I'd be interested to know how people would react to some of the above. The one that sticks out to me was the one about the beach. We were in a cab on our way one at the time. It was me and Liza and a friend of mine from school, not actually an especially close one but we are in touch and he was gonna come through Lisbon so we met up - that sort of feels relevant as it may have affected the amount to which we felt we could rely on each other for a united front, I dunno. Anyway it's a bit of a drive, we were kinda half way there, on the motorway and the guy comes out with that.... what would you do?
Predictably enough we basically did nothing. We were in the back and we all sort of looked at each other and there was big awkward silence. I guess we didn't want an argument, we didn't want to get dumped in the middle of nowhere. We didn't know what to do... ultimately, there's not really much more that I can say except admit that we were just pussies. We pretended not to hear and changed the subject. He clearly knew that he had pissed us off cos at the end as he dropped us off he said it again or some variant on it. Which is probably a perfect example of how our weakness and the way we just did nothing even though we all clearly thought it was wrong emboldened him. Thinking back I feel a bit ashamed, I wish that I could tell you that I righteously brow-beat him into an apology but that would be far from the truth. Sorry. I would like to hear what people think that they would have done, honest assessments of course.
The other thing. Kinda from the other side. Renato telling me about that guy deliberately making a racist comment to him and in a way the challenge for him was to not rise to it. In the previous example it was incumbent on us to do something, to make the effort to do the right thing. Here it was the other way round in that it would have been very easy for him to snap but in fact (he told me) that he almost got really annoyed but actually controlled himself and he said that he grabbed the guy's arm and just said to him very clearly and in a manner that was serious and heartfelt "That's not a nice thing to say". I think that was quite well done in the circumstances, he made a real attempt to force the guy to actually think about what he was saying and understand that it was being directed not at some abstract group but at a particular individual and that it was hurtful and cruel etc etc
As it happens, those guys have been going to that club for years, they know the owner and the staff and so on and another member of the group pointed the bloke out and he was thrown straight out. That wasn't down to Renato but I think he would have been well within his rights to do that as well - what I mean is, yeah, he rose above violence or even anger and that's great but there is no reason for him to rise above having that guy booted out. If it had been him who had made that happen I don't think that that would have in any way detracted from his having managed to not get annoyed if you see what I mean.