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ACRO E-mail Archive Thread: [Acro] Mike Skaggs

Thread: [Acro] Mike Skaggs

Message: [Acro] Mike Skaggs

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From: RecordTapeClub at aol.com

Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 14:49:38 UTC

Message:

  When I was a kid, there was an obnoxious little boy in my school who loved to 
criticize, insult and make fun of the other kids.  Not a big kid, mind you. 
But a nasty mouth with no filter. He said everything that came into his head. 
And some of it was real nasty, hurtful, spiteful stuff. Some of the nasty, 
spiteful, hateful things were funny and, to be honest, we sometimes laughed. 
But that didn't make the kid any less hateful or obnoxious. It just meant the 
rest of us sometimes showed poor judgement. What the heck; we were pre-teens.

Anyway, one day somebody started saying nasty, spiteful, hateful things to 
this kid.  He didn't like that much.   "How dare you say those things to me. 
You owe me an apology," I can remember him saying.  I remember him being 
shocked and appalled. I can remember him asking for an apology.

And I can remember, even as an eight-year old how absolutely hypocritical 
this kid was being.  We probably summed it up at the time by saying, "He can 
give it out, but he can't take it."

I don't know what happened to that kid, but I know from experience as an 
adult that they sometimes just don't grow up. People keep laughing at them 
and they keep delivering the nasty jokes and the hurtful insults. And then, 
when the tables are turned, they turn indignant and they're genuinely 
surprised. "You couldn't possibly be suggesting that I deserve this kind of 
treatment even though I've built a reputation on giving it out myself. I'm a 
great guy. I buy ice AT MY OWN EXPENSE. So take it back, please, before I 
start to cry. Take it all back."

Thomas O'Hearn