13 January, 2002 - 8:44 p.m.

Do you think that for every tolerant person out there, there is one to match them with equal parts intolerance?

It has always amazed me to just sit back and watch the world as it moves along in its odd shuffling ways, resplendid with its many different types of people. Blue collar, white collar, young mothers with screaming children in tow, distinguished elderly business men with their black suitcases and shiny black shoes, ten year olds running around in fluorescent string bikinis .. but then I think of what a pretencious word "resplendid" actually is, and I promptly forget all noble notions and just sit back and contemplate that it certainly does take a truckload of different people to make the world go 'round.

I went to our city's main amusement park attraction yesterday with a mixture of friends from uni, old days, and school. Now I'm definitely not well known for my eagerness to venn diagram my different cliques. As a simple matter of truth, I'm well known to be the one who vetoes the idea point blank. I'm not quite sure how to put it into a clean easy sentence, but it's more or less just a feeling deep down that the reason I met these people in different circumstances is because they're all interested in different things. They perceive ideas differently. They take different stances on government politics. They prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla. One group prefers going out on the weekend, the others to stay in. That kind of thing .. but obviously on a more notable level.

Anyway, one of the times yesterday when it was apparent why I spend time with them separately was while we were standing in line waiting for our turn on a ride. There's about ten of us, mixed genders, just talking among ourselves when two of my girlfriends from uni started giggling and commenting on how cute one of the guys running the ride was. Now that's fine .. almost understandable by today's societal values, right? You're not normal if you don't see an attractive person and at least make some sort of acknowledgement that they're "hot".

What makes me cringe is that the girls didn't just leave it at that. They start wolf-whistling and shouting out crass comments at the guy infront of all these people. Small, impressionable five year old kids, high brow eighty year old couples .. you get the picture, I'm sure. Now I know I'm sounding very petty - but I just think that when you're out in public, and there are other people around you, a little decorum never goes astray.

I could tell that my other friends were thinking along the same lines as I was, and it shames me to say that I was embarrassed by and for them. The differences between the ways that they act only continued to intensify as the day wore on. And time and time again I caught myself trying to shrink in the background, hoping that people walking past wouldn't think that I was part of the trio or so who were making rude, unjust, and uncalled for comments.

Does this make me a bad person? Am I an intolerant person? Have all these years of living life and thinking that I adapt and accept easily .. has that just been something that I've been trying to preach myself into believing?

If indeed it turns out that I am - then I can but hope that there is someone out there who is taking up my slack. Someone who is as accepting of her friends faults as of their virtues. Someone who can verify that the world isn't made up of two-faced people saying one thing, and then acting in another.

.. I never realised that being a snob was such an easy trap to fall into.