D - Don't Sit At Tables Where Respect Is Not Being Served!

It is high time I started living by this principle, no? It is BEST not to show face where dimwits choose to be disrespectful. And, my word should be taken when I say life throws the most absurd of situations and circumstances at me. I mean, I have been forced to make an appearance because of social obligations. My FOOT with a number 11 shoe! Orthotic included! I have sat through sessions where I became open topic of debate and discussions. Like I said … dimwits. I fail to understand why am I a hot topic. *WINKS* - I sinisterly like it sometimes because well … you’re putting me in the spotlight because you have an insatiable itch because of my existence! MUAHAHAHAHA! My trouble is that my tongue is tied due to being respectful. Why? O, because my parents taught me better.

I have confronted many open table discussions about how my Masters degree has made me overqualified and too hot to handle in the eligible bachelorette markets because mother in laws and husbands like control over less educated wives. Did I comment on your private BA degree from Karachi that is not even education in the US? There have been debates about how my profession as a landlady has set me up way too high on the scale of what a woman can and cannot achieve. Did I question your lame, used clothing boutique that nobody buys from? And there are recommendations about how I should and should not run things in my life. Did I question the way you run yours when you squished a bug on your dinner table between conversation and said you cleaned a month ago? 

There are all categories of people who resort to disrespectful arguments. There are the overachievers who disregard my scale of achievements and always have a higher reference for me when I am trying to convey something good about myself. There are the “parents of children” who like to pull Parenting 101 on me simply because I am not a parent. There are racists and bigots of course, that is the specialty of the human race. 

NOTE: Majority of the people I deal with know good etiquette, but there are these cacti (plural for cactus, in case you are one of the dimwits whose table I have sat on!) of the social jungle that stand up like prickly pears! 

My brain begins to heat up - since I am not hardwired for jackass! - when the ladies begin discussing the “ticking of the biological clock” and the “ending of fertility period” in relation to me being single at 31. Facepalm! Please keep your noses out of my “components”. Another starts counting the number of marriages she’s been attending in friends and family, and the ages of the guys and girls, and then begins telling telltale stories about “these girls who are ‘baychari’ (helpless!) still single”. DUDE! Me being single is not a defect, not a defeat, no a measure of my success in both worlds, an certainly none of your beeswax!

So, I am going all deaf, dumb, and mute to such public appearances and obligation or not The Abbie will not be sitting at such tables where respect is not being served!