what happens when you remove the audience participation

I am not always the perfect soul of discretion. Hey, I'm not perfect, and I am, unfortunately, all too human. I shove my foot in my mouth with the best of them. Who doesn't? What I do *not* do, however, is cause public scenes, without a damn good reason. I have to be absolutely furious to cause a public disturbance, and have some incredibly well-founded reasons, and just being a little pissy doesn't come anywhere near to qualifying under those guidelines. Neither does attempting to humiliate someone, simply because I figure I can. And, incidentally, I'm really, really good at making people feel stupid if they get into a pissing contest with me in a public forum.

But it's incredibly rude to do things like that, because for the most part, if you've got some sort of problem with somebody? You handle that shit discretely. You do *not* intentionally walk up to them, in a room full of people, raise your voice to top volume and all but shriek their entire name to make sure the entire room full of people are then focused on the two of you. Because if you do that to *me*, and I happen to be having a really bad day, you're liable to have one of two things happen. I'll either stand up, and point out that you're an uncouth and disrespectful piece of garbage who isn't worth the oxygen that you're breathing, and should have grown up when everyone got out of junior high, and should have been handling whatever petty little grievances you might have happened to be having privately. And I *do* have the vocabulary to support such a dress-down. Or I will simply haul off and punch you in your gods-damned face.

For a change, I happened to *not* be having such a bad day, that I employed a fairly new, third option. Which was having enough common courtesy and diplomacy at hand, all at once, to stand up *and walk outside* before I pointed out that this was a high-school petty bullshit display, and it was immature and idiotic. There was no point to the complete lack of discretion, and no, I wasn't "embarrassed" or "humiliated" or even fearful of such a thing from the fallout, it was simply a matter of respecting the coordinator of the event more than the person who didn't seem to realize that acting like a petty thirteen year old girl in a public place was inappropriate. *I* am thirty-one years old, and much too old to be playing teenage games.

No, I wasn't going to email back and forth defending myself to the likes of such drama. You shoot me a message that states clearly "I have no interest in being friends." My response to that is to remove you from the social networking site list, and to move on with my day. I don't have a need to defend myself from attacks. Conversation or understanding or communication, perhaps. But an attack? No, thank you. I'm not in junior high school, nor will I ever be again.

Which is why I didn't bother standing outside for more than the two minutes it took to snicker, and walk away. I'm also not going to stand and argue the point in person. I have no need to 'defend' an attack. Communicate about it, yes. But 'defend myself', no.

And as I sit and write this now, I'm laughing. Because I could all but see the smoke pouring out of her ears, when she threatened to continue her attack if I walked away from her, and back inside. And it wasn't until I pointed out that *that* would be unacceptable behavior to the coordinator, and against the rules, that she backed down, knowing *I* was the one who followed those rules by insisting it be taken outside in the first place. Her attempt to set me up inside, by causing a scene that *she* started, had irritated me, and the threat that she was going to continue it, angered me, but not enough for her to break and continue the shenanigans. And we both knew it.

The goal was to get me to capitulate, and give her her way, and get some sort of...apology, I guess, so that peace could reign with her in charge once more. Except that I don't function that way. I am a great many things, but a pushover is, unfortunately for a lot of people, not one of them.

Certainly, I like having friends. Who doesn't? But I don't like it enough to put up with the likes of someone who will blatantly lie to my face, and to others, and who wants to be the center of attention all the time.

As a slight side note, the most irritating fact of the whole mess is that what I was accused of doing to her? Was leaking a secret out, that's public knowledge in the first place. *sigh* And *everyone* knows it. Which makes it all the more irritating, as she stood there hopping up and down and swearing that it was this huge secret.

There are days that being the keeper of the secrets is really irritating. Because people like that so seriously deserve to have their own dirty little secrets spit at them, just to point out that if I *truly* wanted to fuck up their precious little worlds? I could, and it would be *SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING* stuff to drop as information into the public domain, than what I'm always getting accused of.

Gods above and below, if you're going to tell me I ruined your life, perhaps I should really start doing that. At least it would be more fun for me.