A lesson learned.

You know, I really hate it when my own conscience kicks me is the ass. Up until now my conscience has been a decently good friend, every once in a while giving me a tweak just to say it was still on the job and earning a paycheck, but recently , it started taking the job seriously, and this is the result.
I had found a website that was called POWM, or better known as 'People of Walmart'. It was a collection of pictures that had been taken of different people, in Walmarts all across the U.S. and Canada, and when I say different people, I mean exactly that; D~I~F~F~E~R~E~N~T.
Now, before I go any further, I will just stop for a second and tell you about myself. I am, what is called in pleasant circles, pleasingly plump. Now considering the fact that I have never ventured near a 'pleasant circle' in my life, I will translate this into laymen's terms~ I am fat.
I am not bothered by this, I get my fair share of fat jokes and such, and as far as that goes it never bothers me, simply because the good Lord has graced me with a tongue that is just as sharp, often times MORE sharp than those who make comments about me. If I hear these comments, you may depend they will be the ones embarrassed, not me. My view is, if you are going to make it open season on me, then it is open season all around.
So having said this, I have looked at page after page on this Walmart site, looking at pictures of all manner of people, from goth, to hill-billy, to pimp, to just plain straaaaaaaaaaaaange. There have been pictures of mullets that I never knew could even be fashioned, pictures of people with their pet monkeys on their shoulder, and as a side-bar, these were not helping hand monkeys, they were pets, which I was very surprised to see actually in the store, but what ever, people with clothing on that didn't necessarily belong to their gender, colors beyond the rainbow gracing clothing I never knew could stretch as far as it did, animal print in places it had absolutely no business being in, well, you get the idea. It was just a total education.
I would look at picture after picture, some not too bad, some totally unbelievable, wondering how these people could actually do what it was they were doing.
And like I said before, being a person who's conscience worked on a part time basis, I also laughed, more out of sheer dis-belief than out of cruelty.
But~~ after a while the pictures became less and less funny. There was the odd one that was an eye opener, mostly younger people dressing the way they did for shock value, but those were becoming few and far between, and even those became, well, I guess I would have to say not funny or shocking any more, just sad, somehow.
And then came a picture that I looked at for a long time, and all of a sudden this site lost all of it's appeal to me. It was an older woman on one of those little scooter things that Walmart supplies people who have difficulty walking, and she was dressed in every color of the rainbow that you could possibly wear; hair included.
She was reaching for a food item off of the grocery shelf, and you could see she even painted her nails in rainbow fashion. I looked at her for a long time, reaching for whatever it was she wanted, and that's when it hit me~ she was trying her best to look as good as SHE could see herself looking, with what she had to work with. She may not have had a lot, or she may have been stinking rich, I don't know, but she was doing what made her feel like a worthwhile person, and by me looking at that picture of her, it was as if I was leaching her pride and self respect from her. By even being on this site I was throwing big stones at my own very glass walls.
I hate it when this happens, when my conscience kicks into full gear. Not because I have had my knuckles rapped for being bad, but because I was not able to see the human being in the weird and wacky bodies in the pictures. I was not seeing a person doing their best, I was seeing what was supposedly funny, but in reality, not funny at all. And I was very mad at myself for being one of the ones who was laughing AT instead of WITH another person.
I don't know if I have made any sense about this, I know what I feel, it just seems to not come out on (cyber) paper the way I feel it in my heart, but needless to say, the site has been sent to the recycle bin, and I have never gone back to it after seeing the lady in the rainbow.
Keep in mind that I will always have a comment for those who want to make themselves look good by zinging the fat woman, but now when I see a mullet, or odd-ball hat, or animal print that has gone so wrong, I will remember that the person who put that on, and looked at themselves in the mirror, saw something good, and I will too.