Ah! How to say it!
Sometimes I get really mad or emotional about something, and I can’t explain my feelings pithily or in a way I think is worthy of being published like this.
But, to just throw out my ideas right now, I’m really mad at this woman, R., who I became friends with in Shenzhen. She’s English. As I mentioned in a reply to another post recently, one of the most shocking parts of 9/11 was the way she and some other English people gloated to me about what happened. My students, and the vast majority of Chinese people I met, were really nice and concerned and sympathetic, but a lot of English people were just nasty and kind of jeered about all the destruction in NY.
I recently got an e-mail with her and since I saw it was one of those dumb “humor” ones with all the photographs, I didn’t open it. (I hate those sort of e-mails — you know the ones, that have a subject line like “wet pussy,” and then it’s just a photo of a cat that’s fallen in a bathtub, or something like that.) Well, I finally opened it, and some of the photos where supposedly funny ones about 9/11. I sent back and e-mail asking if she understood the photos at all, and asked why they were supposed to be funny. We’ll see what sort of reply she sends.
It just seems like a breach of human decency to joke, or, especially to gloat about something like that, right? Especially because she knows I used to live in NYC, and that one person I went to high school with was killed in the attack.
I’m just upset and angry. It’s irritating to make friends and then to decide the person is really an asshole.