THEM’S FIGHTING WORDS. APPARENTLY
I walked into an office recently and greeted a group of women sitting at a table with a bright and cheery “morning ladies”. This greeting, which is my go-to hello for a huddle of the fairer sex, seemed innocent enough to me and quite appropriate based on the recipients of my passing courtesy.
Now I’ve been wrong before – I’ve been proper wrong, I’ve been low-level wrong and every wrong in between, but I had no idea that I had just entered a wrong realm the likes of which I didn’t even know existed.
The alpha female locked eyes with me, a waft of steam exited her ears and she boomed, “Who are you to assume that we are ladies?” My brain said “huh” but fortunately my mouth said “sorry?” The sorry was not an apology (although I’m sure she would have loved it), it was instead a shortened version of “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
My new-found educator then went into her clearly well-rehearsed tirade, explaining that it was me and those like me who keep the female of the species downtrodden and that she and her associates weren’t happy with my “caveman-like” activities.
Over the next few seconds I took a breath, listened to my lesson, rolled the recently passed information around my tiny caveman brain and came up with the best response I could construct. “Morning dragons!” And I went on my way, chuckling to myself and wondering why I didn’t receive the memo notifying me that polite courtesy was no longer appropriate.
I’ve thought about my wrong long and hard since and considered my options for future encounters with similar demographics. I considered the passing ‘grunt’, the ‘completely ignore’ and even an interpretative dance depicting the ceremonial burning of a bra, but I just kept coming back to this:
Macca, old mate, when you see a group of women, you know exactly what to do – smile and say, “morning ladies”.
Correct vs Politically correct.
Correct is correct, it’s based on facts. Politically correct is taking something that is correct and manipulating it to suit the tastes of every minority group who get offended by the correct truth. Which would you rather hear? The ‘correct’ or the ’politically correct?’
