Friday, December 12, 2008

To Bee-otch or not to Bee-otch

A certain someone called my writing whining the other day and I took a little offense to it. I guess I am a bit sensitive about the subject. My brother and sister's favorite joke is about my mom's bee-otching disease. When does relating an incident or telling about something cross the line into whining? When I'm in front of the class and am giving instructions and my students' heads go down on their desks and they start moaning complaints about how much work I'm giving, I know that its just whining. When the junior 100Farmer stomps around the house and slams the door on the way out to clean the cat box, I know its just whining. Standing in the hallway between classes talking to other teachers about students is definitely jumping aboard the whining train. If I am unhappy with someone's rude behavior to me and I tell someone else about it, is that whining? Is it whining because I didn't correct the rude behavior or try to fix the problem? Maybe its harder to judge whining when you can't actually hear the tone of someone's voice and have to rely upon typed interpretation. I don't know. When does whining morph into dumping on someone? When is it just crying on someone's shoulder? When do you pull out the "world's smallest violin" emoticon and tell someone to just deal with it? It leaves a person afraid to share anything because you dont want to be that whiny person. Especially if it makes you sound like your mother....shudder....

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