the blame game

I had a fun day today. I went to my Micro class and wrote down lecture notes and then proceeded to the Micro lab. Thank God that I did not spill any more of my culture broth :) So I'm definitely happy about that. What's funny though is that I did not mess up this time but someone, or rather something else did. Our last incubated experiments got contaminated by a fruit fly. Yep, those little flying suckers. It had a great time gallivanting through our class' agar plates so most of our experiments had worms in them. Yes, ew. But it was bearable and we just went through lab uneventfully.

When I finally got out from lab, I sat on the bench near the Life Science building to wait for Dr. Coop for our study session. As I was waiting, I noticed a lady with a doberman and her companion a good distance from me. A few moments the healthy (obese) woman fell forward, as if in slow motion. Her companion, her dog, and I just stared at her as she fell on the ground. Huh. I just watched on impassively but felt my eyebrow raise when she yanked the dog's leash and started yelling at her dog. I watched on as she continued to scold her dog for causing her to fall. "Shame on you!" And other words of anger were issued from her mouth.

I wasn't amused but I had a smile on my face. I wasn't smiling because she fell, I was smiling because she was blaming her dog. I wanted to walk up to her, help her up and say, "Excuse me but don't blame your dog that you're fat." It's mean. But it clearly wasn't her dog's fault when she suddenly pitches forward and hurts her knee. It's a dog, it doesn't know any better. What egged me more was the fact that she was using her dog to carry her things, like a common mule or a dessert camel. I felt bad for the dog to have such an owner. This post may provoke and/or offend people and start the hating and rotten vegetables thrown at me. But what I saw was an obese woman too lazy to carry her stuff around campus, using her poor dog to carry them for her and blaming it for her own fault. I don't mind fat people, I like being fat. What I don't like is when you go and lash out at something or someone else who can't defend themselves from your attack. That's just spiteful and cowardly.

I wanted to name this post 'Don't blame the dog you're fat' but no that's not nice. The next time that happens just don't use your dog as the scapegoat and we're cool. It's easy to point our manicured fingers at someone or something else but it takes a real person to accept that the blame is theirs alone. It's not easy but it is the right thing to do. Everything else considered, my day was fun, dogblaming and all.