It’s not cool to judge, unless you are a legal official or preside over hotdog-eating competitions.
Women and mothers – judge me not
Women, and the subset ‘mothers’, are the most judgemental people I’ve met. The sisterhood is not always a friendly suburb of tea and sympathy. Motherhood is a place where sometimes I roll up my windows, lock the doors and drive through really fast.
I don’t like the gently shredding comments about other women’s choices. Casual dismissal of circumstance and background. Little packets of superiority sliding across café tables.
My close lady friends are, of course, excellent people. I have ‘binders full of women’ who I like and love and would share a Twix twin bar with.
Nerds and geeks – free hugs!
Nerds and geeks are the least judgemental people I’ve met. I recently had to say goodbye to a charming group of them. I said that it was ‘one of the most diverse places that I’d ever worked at’. This wasn’t a euphemism for unpleasant weirdness, but an appreciation of difference.
Aside from the obvious differences (gender, race, sexual preference, age etc), in the team there people who:
- Liked a screen of neat code or fat book of chick lit
- Changed hair colour on any day of the week ending in ‘day’
- Enjoyed noisy gigs (yo there thrash piggies!) or throwing pottery shapes after work
- Were proudly working class or mildly middle class
- Could dance like Justin Timberlake in a tumble-dryer
- Didn’t eat carbohydrates or food with faces or didn’t drink alcohol
- Wore tweed in a non-ironic way
- Could discuss non-intersectional feminism or Grand Theft Auto cheats.
A basic level of mutual respect (and sharing of kitten videos) kept this mixed bunch together.
(BTW – I found this intriguing empirical analysis of the difference between nerds and geeks.)
So don’t judge a book by its cover. I was once too embarrassed to read a Dr Who novel in public, so I hid it under a fake book cover titles ‘Mother truckers’… Was that any better?
Here’s one I wrote earlier
Slightly ranting about kids, technology, good and evil I can’t decide. Internet = evil cesspit of narcissistic idiots chatting to gambling-addicted paedophiles? Or Internet = global community of inspiring humanity sharing knowledge and joy? Depends on which parent I am talking to …
Will you be my friend? The fastest way to make friends is to have a brief chat, run around a park for a bit, then exchange phone numbers. This method seems to be working quite well for my son.
A life less digital 