I went to my brother’s graduation ceremony on Thursday. After the presentation, my family lined up for the obligatory family portrait. We waited in a noisy, crowded room with hundreds of other graduates clutching their degrees and billowing around in their black gowns and trencher hats.
We waited in the ill-defined line for a long time. Mum and dad were tired of standing. I stared unseeingly into the throng of people. Jason had ducked out for fresh air but soon came back, complaining about people who thought it was okay to infuse their rented gowns with the smell of cigarette smoke.
Suddenly, dad murmurmed, “Where did they come from?” An unfamiliar family was hovering beside us and slowly edging ahead in the cue.
We knew of course where they had come from. “Hey, they pushed in!” Dad was frowning.
I didn’t say anything. Confrontation. Today, confrontation made me feel uncomfortable.
Dad is the most mild-mannered person I know so I was extremely surprised when he tapped the person in front of us.
“Where did you come from?”
It wasn’t like he even asked. He challenged them.
“Oh, we were in the other line. We were in the wrong line for half an hour.”
“No,” dad shook his head. “No, you can’t do that. You should go to the back.”
“Look, we’re all in this together,” they said to defend themselves. “Just let us stay.”
Dad continued shaking his head and frowning. “We’re in a hurry. We have to go to dinner.” He waved over one of the photography company employees. “Excuse me, these people pushed in.”
The lady looked uncertainly at the accused.
“We were in the wrong line for 45 minutes!”
“No,” mum and dad said forecefully. “They should go to the back. Or at least go behind us. We’ve already let one person go in front. This is unfair.”
At this point, I was cowering, looking away front the situation. Confrontation. It made me feel icky.
In the end, the queue-jumping family were asked to line up behind us and the son and his girlfriend promptly went outside for a ciggie.
I’m proud of my parents.
Joan,
well done! well done to your parents for standing up for their rights.
I had a confrontation on friday… there was this guy standing outside Hungry Jacks on the corner of LaTrobe and Swanston streets with this big, very large and badly written sign about mental illness. Anyway, I was on the same corner shaking the tin for Amnesty International as it was candle day. Suddenly, without so much as a hint of a warning, he turns to me and begins abusing me in a very loud voice. Among his many barely-decipherable utterings were accusations that I was behaving unethically and that I was distracting people from his sign and that my actions “had no point”. Interesting.
Standing, as I was, as a standard-bearer for an international human rights organisation (and on the victorian branch committee, no less) I was not about to back down. So I told him, in my own unique calm and collected manner, exactly what I thought.
He continued to shout very loudly, and I countiued to speak strongly and quietly… before long, he realised that, not only was he losing the argument rather badly, the crowd that had gathered at the very busy corner was taking my side. So he stopped.
It is important to stand up. If we don’t, we set a precedent for a set of rules which govern the kind of world that I do not want to live in.