The trip home was mostly uneventful. One thing marred it, however. I had an early flight out of Toronto which meant leaving the hotel before six a.m. On the shuttle from the hotel to the airport, the flight crew of a Westjet flight sat in the back. Three pilots and three flight attendants. They talked quite loudly so it was impossible not to hear their conversations. Most of it was innocuous. Then one of the pilots asked the others if they’d seen the people from the convention the day before.
Silence. And then they started. And their comments kept making me angrier and angrier.
They couldn’t stop talking about how odd looking everybody was. One girl started talking about how everybody had looked like those people in her high school that “creeped me out.” Another said she had wanted to work out, but she began to walk through the hallway dressed in her workout clothes and felt so ogled that it made her uncomfortable that she went back to her room and hid the rest of the night. Somebody else couldn’t believe people could be so stupid/blind about how ridiculous they looked in their costumes, especially the women since so many of the costumes were inappropriate.
The comment that pissed me off the most, though, was when a woman mused out loud that she had wondered how anybody could enjoy these things, how people couldn’t seem to move on or how they could possible get so obsessed with something as stupid as a tv show. Then she realized that she’d seen families there, parents with small children, and she said, in the most condescending, pitying voice I could hear at that hour, “My god, they’re bred into it. How sad is that?”
It pisses me off. Sure, there are people there who may fit certain physical stereotypes of a con goer, and sure, some of the women’s costumes were far too skimpy for their size. But that doesn’t hold true for everyone. And even if it did, who are these people to be so damn judgmental about something they admit they don’t understand? What right do they have to say that these people’s interest in sci-fi stuff is any more pathetic than theirs in say…football? Or fashion? Or cars? To each his own. And to mock another’s passion is a sign of a narrow mind, especially if you’re too cowardly to say so to another’s face.
God. I’m still angry about that. Which is a shame because I was having such a good time seeing old friends and making new ones.
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