CONTROVERSY (OR NOT)

You know, I fretted buckets that a weekend blog posting that I wrote last weekend might prove to be ever so slightly "controversial" amongst my chums. I worried for days beforehand about whether or not it was appropriate or not, only to find that no bugger actually read the bloody thing...

Generally speaking, I don’t often go out of my way to be deliberately controversial as such. Sometimes it just sort of “happens” when I’m trying to be whimsical in that way that only I seem to understand.

And sometimes it simply doesn’t work anyway, given that I generally flitter through life being much ignored, overlooked, and unloved.

Sometimes I make a quite innocent remark, only for it to be massively misinterpreted and get me into a whole heap of trouble, and, on occasions, I just suffer from an almost impossible to predict crassness and tactlessness that I maintain was more about unfortunate timing and unlucky coincidences than anything deliberate.

After all, I ought to know better.

For example, I know that the England (and Wales) Cricket Team have been making a spectacularly poor show of playing the recent one-day series against India, but the commentary on Test Match Special that I have enjoyed for years has been significantly tainted by the occasional presence on the team of a recently added summarizer who is, quite frankly, spoiling it for me with his jibes and comments and generally irritating manner.

Being a creature of the modern era, at least in some ways, I have been onto several social media platforms to express my irritation at his continued presence, albeit in a slightly abstract and whimsical manner, only to have all of my opinions ignored by just about everyone.

And then an innocent enough exchange – or at least I thought it was – about fund-raising opportunities got me into a whole heap of trouble when the easily offended brigade chose to point out a particular unfortunate coincidence (about which I had been previously unaware) over something I wrote in a failed effort to amuse someone…* 

Maybe you could sell one of your players...?

Well… you wouldn’t have to sell off ALL of him or her, obviously… I mean, presumably most of them have viable organs…? Obviously the livers probably aren’t much of an option, but there must be a spare kidney or two knocking about…? ;-)

Ironically, when a friend of mine had a similar sounding experience recently, I sent him a personal message which included the following…

Here’s one of those timely reminders that you can write what you like (whatever it was), but you can never predict how it’s going to be interpreted… and the possibilities of people taking offence about something that comes completely out of left-field are extraordinary…

Perhaps sometimes I should listen to myself a bit more.

Of course, we are living in times where people will keep on “reckon-ing” in public, and so we all probably need to be a little more careful about the things we say and write, but, equally, we can’t all predict what everyone’s personal circumstances might be at any given moment, or how anyone might react to something that everyone else might see as being utterly harmless.

We do, from time-to-time, need to be careful about the things we say, of course we do, but should that mean that we all have to walk on eggshells all of the time, just in case we upset someone, however unexpectedly or unintentionally…?

In the end, it seems, it might be better if we all just shut up about everything I suppose, but I suspect that’s precisely what the “joy vampires” would prefer…

* This never actually happened, of course (because almost nobody actually gives a damn

* about anything I might have to say), but I'm using it as an example of the kind of thing

* that does happen from time-to-time...