PURPLE PASSION

Some see red. Some see blue. Most of us see a blend of purple in there somewhere, but others are so narrowly focused that any tint of purple is offensive.

Several weeks ago I witnessed an adult man who was particularly blind. He was loud. Vocal. You know the kind. Very unattractive. He had a favorite candidate - his chosen one - and come hell or that rising water, he was going to offer whatever assistance he could to spur his choice on to victory. Many of us witnessed his erratic affection. Even those who also shared his passion and cheered on the blue - who actually agreed with his opinion - wrestled with distancing themselves from this man who found disrespectful articulation appropriate. When his favorite won, he celebrated loudly, regardless of any disappointed in his immediate audience. Also, even amidst victory, if a single word was uttered even constructively critically - a potential negative in regard to his primary candidate - the blinded man became predictably hostile.

It was ugly. I saw the blind man four inches from another’s face, fulfilling all aspects of Seinfeld’s “close talkers” rendition. The voice was raised and the finger fiercely wagging. He spewed at the teenager, who at a young age still logically opined that he felt the blind man’s candidate engaged in a stimulating action worthy of a foul. The blind man would have no part of it. The resulting confrontation led me to question who behaved more as the adolescent.

A week later the disrespectful spewing found itself solely directed at someone else, someone, too, who had concluded the blind man’s candidate was not quite as perfect as publicly acclaimed. This confrontation reached a new level, and our agitated blind man was actually asked to leave the public forum. In a moment that proved that age and maturity are not always coexistent, the blind man continued his jeers and jabbering jabs throughout his ejection.

Sometimes our passions get in the way of seeing rightly. Sometimes they get in the way of being respectful. Sometimes they tempt us to justify ugliness as a righteous behavior... just as it did for the aforementioned parent... at my 10 year old’s basketball game.

AR