since it is considered bad manners), how to compromise, and queueing (according to Mikes, the national passion). The chapter entitled “Sex” is in its entirety as follows.
Continental people have sex lives: the English have hot water bottles.”
Actually that very book was the basis for those lessons on ‘How to Survive in the yUK’ I gave my freshly minted wife before we visited the UK for the first time to show off Fruit Of Loins1 to his adoring Grandparents. Written some 70 years ago if I recall aright and still very apposite.
*goes back to Mdsched-ing a computer …and NO Grandad, I can’t install ‘nix on it! *
I will admit to having the same reaction to the news that a total bum-wipe had been chosen by the grim reaper.
I even fired off a couple of emails to friends who shared my opinion of him – and their responses cheered me no end.
What was done went back many years and said bum-wipe most likely had forgotten, or couldn’t give two hoots.
However I have a firm belief in divine justice. Just a universal sort of thing, nothing religious. So the more people who celebrate your death the better. My fervent hope was that he be reborn as a chow dog in Korea.
Of course I have very similar feelings toward all the parasites in tobacco control, though I have a somewhat more fitting fate I’ll wish on certain key players.