Thank you Earl.Earl wrote:The time where I live is now 11:42 p.m. Iâ??ve been rather busy today and have not had time to submit a post to this topic until now. I hate to say this, but I agree with most of what Brigan says. But I certainly donâ??t believe that Fat Man is a despicable person. Heâ??s deeply troubled, but not despicable. I can say this because Iâ??ve gotten to know him personally and consider him to be a friend. Iâ??m not meaning to put him down by saying this; but to use a tired cliché, his bark is worse than his bite.
Fat Man, what youâ??ve got to realize is that employees of the sort you dealt with at the Don Haskins Sports Center do not set the prices of the merchandise purchased at such establishments. All theyâ??re doing is what their employers tell them to do. As Brigan pointed out, Don Haskins is not the only establishment to charge high prices. Just go to any cinema. I understand your frustration concerning water with the people who were running the refreshments stand, but your rude reaction to the popcorn guy was totally unjustified. Again, these working people were just doing what their employers had told them to do. If they had done otherwise, they would have been fired. You should put yourself in the position of these people and think how you would feel if a total stranger was extremely rude and insulting to you. Fat Man, this is actually a form of bullying.
If you met a white person who had been a crime victim at the hands of blacks, wouldnâ??t you tell him that he should not be prejudiced against all blacks? You would say that prejudice is unfair to all the blacks who are decent, law-abiding people. I understand being prejudiced, as I used to have the same problem myself. But as we go through life, we should try to deal with our weaknesses, correct our faults, and overcome our problems so we can become stronger, happier human beings. We call that personal growth.
You cannot hold all athletes, coaches, and sports fans responsible for the terrible abuse that you suffered when you were in school. Those who abused you are personally responsible for what they did to you. They and no one else. Young athletes and sports fans who have been members of this website are not responsible for what happened to you. They had not even come into the world. Yes, today there are â??jocksâ? and coaches who are jerks and even thugs; but others do not bear their guilt. Surely you can see a radical difference between someone like Samdaman and someone else like SportsGuy92 or Andy. You donâ??t have to be in complete agreement with them to realize that theyâ??re good kids.
Regarding your comment that the part of your brain that governs your politeness towards athletes and sports fans has been damaged, I doubt that you have suffered any such brain damage. I say this not to put you down, but just to speak the truth. You just have a bad attitude, which is a common failing of us all. Weâ??ve all had bad attitudes of one kind or another.
When I graduated from high school, I was so sick and tired of the cliquishness of high-school social life that I had become prejudiced against football players. But over the years I was glad to hear about individual players or former players who didnâ??t fit the negative arrogant jock or bully stereotype.
When you judge people as members of a group instead of viewing them as individuals, you run the risk of depriving yourself of friendships. Today my friends include several guys who played football in high school who were never arrogant and never bullied anyone. One of them, who is an elder in my congregation, recently told me that he would never give the time of day to former teammates of his who had bullied other students. And none of them are offended because I happen to not be a sports fan.
Though we don't always agree, I have to admit, sometimes I do go way over the top. I respect you as a friend.
At least you understand my anger.
Yeah, I understand that the employees at the sports center are worried about losing their jobs but it's still immoral and criminal to charge $3.25 just for a cup of water! The people at the top who run the sports center, they are scum as far as I'm concerned if they set a policy that one is to be charged $3.25 just for a cup of water!
Also . . . . .
If Brigan had not referred to me as "despicable" but merely disagreed with me I would not have come down quite as hard.
But when he arrived as a new member, the first thing he does is get on my case when he doesn't know a damn thing about me and what I have been through.
I'm having problems with my computer, and I got screwed on a new motherboard I bought for it yesterday.
The new motherboard does not work at all, so I put the old one back in.
The new one is defective and they refuse to refund my money, so I'm out $60 dollars. I'm screwed.
My computer locked up twice this evening and I had to reboot. In fact, it locked up as I was typing this message, but after I rebooted, and reloaded the Mozilla Firefox browser, the text I was typing was still in the text window. Yeah! Mozilla Firefox is one really smart browser! It remembers where you left off, even after your computer crashes and you have to hit the reset button. It still remembers! It's much smarter than Microsoft.
Anyway . . . . .
With all these problems I've been having, I'm about ready to have another emotional breakdown.
Anyway, thanks, just for being a friend.
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
). I've been growing more neutral/indifferent to sports, frankly I've grown an interest in other things, but I have to say all its supposed advantages from playing sports can achieved in doing other things, which athletes and their coaches don't tell you. For example teamwork; working together in a division/department in a company to finish a project. Also I think there should be a distinction between activities and sports. All sports are activities but not all activities are sports unless treated in a competitive manner like swimming for example. Swimming is actually useful though no matter what your stance on sports is especially if you make a living fishing in the body of water. 
