In the sewer

Why is it that when someone decides to sink to flinging obscenities at someone they barely know and the person responds in educated language and flowery sentences they are wrong? I write the way I speak, except when I'm writing a character who doesn't speak the way I do. My words sound nice but they have no feeling is the next accusation. Have people become completely unable to communicate without smilies and emoticons?

One of the men I dated used to go into towering rages: screaming, cursing, flailing his arms, pacing and breaking things. My response was always calm and quiet and that just made him angrier and more flamboyant in his cursing and flailing and breakage.

Rage and screaming obscenities -- even in print -- is a waste of energy and emotion that does nothing but create a negative atmosphere. I gave up the rage a long time ago and I seldom use obscenities. My vocabulary is quite rich enough without them. Does that make me unfeeling or in some way deficient? To some people it does. I have one thing to say to them:

Get over it. I will not change the way I communicate to make you feel better or make you feel less like I'm looking down on you. That's your problem, not mine.

And now I return you to your regularly scheduled posts.

That is all. Disperse.