Sometimes You Just Have To Stand Up For Someone Else
I went to the local casino today because there was to be a drawing for what I thought was money to have your mortgage paid off. Instead, it turned out to be a drawing for the equivalent of having your mortgage paid for one year, or $12,000.
Still, I got to go to the casino, which means I got to play a little bit of poker. I’d had to leave a few times during the day, first to register for the event, then later to go for the drawing. After the drawing, I went back to play more poker, and things weren’t going well, a lesson I learned later but I’m not going to address here. Instead, I’m going to address an incident.
There was an older Asian woman playing at our table, and this young man of some nationality I wasn’t familiar with started baiting her and treating her with disrespect. He thought he was being smart and smug, and though I’d seen this woman before, she’s not really that good. Finally, on one hand when he’d bested her again and started talking stuff, I’d had enough. I basically told him he was wrong in the rules of decorum in how the game was played, that he was baiting this woman who was old enough to be his mother (she’s probably older), and that he was being disrespectful and needed to stop because I wasn’t putting up with it any further. He tried to defend himself, but I wasn’t having it, and his “friends” sitting near him told him they agreed with me and that he was baiting her. She didn’t say anything, and I’m not sure what her thoughts were, but I didn’t care by then.
There’s a growing lack of respect for people these days, and I don’t like it one bit. I see it almost everywhere I go, and in a work situation, it’s easily suppressed because there are rules that everyone must live under in some fashion. However, in public, the rules and getting blurred, especially where it concerns someone younger and someone older, or even men and women. Because I have no kids, many times I just let those things go, because I’m expecting someone else to step in and take care of things. In this case, it should have been the dealer, but he seemed like he was trying to stay out of it. So, it had to be me. And he didn’t misbehave like that towards her again, started acting better, and I calmed down and tried to do what I could.
Sometimes we all have to do the right thing and stop the madness. I felt good about taking the lead this time; I hope I’m ready to do it again, whenever it’s needed.
