What's Your Sign

Another Blogger, The Patient Flosser, wrote that she had thought (among other things) about putting a nasty poster on her neighbour's door that reads, I AM AN INCONSIDERATE F***. She calls him Stompy and you'll have to read the entire post to decide whether he is deserving of the label or not. Here's the link (it's a quick read):

http://patientflosser.blogspot.com/2007/01/stompy.html

She described this act as "stooping" to his level and dismissed it outright. I, on the other hand, found it to be a very compelling idea. Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about Stompy, because it's easy to rationalize behaviour when we have the luxury of guessing about people's motives, but I am interested in the premise. What if this was one of our social norms? What if we were permitted or encouraged to place posters on the doors of our neighbours? What would the poster on your door say? What sign would you leave for your neighbours?

If you've been reading my entries you would probably guess, as I would, that my signs would say "dirty bathrooms," or "sharp tongue" or "flabby abs" or even "quiet, blogger blogging." The neighbour across the street might leave a poster on my door that says "yummy brownies," or "needs bedroom curtains."

I'd be all over this idea. I'm sure I would mostly use it as an opportunity to reinforce good behaviour through positive reinforcement - that, of course, would be the right thing to do. You know, "nice lawn," "world's best neighbours," "great kids live here," things that convey sweet, warm sentiments. That said, I have been known to have some pretty bad days during which I must harness all my will just to hold my tongue. I'm not sure I'd be as successful at self-restraint if I knew that I had this option available to me. An almost anonymous offensive directed at unsuspecting, but deserving people who push my buttons might be far too convenient an opportunity to pass up. On such a day, I could be lured to the dark side with as little as a sideways glance. Most often I just entertain thoughts of retaliation and am rarely compelled to act, but there have been a few regrettable incidents.

Consider this though; how would we behave if we knew that we were going to wake up the next day to a door full of posters? Would we try to be "cute & cuddly" or "strong but silent" or would we just wake up, pull the signs off the door and shout out defenses to our neighbours? Would we be more kind or more irritable? Would we be more tolerant or less judgmental? Would we concern ourselves more with the actions of others (the posters we're going to make), or pay closer attention to our own behaviours (the posters we find on our own doors)?
Let's ask Stompy.

Stompy, if you knew that your insensitive behaviour was going to result in a socially-acceptable method of public and personal defamation, would you be a little quieter? What's that? Go to hell, you say?

Well, there you have it. It's going to take much more than a sign on the door to curb the enthusiastic shenanigans of Stompy. Maybe a poster fastened to a brick with an elastic....

So tell me, what's your sign?

Thanks, Patient Flosser, for opening up this idea for me. It was a fun one to explore.