Out of sight, out of mind

Years ago, some friends and I wondered why we spent so much time talking about a particularly difficult person in our lives. He was in a position which made him difficult to ignore and every night we found ourselves mentioning him at some point. It was as if we needed to debrief on a daily basis to stay sane.

His job meant that he was in daily contact with members of the public, and - almost every day - one of them would ask us what they had done to offend him; what was wrong with him; why was he so rude; etc. etc. If anyone was totally unfit for the position he occupied, it was him.

Not being trained psychoanalysts, we had no answers to these questions, so we made feeble attempts to laugh it off by saying things like, 'Oh, it's just him. He's like that with everyone.'

One night in the pub, we all suddenly became tired of talking about his latest bit of bad or unreasonable behaviour and vowed to keep him as a subject down to as much a minimum as  the situation allowed. It was hard, and after a while the elephant in the room had to be mentioned by the first person to crack.

If a person is normal by being reasonable, kind and thoughtful, they hardly ever get a mention. That is the way it should be. 

As I said over on Thelma's blog, I am looking forward to not talking about the orange man in the very near future.