There's a part of me that doesn't come out very often.
A part that I sometimes wish wasn't there.
It's not a terribly nice part of me, but it has its uses.
Like today.
We were arguing about alimony. A trivial subject, perhaps, but one that we all had strong, and different, feelings about. The outcome, as with most arguments on this sort of thing, was ambiguous and unimportant. I was fairly irritated, though. And it must have showed.
One of the women who works here, currently in a sort of quasi-training state, took offense when I said that if I were involved in a divorce, I would never request alimony.
"You can't say that, you never know what you would do in a situation till you were in it!" That argument has always grated on my nerves. I have what I consider a very strong code of morals, and it always irritates me when I'm told I might do something I say I won't. Probably why 'potential rapist' pisses me off too.
So I turned on her. "Would you kill someone?"
"Well, maybe, in the right..."
"Would you rob a convenience store?" I was relentless, advancing, backing her into a corner without moving a step. "Would you commit fraud? Hit a priest? Lie to your mother? Write a bad check?" She was speechless at this point. "Would you molest a toddler, gal?"
I was ice. I was cold, precise, merciless. And I reveled in it.
She managed a stammered "Of course not!"
"But how can you know? How can you know until you've been in a situation where there was some motivation to molest a toddler?"
She gaped.
"Don't give me that situation crap, gal. There are things we KNOW we won't do, no matter what the situation."
I turned, walked away.
She didn't say a word. |
