There are a
few things I would love to write about on this blog but the truth is I am a
little worried about doing so.
There are
many tales to tell, mostly funny and amusing, and some things that have
irritated me or continue to annoy me. I would love to write them down but there
is one thing stopping me.
They involve
people I know.
I have a
thick skin and can tolerate a fair amount of abuse, either funny tongue in
cheek banter or even on occasion words spoken in spite because of a difference
of opinion, an argument or whatever.
The problem
is that I really don’t know how thick skinned other people actually are. Worse,
I have no idea if they would mind seeing a story about them appearing on a blog
in cyberspace that a lot of people may stumble across.
Regular
readers know that I have actually written about a few people, notably Mrs PM,
as well as my sons. I’ve also mentioned people in passing, usually involving an
amusing incident in a light-hearted post.
However, I
have hidden their names behind a pseudonym; I’ve done exactly the same with
myself too. My name is not really Plastic Mancunian – in case you were
wondering.
Nevertheless,
even when I have mentioned people hidden behind a silly name, I have wondered
whether they actually read my blog and if so what they would think if they
actually recognised themselves.
It’s
happened on one or two occasions.
I walked
into a pub one day to meet some mates and one of them said:
“OY! You wrote
about me wearing a bloody dress!”
The fact
that quite a few people knew that he wore a dress once was irrelevant. I didn’t
even give him a pseudonym – I merely mentioned the fact that I knew a guy who
wore a dress to see the Rocky Horror Show and allowed a photograph of him to be
taken.
Worse, I
think I was the person who circulated the photo around selected people in the office
– a double whammy if you like.
And now I’ve
mentioned it again he might even bring it up YET AGAIN!
“YOU UTTER
ARSE! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! ARE YOU OBSESSED?”
Of course I’m
not obsessed and I apologise once more in advance.
This is the
dilemma I have. Over the years certain people have truly annoyed me and some
still do, particularly in the work environment. And I am itching, absolutely
itching to pour scorn on them via the medium of the blog.
I guess that
for those in my past who I do not class as friends or those I simply haven’t
seen for years, the problem is not too bad. I would hate to have upset a work
colleague because of a few ill-chosen sentences just to make a point – even if
I disliked the fellow in question.
So I am
torn; torn between an evolving need to write about people I know or have known and
a desire to remain a nice guy and leave people alone.
I don’t
think it’s so bad in the case above where I am simply taking the piss out of a
friend. I wouldn’t mind if people did that to me – I do enough of that myself.
It is an
inner conflict that needs to be resolved.
This is one
of the reasons that I was disappointed that my blog was discovered in the first
place. Initially I wanted it to remain completely anonymous, devoid of any
photographs of myself, so that I could regale the world with tales of work,
life and the universe, mentioning everybody I knew without fear of reprisals.
Thinking about
this logically, I shouldn’t be worried at all. I’ve read autobiographies where
the author has made it perfectly clear how he feels about the people in his or
her past. It’s worse in this case because the author has actually named names
and not been kind enough to protect them behind a pseudonym.
So why
should I care?
I care
because I think I am a nice guy and even though I may not be keen on the person
in question, I feel a moral obligation to leave them alone rather than splashing
their name, albeit a pseudonym, on a blog that anyone can read.
I sometimes even
wonder how Mrs PM will react if I mention her in a post (and I never say anything
bad about her).
Not everyone
is like me. Not everyone would like to be seen as a joke or the target of a
Plastic Mancunian rant.
Do you see
my predicament? I could open up a whole new area of bloggery if I allowed
myself to stop caring about what people would think if I were to write about
them.
It’s one to
mull over I think. Perhaps I can dig into the distant past and hope that people
don’t recognise me or themselves.
Over to you,
dear reader.
What would
you do?
Would you avoid writing about people you know for fear of upsetting them
– even if you are not sure whether they read your blog or not?
Actually, part of
me is tempted to lose my own anonymity on this blog.
But that's an inner
struggle for another day.
