Somewhere people have lost the ability to take criticism or discipline or even own their mistakes. I sometimes come home to watch court tv shows for the humor and to see what outrageous things people have done. These examples show how overboard feelings have gotten out of hand:

• A court show (don’t remember which one) where the plaintiff (mother of a student) was suing for emotional distress for her son because he wasn’t invited to a birthday party – even though he had been bullying the birthday girl. The students were not 5 years old.
• Another case where a woman was suing on her boyfriend’s behalf because an entertainer mistakenly sang happy birthday to someone of the same name at his job. When she tried to make up for the error and sing it to him, he was humiliated because everyone knew the wrong person had been sung to already. They were also not 5 years old.
• And the best one yet where a man had so much hubris that he ran a hate campaign against a family because they got the house he wanted and he was mad (and emotionally distressed) when they would not accept his offer to purchase it from them.

I’m wondering how this phenomenon is happening, particularly when there are folks walking around blasting people with no provocation, profiling people with no idea of who they really are, and believing they have a right to speak their opinion to people who did not ask for it. When my twins were little and I was in a public setting where a vendor was passing out free candy samples, the girls wanted some and I told them no because I didn’t want to clean up the mess. A woman came up to me and told me to let them have the candy (thinking her condescension was her being pleasant), and I told her no also and walked away. Don’t know why she was shocked.

It’s interesting how this bully syndrome exists. Bullies are always demonstrative and opinionated and full of themselves, but when confronted or retaliated against in any form, they are actually offended. SMH