The Joys of Friendship...

Last night, we had dinner at the center, like we have every night, and an incident occured. Now, mind you, we are all friends here (supposedly), and I have seen this guy (we'll call him Mike to protect the guilty) act stupid and do things to people before. We've even been kind of mean to each other, but we both realize it's all in fun and understand that we are not trying to inflict too much pain upon each other. The problem is Mike doesn't know when to stop with others. He grabbed the leg of the chair of this gal (who we'll call Tammy to protect the guilty) and pulled up upon it (I don't even know why) and she spilled off the chair. Tammy gets off the ground about to cry, sits down for a second, and then decides to get up and leave. Her sister (we'll call her Erin) goes to try to talk to her. Now, at this point, I have one thing going through my head: GROW UP BOTH OF YOU!!!!!! Erin comes back and orders Mike to appologize, to which Mike tells her she is not his mother. Mike decides that it is time to bail and leaves, leaving his girlfriend (Annie for this story) to defend him. Annie talks to Tammy and they get into a big argument. Annie leaves pissed off at Tammy.

I've already made one piece of commentary on the situation, which is the basic framework under which I will work. Mike needs to grow up a little and realize he cannot pull stunts off on everyone. Tammy needs to realize that Mike didn't actually mean to dump her on her rear, and that he is immature so, when things like this happen, she is the mature one and not acting like she's 5 or 6. Erin needs to realize she's not Mike's mom and, rather than ordering him like a drill seargent, ask him to appologize. At any of these points, if someone had stepped up and been the better Christian, the whole situation could have been diffused. Instead, everyone involved went home mad. The biggest problem is, I didn't think of all of this until after the fact. That, in a way, is my failing since I could have diffused the situation. Rather, I kept my mouth shut and watched this whole thing disintegrate. Good job on my part.