How many times have I been insulted in life? How many times has that been in the bodiless environment of the Internet?

Exactly. And so I wonder why one small insult out of countless others has me bothered.

I’ve had a lot of success on Craigslist. I recently posted an ad for an iPod Touch I no longer need, and got a bite almost immediately, but the individual wanted 20% off my listed price. I’ve always gotten exactly what I’ve asked for on Craigslist, so I replied in two curt words that I’d only be taking my asking price. “No, $300,” was how I put it.

An hour later, I got back a reply saying, “Get over yourself,” followed by a large ASCII Star of David. My name is Steiner, a classic German name that confuses some people, who take it to be Jewish. It seems this symbol was supposed to stand in for something, to intimidate me. A shaming device of some kind. A yellow badge, I think.

I immediately deleted the e-mail, then revived it a few minutes later. I looked at it for a while. I’m not the most charitable of men, nor the most even-tempered. Several replies came to mind as I wondered at what I should do. “Wow, I’m convinced, it’s yours — free!” was one. “Steiner is a German name, Genius,” was another. Various other flavours of sarcasm seemed apt. Later, it seemed to me that I could also take the route of pointing out how his message was received: with some alarm, and some sadness at its implications.

The young man was from Toronto. He’d used his full name in the “From” header of his e-mail, and, it being very unique, I looked him up and found a Flickr web page and a few other things. In addition to his likes, dislikes, the town in Romania where he grew up, friends, and hobbies, there were many pictures of him. Here he was with a few friends, also twenty-something, lounging in a nondescript apartment. Here’s a girl with him. He’s carrying an infant in this one, and here’s a picture he’s taken of himself, holding a point-and-shoot at arm’s length.

What path has led this ordinary person to the place where it seems acceptable to him to offer a stranger a deflating insult, and a veiled threat? And what’s the appropriate response?

The second question is easier for me to answer. In a case like this, the appropriate response is no response at all. For one thing, we are, unfortunately, forced to consider that an individual capable of a menacing text reaction like this is also capable of much more. Further, what could be gained by reacting negatively? Or even with sadness and alarm, my most sincere response? I couldn’t imagine this person responding well.

No, I quietly ignored his response.

About the first question, about how it came to be that he, or me, or anyone else, would think that such a response could be legitimate. There’s no real answer. The usual observations about faceless communication and the ease with which one can abandon civility while engaged in it come to mind. But it seems there has to be some larger issue, some explanation that would account for the willful injury people cause on a daily basis. It’s not that online communication engenders acting badly; it seems to me there’s a callousness inherent in many people that is exposed by online communication. Perceived consequences being minute, many feel free to act in whatever way is expedient to vent their ever-shifting negative emotions. Even a second’s worth of thought for how the other is made to feel seems too long.

Generally I love people, but it’s an on-again, off-again affair. They so disappoint. I am enthralled one moment, overjoyed at their complexities, torn to wonderful shreds by the fickleness of their delights and passions and pursuits, in awe of the heights of intellectualism they can climb to; and then I’m dashed again, brought down by their pettiness, by their dogmatic and inward-looking steadfastness to unreason, to selfishness, to emotional, intellectual dwarfism. I wish I knew what brings people to the very boundaries of supreme selflessness, only to be snapped back into their own self-concerned little world with the bright silent violence of a meteor crashing into the atmosphere.

I’m a victim of it and a perpetrator at the same time.

Louis General Communication, Morality, Selfishness, Strangers

We needed to get the car washed.

We’d been camping at Bruce Peninsula, two hundred and eighty kilometres or so away, and some of the back roads were dirt. We went on a long country drive one night. I’d looked at the rearview to watch a big smudgy cloud of dust billowing up behind us. Alex smiled, said sorry — he’d picked the road — because the scenerey around us wasn’t as interesting as he’d hoped. And a few days ago, there was a torrential downpour. We went to the movies that night, but the road next to a cornfield was flooded, and we were soaked by muddy water. The car was filthy. It was supposed to rain that day, but the car really needed cleaning.

