Can You Scotchguard Your Ears Against Bad Conversation?

You know what Scotchguard is, right?  It's a 3M product that you spray on furniture, carpets, even clothing, to protect against stains.  It's an amazing product; when wine spills on your favorite white sofa, it bounces off...If you have sprayed it with Scotchguard before your sloppy guest spills his glass.  Well, at least that's what the ads say.

 

So I got a truckload of Scotchguard spray that I intend to use on my newly upholstered living room furniture and the new carpets, too.  I'll do it some weekend when I'm going to take off for a couple of days, to avoid the fumes that could probably knock me out if I don't ventilate the place properly.  New York apartments are not the easiest places to make sure you've got fresh air pouring in to save you from toxic attack.

This Scotchguard adventure has gotten me thinking.  I am fantasizing about having some way to protect oneself from the toxic things that get said every day, whether in your face on the subway, or on television or screaming nonsense on the web.  Everyone seems so angry, no?  Even total strangers venting on the City bus somehow get through to me...it's as if the stain of their rage seeps into my skin and stays there, souring the evening after I get off the bus.

So I want a conversational Scotchguard.  A way to protect myself against the stain of words that pour out of others in my direction, even though rarely directed personally at me.  And for sure I'd like to spray the kids I see standing in checkout lines with adults who say nasty things to them.  I saw an adorable enthusiastically active four year old on the street the other day with his apparently exasperated mother.  She suddenly turned at him angrily and said, "So will you stop jumping around like someone retarded?"   The words seemed to spill not only all over the little boy but on me and others close by as well.  I felt soiled just hearing those words.

He was so excited to be alive, he was jumping.  And she cut him to the quick.  Not to mention the fact that she disparaged all retarded people in the universe in the process.  We can count on the fact that this little boy will no doubt grow up to despise and ridicule people with physical disabilities.  I guarantee it. 

He may say mean things to them just as his Mom says to him.  I wish before he starts talking as she does that there were a way to Scotchguard those other kids against such talk. 

On the other hand, we could focus on using our conversations not to spread words that stain, but words than enhance and brighten.  There are laundry products that do that, right?   Not bleach, but enhancers. 

So let's use words that do that.   Courtesy is contagious.