a few socially unacceptable things

Recently a few people have commented on my height (or lack thereof), someone actually said 'your short for a guy' and the other person said 'your cute, but short'... nice. At the time I forget to recite what my mum told me to say if ever anyone picked on me because of my height- she said 'tell them that your mum said that good things come in small packages'.. .yeah I seem to remember that working really well in Primary school when i was being called 'shrimpy' ;-)


Something else that happened was that I saw a non English speaking client I hadn't seen in a while...she was excited to see me (can you blame her?), and gave me what I assume she thought was a compliment.. she said 'oh... your looking healthy' and then pointed her fingers accusingly towards my stomach and then drew her hands out to make the shape of a very large ball.. yeah i get it! I have put on a few kilos... and can now possibly be described as a short fat and bald man who wears glasses, which is kind of a hot look... if I don't say so myself, throw in a bow tie and WATCH OUT city of Melbourne ;-)

In all seriousness though, commenting on a persons height or weight??, this one is a no-brainer, come on !!! who doesn't know that you can't do this?, regardless of your cultural background!
Having said that, I did ask a lady who is a 'tall midget' if she asks taller people to get things off the supermarket shelf for her, only because I do that myself sometimes. She didn't really answer.. she just gave me a 'yeah, the supermarket can be tricky' response and her eyes went all large and then she just stared at me in silence. Are these signs of a crazy person ?? Because I think they might be...


Something else which is not quite right:

A very mature mandarin speaking client, who doesn't speak English and seems to love me (what is it with people loving me??), saw me after a month or so and excitedly bowed to me, did a little Namaste/hands in prayer position thing and said something in Mandarin.. ok, that is very acceptable and encouraged... but made me feel pressured to return the gesture..so I bowed, did a namaste/prayer hand thing and because I don't speak Mandarin, I made something up that kind of sounded Chinese, and figured that if I said it fast enough, he wouldn't notice it was made up, but be delighted with my terrible effort... Yeah, I know.. why did I do it??!!! Not socially acceptable, but as I was put under pressure by him to return the gesture.. I don't think that makes me entirely to blame.

Last on the list is people sneezing.

While sneezing is socially acceptable, provided that it is done in a respectful manner and that you don't spray your fine misty and slightly smelly nasal droplets everywhere (I have no idea why a 'sneeze' smells, but it does)...If someone says 'bless you', you HAVE to respond. A few times recently, I said 'bless you' in the tram to a fellow passenger and I received no response, which is not socially acceptable! I had to stop myself from pointing out to them that I had said 'bless you '... I did however look around the tram for support and gave other passengers a little nod with raised eyebrows (which said 'you saw what just happened, can you believe that?!?') and then l gave a sideways look at the offending passenger in a 'Tsk Tsk' manner. Surely this is the kind of thing the transit police/inspectors should be looking out for?


What is happening to modern society???