It was a weekday, so ours was the only car at the wash. Instant service, roll right up. The old guy taking the ticket had been pacing slowly with his hands behind his back, his head down, at the entrance to “The World’s Longest Car Wash!”, and when he saw us, he snapped into life and guided us in. Little left, little right, on the track, thumbs up, we’re in. We really got the treatment, being the only ones there. Before sending us in, the old guy brushed down the windshield, washed the tires, and hosed off most of the dirt from the hood. Nice. He remembered something, hurried to my window and started gesturing, but I knew what he wanted. I rolled the window down to hand him the car wash ticket.

“Thank you, Sir,” he said, with what sounded like a Greek accent.

“Thanks,” I said. There was a fine spray from the machines coming in, and I closed the window quickly. He pushed a few buttons and the track pulled us in, and we got our lovely wash.

Something wasn’t really right.

This man, this car wash man, was about seventy years old. Apart from his car wash overalls, he looked neat and trim. He had all his hair, and it was cut nicely, combed perfectly. His short moustache looked meticulously groomed, and he wore gold round-rimmed glasses. He looked like a librarian, or a writer, or an antique shop owner. And he called me “Sir”.

That was the problem.

Everyone calls me Sir. The kids checking me out at the all-night grocery store, or the liquor store guy, or the gay guy helping me pick out a shirt, I’m “Sir” to all of them. The army of waiters and waitresses that have been serving me since I turned eighteen, the bank lady, the guy who keeps calling my office trying to sell me financial products, the book store clerk, the harried girl working the returns desk at the downtown Canadian Tire, all of them say “Sir”. I’ve heard it countless times over the course of adulthood, and every time, it’s moved through me as meaninglessly as “Mister”, or “Fella”, or “Hey you”.

But hearing this old guy say it? Who’d just finished brushing down my car, who started the track that pulled the car into the machine? Hearing this older car wash man addressing me like that, when I’m maybe twenty-five years younger than he… it wasn’t right.

I started wondering why he worked there, what circumstances led to him hosing off cars in front of The World’s Longest Car Wash! for what could only be minimum wage. Maybe he was a bored retiree who’s wife was gone. Maybe he needed the money. Yikes.

But a different question is, why on earth is he going around calling the likes of me “Sir”? Well, because I’m the consumer. The ultimate aristocrat in an ostensibly classless society. My ten bucks not only gets my filthy car as clean as the day I picked it up at the dealer, it also confers on me titles, and dignity, and unfounded unearned respect, and other such social paraphernalia that, were it to suddenly be taken away tomorrow, I would surely notice, and probably miss. Oh, I am surely part of the consumer aristocracy.

Yes, there surely is something dreadfully wrong with that.

No, I’m not “Sir” to him. Not “Sir” any more than I should be called “Your Excellency”, or some other such nonsense.

I’ll bet he’s got stories to tell. He’s been around, certainly. He himself, with his careful grooming, his perfectly trimmed moustache, has the comportment of someone with great dignity. He had a nice face. Not particulary kind, not care-worn either, or menacing. Ordinary in a carefully groomed, resigned sort of way.

I detected an accent, Greek perhaps. Hard to say how long he’s been here.

I’m done with notions of romance and common heroics and so forth. That’s for young men, as Plato (or someone) said. But, there’s a weak and romantic part of me that can imagine him against the sky, on the water, the waves lifting and lowering a little slip he’s on. The wine-dark sea, as they say. Because the sky’s light — even though it’s dusk — he’s darker, more of a shadow. Maybe he’s sixteen, maybe twenty-six. His elbow’s bent at a right angle behind him because his hand is resting on the rudder’s handle. There’s an old torn net on the floor of the slip. He’s looking out against the water, where it disappears into the horizon, where you can’t see anything else. The sound of the waves is calming, for now. There’s nobody else around. He might think, A moment like this, out here, where there’s a job to do, where noone else is helping you, where the slip is part of the water, and you are part of the slip — a moment like this lasts forever.

Louis General Greek