[redpoint5]

Among the things I'm most ashamed of is the time a group of us were walking in a college town, and a guy across the street yelled to the women in our group to come over to his side so he could do sexually explicit things.

It pissed me off, so I yelled the thing I figured would most anger the guy and used the N-word; the only time I had ever uttered the word. The point wasn't that I hated that he was black, but rather hated that he would act so inappropriately to strangers. It doesn't justify the way I handled it because I completely lost my cool. There's a way to express what is appropriate behavior and what is not without resorting to name calling and threats of violence (or other extreme action).

If the women were merely annoying, and not hindering the business I was attending to, I'd probably just ignore it because people don't annoy me very easily when I can see their intent is to enjoy themselves and not to be malicious. Being annoyed gives others too much power. That said, if their behavior was disrupting the ability to attend to the business at hand, I'd have asked that they quiet down or go somewhere else. Minimum necessary force to affect the change that needs to happen.

Of course, if I let something annoy me to the point of anger, I lose my ability to approach calmly and politely. Best to make your wishes known well before reaching that point.