Are we becoming the most intolerant country on the planet? Maybe it's because we have to be tolerant about the big things - sex before marriage, gay rights, Asian immigration, body piercing - that we seem to have lost the plot about the small stuff.
A woman correspondent to the Herald this week demanded, in all seriousness, that there be adult-only flights so she wouldn't be bothered by ankle biters when she travelled.
North Shore residents have gone all Western Springs-like and don't want concerts at the North Shore Events Centre because the bass sound does their heads in, and I received a letter this week from a woman whose neighbour - a retired judge, he informed her - demanded her nephew stop playing basketball outside the house because the noise ruined the ambience of his evening meal.
On the one hand, parents are berated if their kids are indoors playing on computers; on the other, they are told their children aren't allowed to bounce balls, run, scream, splash or do anything that will interfere with their neighbours' enjoyment of Coro Street or Tchaikovsky's 5th.
I know other people are irritating - I would love to live the privileged and gilded existence of the truly rich and famous. It would be magical to live in a world where everything went as we wished it. However, we left that world behind when we were about three.
One of the downsides of being an adult is that we have to compromise. I would love to banish the neighbour's barking dog to the Campbell Islands - screaming children in supermarkets terrorising their parents is up there too - but until such time as we write a novel that gets on Oprah's Book Club or warble a tune that goes platinum worldwide, we're stuck with one another.
And we're going to have to develop the tolerance that will lubricate the wheels of civilisation or else society will come to a screaming halt.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
<EM>Kerre Woodham:</EM> Our intolerance is beyond bounds
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
